Monster In The Closet

A monster in the closet is probably the most common fear of children. That experience is one of my earliest memories. It wasn’t a large figure but actually very small, almost elf like. My closet was at the foot of my bed. My toy box, my great uncles foot locker from the Air Force, was in my closet. The closet doors were the standard two sliding doors on a track. The door on the right was normally left open so that I could access the toy box. I remember this little male entity crawling around almost spider like in the closet. sometimes it would perch on the shelf or the clothes hanging on the bar. It rarely sat on the toy box probably because it was too low for me to be able to see it. It would taunt and tease me and say things very matter of fact to scare me, often threatening to harm people. I remember asking my mom to close the closet doors at night so the scary man couldn’t get me. Of course, my mom decided it was all my imagination and had “the talk” with me. Eventually she relented and would close the closet door when she put me to bed. That was the first time I remember the man being angry, when he opened the closet door that night. The next morning my mom was surprised to see that I learned to open the door by myself. I remember being terrified and crying and begging not to have to sleep in there anymore. They moved my bed to the opposite side of the room , away from the closet. It didn’t solve the problem. They eventually bought another bed to put in the spare room and I was allowed to sleep in there at night. That room felt lighter and safer and didn’t have closet doors, but it had its own visitors. They weren’t as terrifying as the closet man, so life was better until my parents told me I had to go back to my room because a new baby was coming. I found comfort sleeping with my body pressed into the wall and feeling the coolness on my face. That was the furthest I could get away from the closet and hide my face. It was two long torturous years before my brother was ready to come out of his crib and into a big boy bed. I thank God that my room had red carpet and the baby’s room had green. My mom is a very tasteful home decorator and decided that red carpet was easier to decorate for a boy . My brother would never sleep in that room. They would even rock him to sleep in the living room then put him in his bed after he fell asleep. He would wake everyone up a few hours later screaming as he ran across the hall to my parent’s room every night. One Christmas my grandmother came to stay with us for the holidays and slept in my brother’s room. The next morning, she told my parents she knew why the kids wouldn’t sleep in that room. She said she was woken up several times during the night by electronic toys coming on, particularly the remote control R2D2 robot. She said she turned it off and it came back on. She removed the batteries, and it still came back on. She never slept in that room again, she was quite comfortable on the couch. I was 7 years old and that was the first time I experienced “validation”.