Note: This is part of a continuing series on Hudson County’s myths, mysteries, and macabre moments.
Twenty-five years ago, hysteria hit the hallways of Hoboken’s schools. At least, according to Weird New Jersey Magazine, kids became so terrified in 1982 of the mysterious “Hoboken Monkey-Man” who supposedly had killed a teacher, that the city’s Police Department created a special task force to deal with mounting fears.
However, dozens of residents and police officers said last week that only part of the story published by Weird New Jersey is true.
Native Hobokenites said they remembered their friends and parents scaring them with stories of the “Hoboken Monkey-Man” when they were growing up in the 1980s. But police and former city officials say they don’t remember any task force being started to deal with the myth.
Still, Weird New Jersey dedicated a full page to the myth in their book published in 2003. They even feature the “Hoboken Monkey-Man” in a board game they just released.
So what’s the truth about this mysterious mythical mammal?
‘It was a downtown thing’
Hoboken resident Nora Martínez, 29, grew up near 12th and Garden streets. She said last week that while she does not remember a task force being formed to talk to kids about the Monkey-Man, she recalls being very afraid.
“The Monkey-Man is scary, but we don’t know why,” Martínez said. “Its just one of those things you remember but haven’t talked about it since you were like seven.”
Now a teacher, Martínez said she thinks the Monkey-Man myth was based more on various stories than any one event.
“I think it spread in the schools,” she said.
One resident said it was something kids talked about to scare each other, and parents said to their kids to keep them out of danger at night.
“They’d say, ‘If you go out, the Monkey-Man’s gonna get ya!’ ” said Mariah DeBenedetto, 34, who still works in Hoboken.
DeBenedetto had more details than Martinez did.
“I think it was a downtown thing,” said DeBenedetto, who used to spend a lot of time at her grandmother’s house downtown. She attended St. Francis School at Third and Jefferson streets.
“They used to say the guy came around the projects downtown,” she added. “Some people said he was a killer who wore a monkey mask and abducted kids. You’d be walking, and if you saw a guy, you’d say, ‘Ooh it’s the Monkey-Man!’ I remember one time we were walking and we saw a guy who had on a hood with fur, and we started screaming and ran away.”
DeBenedetto added, “A boy I went to school said the Monkey-Man grabbed him and that he had real monkey-hands. A couple of years later, he said he made it up. He was late for dinner or something.”
She added, “Why it was a Monkey-Man, I don’t know.”
How the Monkey-Man came to be
The Weird New Jersey book, published in 2003, has this to say: “In October of 1982, rumors circulated about a mysterious apelike creature terrorizing schools, attacking children walking home, throwing students out of windows, and even killing a teacher. The Hoboken Police Department set up a task force to quell the mounting hysteria.”
Several calls to the offices of Weird N.J. magazine about the origins of the Monkey-Man story did not yield much information. Staffer Joanne Austen said stories of the Monkey-Man have appeared in six issues of the magazine over the years, but they were based on reader letters.
When asked about the myth last week, longtime city clerk and former Board of Education President James Farina solved the mystery – at least, momentarily.
“The Hoboken Monkey-Man?” he asked. “That’s me.”
He added, seriously, “I never heard of that. If it was something really serious, I would probably remember that.” Farina has served on the Board of Education for at least 30 years.
City and police officials did not know anything about a specific scare in 1982 or a task force being formed. “I’ve been on the force for 28 years and I haven’t heard anything about the Monkey-Man,” said Sgt. Michael Costello of the Hoboken Police Department.
Both DeBenedetto and Martínez theorized that the story stemmed from a national fear in the early 1980s about kidnappings. And Wallace Primary School Principal Charles Tortorella, who was the vice principal of Hoboken High School in 1982, agreed.
“I don’t have any recollection of anything like [the Monkey-Man],” he said. “There were some other parental concerns about things happening in other parts of the country. A lot was going on in Atlanta [referring to a rash of kidnappings]. There was some concern about that, and some parental inquiries about if we were aware, and what were we doing, but not about the Monkey-Man per se.”
Tortorella also mentioned that he and his father, Detective Sgt. Frank Tortorella, who retired in 1982, often spoke about issues affecting the police and the schools.
“I don’t recall anything about a Monkey-Man. Maybe Nessie [the Loch Ness Monster] a little bit,” he joked.
Former Public Safety Director George Crimmins Jr., a Hoboken native whose father, the late George Crimmins Sr., was the police chief for many years, also said he had never heard of the Monkey-Man – that is, except for when he saw it in Weird New Jersey Magazine.
Apparently, the 17-year-old magazine has kept the myth alive.
“I’ve never heard anything about the Hoboken Monkey-Man except for maybe in the Weird N.J. book,” said Bob Foster, director of the Hoboken Historical Museum, last week. “It seems like it’s kind of a hoax of a hoax. The only time I’ve gotten inquiries about it is from people newspapers, and I can’t add anything except to say that I’m highly suspect of it.”
Sgt. Costello said he recalled another local character of whom kids were scared in the 1990s.
“There was an old guy who would walk around that the kids called ‘the Scarecrow’ because he always had straw sticking out of his shirt,” he said. “He used to hang out by Sts. Peter and Paul Church. The kids that walked to school were scared of him.”
Wherever the Monkey-Man and the Scarecrow came from, they seem to have disappeared. So are those two creatures still out there?
Maybe right now, they’re listening to “Monkey Man” by the Stones while they share some banana Tasti D-Lite at Washington Street’s Frozen Monkey Café.
Comments on this piece can be sent to mfriedman@hudsonreporter.com