"So it wasn't my imagination?" I asked.
"No," he told me, then leaned in close. "These barracks, fuck, this whole post, is haunted."
I felt a chill run up my back.
"Welcome to Germany, PV-2 Monkey. You ain't seen nothing yet."
"No," he told me, then leaned in close. "These barracks, fuck, this whole post, is haunted."
I felt a chill run up my back.
"Welcome to Germany, PV-2 Monkey. You ain't seen nothing yet."
Humper Monkey's Ghost Story
is a rather lengthy Creepypasta, originally posted on Something Awful some time in the 2000s. While it qualifies as a creepypasta, it might almost be more accurate to call it a web novel.
The story is told from the perspective of a Private fresh out of boot camp, known only as "Private Monkey." The year is nineteen eighty-something, and the Cold War is in full swing. As part of the ongoing geopolitical tensions in Germany, a platoon of United States Army soldiers is dispatched to occupy an abandoned Nazi barracks, directly in the middle of the Fulda Gap. The barracks is strategically valuable, but extremely isolated, and subject to frequent and intensive snowstorms.
As the weather turns foul and a snowstorm settles in for the long haul, the building's occupants are left to fend for themselves against the isolation, the weather, and possibly something lurking within the building itself, something that is not pleased about having new roommates..
The story is notable for its highly effective usage of Nothing Is Scarier. The tense atmosphere is derived less from the threat of whatever is lurking in the barracks, and more from the very real strain of cracking under the mental pressure of the situation.
Humper Monkey's Ghost Story provides examples of:
- A Father to His Men: Captain Bishop. Despite his current situation having been a punishment for his previous behavior, he still leads the soldiers under his command well, and recommends Monkey for a promotion, thanks to his leadership skills in the face of all the bullshit the barracks put them through.
- Ambiguous Situation: As mentioned under Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane, the story avoids offering a definitive answer on whether or not the barracks truly are haunted.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Deconstructed. Monkey deals with the strain of being isolated in an apparently-haunted barracks by attempting to come up with rational explanations for each and every incident. He succeeds, with one exception - how did Tandy vanish from a windowless bathroom with only one door, which let out into a room full of people? At the end of the story, Monkey himself appears to abandon his skepticism completely.What happened to Tandy?Officially: Death due to exposure. To us? The building got him.
- Bald of Authority: Captain Bishop fits the bill; he's a Reasonable Authority Figure and A Father to His Men, black, and given the setting and time period, most likely bald or buzz-cut.
- Bald Head of Toughness: Almost everybody, given that the story takes place during the Cold War, when buzz cuts were standard issue for the US Army. Monkey still takes the cake, given his refusal to take any amount of shit from the situation he finds himself in.
- Battle Amongst the Flames: The story's climax involves Monkey plunging into the burning barracks to save an unconscious Cobb. Unlike most examples of this trope, the confrontation is more metaphorical than physical, as Monkey effectively battles the building itself to save his friend. This point is driven home both bluntly and rather-amusingly by Monkey's brief CQC duel with a lamp post.
- Black Guy Dies First: Smith is the only black soldier in the unit other than Captain Bishop. He insists that this fate awaits him as the unexplained activity in the Barracks intensifies. Ultimately averted; the only person who unambiguously dies from something paranormal is Tandy, a white soldier; Smith and Bishop both survive the entire story.
- Ghostapo: Possibly an unusually literal example; the building the story takes place in was once an SS Training Barracks. There are a few hints that the former occupants never quite left, even if they didn't exactly hang around as humans.
- Hidden Depths: Monkey is a bald, foul-mouthed grunt who was transported to boot camp in handcuffs. He also went out of his way to read as many advanced training documents as possible during basic training, earned letters of commendation from his instructors, risks his life to save Cobb, and refuses Stokes' advances, as he's already married.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Are the Barracks actually haunted? Monkey establishes a thorough case suggesting that everything that's happened is the result of a building that's been left to rot for over a decade and a half, as well as the immense mental strain everyone is under due to the isolation and paranoia. While Monkey fails to come up with an explanation for Tandy's disappearance, all of his other points are extremely solid, but Monkey's final line at the end of the story seems to suggest he believes the building was haunted after all.
- Noodle Incident: Monkey makes passing reference to a "drunken bet" that led to a friend of his shoving a flashlight into her, ahem, 'privates first-class.' He still has the flashlight, and uses it regularly throughout the story.
- Also, whatever altercation got Monkey sent to Juvie to begin with; a brief conversation with Bishop suggests that he almost killed a cop for raping his sister.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Whatever's stalking the barracks is never seen; its' presence is only hinted at. Of course, that's assuming that there IS anything stalking the barracks to begin with.
- Real After All: After spending the latter half of the story trying to explain away all the phenomena they've had to deal with, Monkey ends the story by clearly expressing his view that "the building" got Tandy.
- Seduction-Proof Marriage: Despite describing his thoughts about Stokes in graphic detail, Monkey refuses her advances once she actually tries to seduce him, due to being already married.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Monkey, natch. This could be understandable given his situation, but he comes in with both barrels loaded well before anything paranormal happens, dropping a Precision F-Strike on the reader in the first line of the story.
- Those Wacky Nazis: Defied. The reason the barracks is haunted is because of Nazi shennanigans, but absolutely none of it is played for laughs. Hell, they weren't even doing supernatural research there, it was where they trained their Torture Technicians and the bad shit what went down stained the carpets.
- Too Dumb to Live: Lieutenant Greer barges directly into a blizzard without any protective clothing, and with no tether. The others don't even attempt to rescue him. It's ambiguous whether or not the building had something to do with his reckless behavior.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: An in-universe example. As Monkey is offering his analysis of the unexplained activity to Bishop, Bishop bluntly asks him what his explanation for Tandy's disappearance from a windowless bathroom with only one door is.
- What You Are in the Dark: Stokes attempts to seduce Monkey, a married man, in the privacy of his dormitory room, where nobody else would ever know about his infidelity. He turns her down.
