The Monkey in the Closet

No, it is not a psychology term as in “I think you need to face your inner monkey in the closet.  And it isn’t a summer replacement show in the NBC lineup, with the smart-alec neighbor monkey with a catch-phrase.  It seems to be an elusive part of American folk lore/culture.

Part of my family’s lore is the story of the monkey in the closet.  My mother has said my aunts and uncles tell about seeing a monkey in the bedroom closet at my grandparent’s house when they were growing up.  According to the kids, this particular bedroom had a closet with a door that did not fully close.  At night, they swear they would see a monkey in the closet.  Even some of the older kids claimed to have seen the monkey. 

So I am watching Family Guy and the middle kid Chris has a character named “Evil Monkey that lives in the closet”.  The monkey menaces Chris with an angry teeth gritting point wordlessly telling Chris, “I am going to get you”.  I thought, “That’s odd.  There is an evil monkey in our family too”.

So then I talked to a guy at work who also was afraid that an evil monkey would get him when he was a kid.  Now wait a minute.  How can this be?  I had a very vivid imagination as a kid and I never saw an evil monkey in the closet.  Although I was kind of freaked out by those cymbal playing mechanical monkeys.  Those are just plain freaky, maybe they are too close to clowns, which terrify me.  So I am thinking, is this one of those shared memory deals?  I think this is worth exploring.  Seriously.  If I get any kind of response generated from this, I will post a whole new evil monkey page.

Email your stories, comments, experiences to evilmonkey@daveobrien.com and I will post them to the evil monkey page.

DOB 6/1/2006