My brothers tried convincing me there was an alligator but I knew it was a carnivorous troll with long arms. Fortunately, I could leap just out of his reach.
It was in my closet, like in Monsters, Inc.
It was the indefinite nature of it that made it scary. I still don’t know what it really looked like.
The Blob.
Me too, the Blob, for years. I always hesitated before putting my foot on the floor, knowing that ooze was just waiting to gobble me up…damn that movie!!
Speaking of The Blob, what gave me nightmares as a kid is that sludge monster from “The Raft” short in Creepshow 2 (1987). I literally would not go into a lake for years. I would always see something floating on the water that would scare the beejeezus out of me. Nightmares for years.
The Alligator was actually a Crocodile, and he lived under my bed. I was OK as long as I didn’t fall asleep with a hand or foot hanging over the edge of the bed… I’m so lucky to still have all my appendages. 
Speaking of things things ’ Blob ’ ..There was a Japanese movie called the H-Man that came out in the ‘50’s…
Same thing…a Blobby stuff that dissolved people !!!..
I was 7 year old boy at the time I saw it, and it scared the sh***er out of me for many years…I had to sleep with the window open no more than 1/2 an inch wide…so the H-Man could’nt get at me while I was sleeping…!! 
As a footnote to the above…
Last year I searched out a copy of The H-Man from E-Bay and it was genuine fear that gripped me when I slipped it into the DVD player !! …
This fear soon turned to embarrassment though, as the Missus and our two teenagers showed no sympathy at all for the dear old Dad,facing his childhood demons…There they sat sniggering away "You’re kiddin’ are’nt ya Dad,this is wimpy stuff to be sure"…
Alas,I had to agree with them, as it was a real B grader of a movie…But at the time,all the kids in our street were mighty afraid of the evil,nasty,blobby H-Man…
Wolves. I knew they were upstairs waiting for me as I climbed the stairs to go to bed.
None for me but one of my imaginative cousins imagined a creature called the Aah Haah (the a’s sounding like the a in “hat”) who lived in an electrical outlet. My uncle was an artist, so he conceived and drew a sort of Leprechaun character called Mr. Umpity. Little Kenny stood the picture of Mr. U near the haunted outlet and from then on slept perfectly
Kids are weird. My bed was not within reach of the light switch and, as it was clearly unsafe to cross from the switch to the bed in the dark, I generally had to talk my sister into turning off the light.
Monster? who needed one when your younger brother slept in the bunk under you. I’m hoping something really evil slept under his bed. Our boys were crazy about “There’s a Nightmare in My Closet” I’m keeping it…to pass down of course.
I have one brother, 5 years older than me. I didn’t need monster under the bed, I had him to terrorize me.
I had blood-sucking monsters of the worst kind.
When we went to a holiday bungalow in Millisle on the Ards peninsula, by the end of the summer I was miserable and covered in welts. Eventually we worked out that I was allergic to flea-bites, and we didn’t go there any more.
Younger brothers are almost always deserving of some type of retribution. Noogies!
Mine was under the bed, but was similarly indefinite in nature. I don’t remember that phase lasting very long, though. The monsters who lived in the bottom of the steep, dark, wooded valley in front of our house, however, were another story altogether. They’re still there, as far as I know…
As the youngest of four, I quickly learned that having feet tough enough to run barefoot on sharp gravel was a good survival skill. I’d catch my big brother lifting weights while barefoot, punch him in a bicep as he was doing curls, then run out into the gravel driveway. 
My monster was flesh and blood, or at least flesh and blood-letting: a small white Persian/Angora mix cat. She was fluffy and silky-soft, and had that angelic round Persian face. And she was psychotic. She regularly hid under my bed and would dash out when I came near and sink her teeth into my ankles, drawing blood and causing me to scream, peel her off my foot, and fling her across the room. (Yes, with more maturity, I now realize that I probably didn’t help the problem any.) For years my standard method of getting into bed was to take a running leap at the bed from halfway across the room so that I’d avoid entering her attack range. Then I had to wrap the covers tightly around myself so she wouldn’t squeeze in underneath with me, because she’d sleep on my legs and bite me if I rolled over.
So, you got two stories in one: the monster under my bed, AND why I’m a DOG person! 
My own private Monster was a place called Smileys…
A place where children go, and their mothers squeeze sweets (candy) through the railings (big wire fence)…
A home for those who spoke about what they had seen and heard.
Coming from an active and ..well..involved family it scared the shit out of me…
It was a scary lesson ..Three wise Monkeys.
All these years later …for some strange reason…
I still believe in saying nothing..not one word…
It was not the Monster I feared…
It was the way of things…in those wonderful days.
Slan,
D.
I had the same one, but it was under the bed, probly.
Why did I think that the sheets, pulled over me head, would protect me???
What really made it hard to sleep was my darn sisters reading Bluebeard or my parents, letting me see Twilight Zone. They never should have allowed that!!! But I survived…I still think there’s a Bigfoot out on the airplane wing as well as a little girl stuck in the 4th dimension wall…believe it or not, that one creeped me out the most, even more than “room for one more, honey.”
I used to close my eyes really tight…even when I was old enough to know it wouldn’t work. Actually, I still use that one from time to time…
