NEIL ARNOLD: Hey, hey, we’re the (mini) monkeys!

I have known Neil for fifteen years now since he was a mod schoolboy with ambitions for adventure and I was an earnest young hippie who merely wanted to start a club for people interested in unknown animals. Nothing much has changed over the years. We are just both a tad older...

Flick through a majority of UFO and folklore-related books and you will come across tales of mini-people, fairies, imps and tiny demons. But have you heard the one about the miniature monkeys ?

It took place on the 18th June 1980 at Lumut, a village in Malaysia, and it remains a case which has intrigued me for many years. This wasn’t one of those cases of hazy description or where one witness was present. On this occasion many pupils at the local school and two members of staff were present. The first stirrings emerged at around 10:30 am when two twelve-year old girls were on rubbish duty and depositing some trash outside. They were confronted by two figures. Both were suited, one in white the other in black and they carried packs and held rod-like objects. The beings resembled monkeys, stood only a few inches in height and seemed to be hovering above the ground. The girls fled and told staff, who also heard that a couple of hours previous another girl, whilst visiting the toilet, encountered a large ape-like beast which suddenly shrank to no more than two-inches tall! The girl fainted and when she awoke there was no sign.

Some of the young boys at the school went out into the grounds to search for the humanoids and came across three of them. From hereon the story remains vague, as some witnesses claimed they lost sight of the creatures, and a few other boys stated an alien craft picked them up. Many cases involving such mini-people have been often connected to UFOs, but this maybe the only way to explain such critters for those who have no other explanation, as surely such beings do not live in the woods ? We have blamed many mysteries on the aliens, from crop circles, to cattle mutilations and the Men in Black. There is of course no evidence to suggest that mini-monkey monsters are roaming our gardens, schools or deep space, but why should such things appear ?

Are these creatures something akin to boggarts, bogeys, sprites, brownies, goblins, imps and the many other folkloric entities ? I’m sure we’ll never know.