The Bukit Timah Monkey Man
This essay first appeared in issue nine of Myth & Lore zine, ‘Cryptids of the World’. The publication is on indefinite hiatus following the untimely death of its founder and illustrator, Mark Ryan. If you enjoy this essay, please consider donating to this fundraiser which is raising money for Medecins Sans Frontieres in Mark’s memory.
Bukit Timah was not high but steep. The air was hot and heavy, and rain dripped from rattan, fig, and macaranga trees overhead. Soon, my shirt was stuck to my back, and I rested under a wooden hut, watching a woman futilely wipe the fog from her camera lens. All around, I could hear the orchestra of insects and birds in the rainforest.
An elderly man, an uncle as the locals would say, sat down beside me, mopping his brow with a red handkerchief.
“First time in Singapore?” he said.
“Yes, first time in Asia, actually,” I said, “still getting used to the heat.”
He laughed and held up his handkerchief in commiseration.
“I come every Monday.”
A sudden scream echoed from behind us, along with the thwacking of branches knocking together and the rustling of leaves. The man looked up; his face suddenly stern.
“Monkey. More will come.”
The man invited me to walk to the foot of the Devil’s Stairs, the steep stairway that led directly to the top of the hill. I stared in dismay at the steps stretching far out of sight. This is the way to heaven, he told me, and the way to hell if you fall.
“I’m going to go the longer route,” I said, catching my breath. “Thanks for showing me the way.”
“You sure? Only 10-minute walk.”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay,” he smiled generously at me, “stay back if you see monkeys. Don’t make eye contact.”
A few minutes later, I turned a corner, and there they were: five long-tailed macaques sitting on the path about ten metres ahead. I stood still, drenched to the bone, waiting to see what would happen. One was peeling flesh pink seeds from a fruit, discarding the remnants on the ground. Another held a small baby to her chest, which nuzzled into the soft fur. More clambered down from the canopy, sliding down tree trunks as easily as firefighters, until about twenty or so macaques blocked the trail. The larger male emerged slowly from the bush and walked languidly towards them, swinging his broad shoulders forward. He stopped and turned his long grey face towards me. His yellow eyes were ringed with black where I expected whites to be. I thought of the man’s warning and stared firmly at the ground. When I looked up, they were gone.
Concrete jungle
In Singapore’s short history, monkeys have played a contentious part. As the country became more urbanised, residents and tourists have butted up against nature—encouraging animals to forage in bins and bags for food. The vision of the ‘garden city’, which was introduced by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in 1967, has increased contact and conflict between humans and animals who share the city’s ample green spaces.
Negative headlines about “marauding monkeys” occupy the local press. News outlets report keenly on stories about macaques rampaging through kitchens or stealing ice cream from children. They are rarely afforded the same grace as other local wild animals, such as the smooth-coated otters who frolic in the waterways. There’s always the implication that monkeys are invading our territory rather than the other way around. Over the years, this strained relationship has led to complaints from the public and mass cullings of macaques.
Louis Ng, the founder of Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (Acres), argues that as encounters with wildlife become more frequent, people develop a “fear about what these animals are and what will they do to me”.
The missing link
These fears stretch back through time and into the realm of myth. Since the 1800s, rumours have spread of a humanoid or ape-like creature who lives in the rainforest: the Bukit Timah Monkey Man (BTMM). As young children, Singaporeans are warned not to enter Bukit Timah at night in case they fall victim to the Monkey Man. A taxi driver also recalled striking what he thought was a child in the middle of the road at night in the Bukit Timah area. Whatever he hit was monkey-like and covered in grey hair. It snarled at him before escaping into the woods with a broken arm. More recently, a domestic worker posted a video online of the alleged BTMM, though to the untrained eye, it looks suspiciously like a man in a gorilla suit.
Similar legends are found worldwide and are marked by eerie similarities, from the Yowie in Australia’s Outback to (arguably the most famous cryptid in the world) Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest. All speak of an upright-walking, monkey-faced creature.
Some theorise that these monkey men are the “missing link” between man and ape: a living fossil that connects us evolutionarily. Indeed, in the late 19th century, Dutch paleontologist Eugène Dubois discovered a skullcap, thighbone, and tooth in the Solo River in Trinil, Indonesia. Dubois argued that these remains, known as the Java Man, were a transitional form between ape and man, though this was fiercely contested at the time.
Monkey mind
Monkeys are prevalent throughout Asian cultures, often with negative connotations. In Buddhism, the largest religion in Singapore, the ‘monkey mind’ concept describes a state of restlessness, capriciousness, and lack of control over one’s thoughts. In Chinese folklore, the White Ape is a supernatural being with human speech who is slain after kidnapping several young women. In Japan, the sarugami are a type of monkey spirit that are as intelligent as humans and mimic their culture, but stand in opposition to the laws of the land to wreak havoc.
Even one of the most beloved monkeys in literature, the Monkey King or Sun Wukong, is somewhat of an antihero before his redemption arc. Authored by Wu Cheng’en during the 16th-century Ming dynasty in Journey to the West, the Monkey King is renowned for his mischief and defiance against the heavens, including stealing peaches from the celestial garden. For his wickedness, Buddha casts him to the earthly realm and pins him under a mountain to reflect on his actions.
Monkey business
The cultural prevalence of monkey men might reflect our psychological fears. They fall into an ambiguous zone between the familiar and unfamiliar—triggering the uncanny valley—which challenges our innate ability to recognise and decipher human traits and protect ourselves from the unknown. This creates fear, anxiety, revulsion and, in some cases, fascination. Many people pin their pithecophobia, the fear of monkeys and apes, on the same root causes—that they look eerily similar to humans. Others might argue that tales of monkey men reveal an unwelcome truth: humans are selfish beasts without the thin veneer of law and order.
For now, whether an ape-like creature lives in Bukit Timah remains a mystery. But these legends reveal our increasingly complex relationship with the natural world. In almost every folkloric tale, monkey men are seen as chaotic, if not outright devilish, forces threatening the social order.
Indeed, monkey men directly subvert the animal-human dualism thinking prevalent in the West, which was projected by British settlers during colonial rule in Singapore. Separating ourselves from nature reduces our responsibility towards the environment and colours our interactions with other species as largely negative.
In Singapore, the conflict between humans and monkeys will likely increase as the city continues its ambitious development plans. Despite sixty years of successive greening policies, Singapore has lost 95 per cent of its forests and invests in creating more parks than wild habitats, further crowding out its wildlife. Perhaps it will take the Bukit Timah Monkey Man coming down the hill for us to realise that monkey business is our business.