The Monkey Man

When my family and I were stationed at Camp LeJuene, N.C., we lived in base housing on a cul-de-sac. We had been living there for about six months when my son, three at the time, started seeing monkeys under his bed.

Every night I got up, turned the light on and ran a broom handle up under his bed to assure him that there was no monkeys under there.

This went on for about three weeks. I told my neighbor Trina and she said that the new neighbor across the street, her daughter had see a man with a small monkey on his shoulder standing in her room. He didn't try to scare her, only smiling and showing her the monkey. When I heard this it really creeped me out and I went to the neighbor and asked her to tell me her story and in return tell her mine. It gave us both an uneasy feeling.

As time went on I began to get curious of why this person chose our children as the contact. So I did some research and found out that about ten years prior our housing use to be barracks and there was a young man who owned a spider monkey. He was a friendly person from what I could find out and one night while he was out in town a bunk mate caught the barracks on fire by accident and ran for help. Meanwhile the monkey still in his cage was screaming and his owner was on his way there when he saw the fire. The fire was in full blaze when he ran in to get his monkey. He never came out.

It still haunts me to this day and I still wonder why he chose us.