It was ordained, or at least fated, and what's more, the monster that still has parts of New Delhi hysterical is starting to sound pleasingly provincial. There's something quaint in the accounts of India's mysterious monkey-man springing on the sleeping, clawing them or biting them or frightening them off their feet, causing them to fall to the street below or down a flight of stairs until they're dead.

Quaint by the time the accounts reach the United States, at least. The injuries aren't quaint; neither are the panic-related deaths, but these are told in a larger context, one of colorfully naive citizens, given to touching hysteria and buckets of monster-repelling water at the ready in every tenement. It's a tone one takes when one is more amused than surprised, when a story is incredible but somehow not shocking.

The Hindustan Times first noted the sightings in early May. Residents of two New Delhi suburbs began reporting attacks by a mysterious creature. The attacks always came in the dead of night, scratchings and bitings that weren't exactly human and weren't exactly simian. The monster is hirsute, but his claws are consistently metallic. Sometimes he wears glasses, other times a helmet. He's too big to be an ape -- he's described as 4 or 5 feet tall -- but he leaps, growls and bites like one.

	Print story E-mail story

The creature was soon dubbed the "monkey-man," though many accounts suggested a feline element, too. It was "as small as a cat," one woman told the Indian Express. The woman's fingers had been bitten, her husband's teeth knocked out by "a metallic hand."

Another resident saw it larger, but agreed with the cat assessment. "It was a monkey alright, and about 4 foot tall, but as soon as I grabbed it, it turned itself into a cat with tawny, glowing eyes."

Half-man, half-monkey and half-cat, the creature put New Delhi citizens in a panic. Each night, the police logged dozens and dozens of sightings, and the number of alleged attacks shot up. Newspapers outside India picked up the story, reporting that nobody in the terrorized suburbs was sleeping.

"I don't sleep at nights and now always keep a bamboo stave by my side," 22-year-old Vinod Yadav told the Gulf News.

Since the recent hysteria began, a man and a pregnant woman have both fallen to their deaths fleeing the alleged creature. Some reports say that as many as four people have, in fact, died from similar falls. Also, a 4-foot-tall Hindu mystic was assaulted by a large mob who mistook him for the monkey-man. A few days later, according to the Hindustan Times, a young girl was also attacked, by people who believed she was possessed by the monkey's spirit.

Police did make an arrest -- a man named Dharmendar was picked up wearing a monkey mask -- but this did little to restore calm. Dharmendar claimed he was just a simple thief, according to the Hindustan Times, and that he was taking advantage of the hysteria.

"He donned the mask so that everyone would think he is yet another monkey-man at work and so would be scared of touching him," a police official said.

Though police maintain that the monkey-man doesn't exist, they've offered a 50,000 rupee reward for his capture. The bounty, worth a little over $1,000, has yet to be claimed, and by many accounts, the affected neighborhoods are as jumpy as ever.

Brilliant Careers: Sound and Vision Audio and video highlights of our Brilliant Careers profiles