Operation Bogeyman

Duration: 67 minutes

This essay film navigates the intersections of folklore, folk horror and black propaganda during the Troubles.

Beginning in the filmmaker’s childhood home of Carrickfergus, Simon Aeppli embarks on a personal journey through haunting landscapes and archival discoveries to reveal a past steeped in strangeness and horror.

The film examines a bizarre propaganda operation in which the British army staged fake black magic rituals to smear the IRA as ‘Satanists’. This unique blend of video essay and desktop documentary explores the spectres of Northern Ireland’s history through landscape and archival footage, audio interviews, and personal reflections. The film grapples with themes of buried histories, social control, and the haunting legacy of psyops and black propaganda.

This film received support from
Techne AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership
British Association for Irish Studies

Screenings

Docs Ireland 2025, 24th June, QFT Belfast

Reviews

Eye for Film 
'Aeppli’s work brings scams, superstition, abuses of power, real world horrors and the magic of storytelling together in one heady brew'. 

Best Boy
'Aeppli...is a true ghost hunter. He is delving into the other world of archive, the second spaces of history that exist under thick layers of dust and black lines of redaction'.