Monsters in the Closet

In There Be Monsters!

I was always amazed at how stupid adults could be. Leaving a closet door open at bedtime? Why not let me play with matches, or run in traffic? Anybody with an ounce of gray matter knew an open closet door was the gateway to hell. Pathetic, unearthly creatures clawed and slithered their way up from the putrid slime just waiting for mom and dad to go to bed so they could come for me. Wolf Men were prowling about; Frankensteins were behind clothes hanging; Draculas and Creatures of Black Lagoons weren’t far behind, and surely they awaited the snuffing out of the light.

Naturally bedtime was never a good time, at least not until I lost my fear of monsters and the dark. But until that time, bedtime was the beckoning of what waited in the closet, under the bed, or just outside in the hall. Monsters and evil could be seen in shapes. That's how they announced themselves.

Once my eyes adjusted to the dark, anything was possible. Truth was fiction, and the dead came back to life. A coat hanging on the door was a demented hunchback waiting for my parents to fall asleep so he could kill me. Stuffed animals took on a presence of their own, staring at me in the dark, and moving from one position to another so slyly that I barely took notice. Sometimes if I looked just right, I could see an arm move. If the closet door was ajar, then there was no sleeping.

Now, here's the kicker of it all: In the daylight, monsters were cool. They were good friends because they were, for the most part, harmless. You could study their pictures and almost say out loud "hey, why can't you be this cool at night?" Whenever monster movies were on TV, or any scary program, I had to watch. It was only when bedtime came that the monsters became deadly predators. The giant monsters like Godzilla wouldn't fit in the bedroom, so I was pretty much safe from them.

The Wolfman was one of the monsters that I knew for a fact was hiding somewhere in my room. This perturbed me because I treated the Wolfman with respect. I bought his models and toys, watched his movies, drew decent pictures of him in tribute, yet he chose my house and my bedroom over any others in the neighborhood to terrorize. Plain and simple, monsters just couldn't be trusted. Dracula, Frankenstein, The Phantom, The Mummy, and The Creature, they were no better. All monsters were narcissists.

Some monsters were merely creepy, while others were horrifying. I was five years old when I saw something that terrified the wits out of me. It was a vision of unbridled horror that crept into my soul and unraveled it from the core. It was a commercial for the movie, "Village of the Damned." Even the word, "damned" was frightening to me. Nothing was more horrific than the white glowing eyes of the children. There was something inhuman and fiendish about those white eyes.

Whenever I was alone in the house, those neon white devil eyes were there with me. I could see the evil children materialize before me. If I went upstairs, they were waiting at the landing for me. When bedtime came I was terrified. They chose to appear and keep me company in the dark. It was much worse that they were children. Kids were supposed to be your allies, the ones you could identify with and understand.

Kids were my immediate support; the ones who helped me view the paradoxical adult world through a more feasible lens. What happens then when kids become the monsters? The world becomes a place where there is no safe haven. Those "children of the damned" (also the title of the film’s sequel) paved the way for me to fully grasp the concept of deception. My ever-active subconscious was able to summon forth from the depths, bigger, better, and scarier monsters.

If that were not enough, during lunch period at school, movies were shown in the school gym in thirty-minute installments. It was in my second grade year in the gym at Lent School parked on a hard wooden bleacher slab that I saw "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers." At seven years old, I began to grow as a person. I was becoming a thinking human being who could decode the world around me. On my own, and without the benefit of therapy, I had just gotten past the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder associated with "Village of the Damned." Blond, fair skinned children no longer put me in a coma. The white glowing eyes? Well, if you've seen one set, you've seen 'em all.

It was alien robots that became my new horror. How in the world does anybody stop an alien robot? They clumped along with their arms outstretched, shooting out death rays at helpless victims. Yes, robots were the new horror. As if those robots weren't enough, third grade presented to me "The Day the Earth Stood Still" featuring a newer and improved robot capable of melting tanks. Yes, you heard me, tanks!! That very robot obliterated cannons and neutralized entire platoons of soldiers. Fortunately I knew the secret words to stop him: Gort, Klaatu, barada, nikto.

By third grade, my love affair with monsters was burgeoning. I began to collect the plastic model kits from Aurora. They cost ninety-eight cents apiece at our local Pay N' Save store. A set of enamel paints were fifty-nine cents, and a tube of glue was ten cents. Of course, a dollar sixty-nine was big money for me, so each kit was cherished.

After building the kits, I mounted the boxes on my dresser to display. At night, just before the lights went out, they were the last faces I saw. The old gang was together again. The Wolfman, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Phantom, The Mummy, and The Creature, came back to haunt the darkness, but that was okay. I had built the kits, and therefore, I had become “their creator”. I was safe from all harm.

Then came “The Outer Limits” with even newer monsters that crippled my psyche. Those fiendish ants and the jelly-blob monster eating pond slime kept me in fear all over again of open closet doors. I knew that the Zanti Misfit ants were in my bed crawling around, waiting for me to go to sleep. Still, I survived.

I loved every minute spent with my Aurora monster models, and monsters in general. I never passed an opportunity to see a monster movie on TV, or buy more monster models, or plastic figures. I was just plain monster crazy. I still am today.