The Manx Buggane is a particularly noxious type of goblin, adept at shape-shifting like the picktree brag and the Headley Kow, but more dangerous and vicious. Walter Gill in "A Manx Scrapbook" (838: p.487) seems to identify the Buggane with the Cabbyl-Ushtey, the water-horse of Man. One haunted Spooty Wooar, the Big Waterfall in the Patrick District. Gill says:

The Buggane who lives here has been seen by many people in time past, and not very long past; he was usually shaped like a big black calf, which sometimes crossed the road and jumped down into the pool with a sound as of chains being shaken. In a more human form he came to a house at the Glen May end of Glen Rushen, picked up a girl who was working near it, slung her over his back, and carried her down to his place under the dub into which the spooty falls. But just as they were coming to it, she, having a sharp knife in her hand with which she had been slicing up turnips, managed to cut the string of her apron and get free.

Walter Gill "A Manx Scrapbook" (838: p.487)

Walter Gill thought it likely that even in his human form the Buggane had the ears or hoofs of a horse.

In Dora Broome's excellent little book "Fairy Talesfrom the Isle of Man" there are three Buggane stories, in all of which he is a shape-shifter, capable of growing into monstrous size and extremely mischievous, but not so dangerous as the Buggane of Glen May, unless we except the Buggane who made a habit of tearing the roof off the little Church of Saint Trinian at the foot of Mount Greeba. This is a version of the Highland story of the Haunted Church of Bewley, except that in the Highland version the tailor finishes his shirt and in the Manx one he is one button short. The point of each story is the gradual emergence of the bogie from the tomb: head, hands, arms — and when the first leg is out it is time to be gone. The Buggane of the Smelt is a magnificent tale of shape-shifting (1290: p.51-52).