Authorities say a babysitter checked under the bed for monsters — and found someone

The myth of a bogeyman hiding under the bed came true for one Kansas family this week after a child’s complaint led to a man’s arrest.

The Barton County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that it responded to reports of a disturbance at a house outside the city of Great Bend on Monday.

The unnamed babysitter told authorities that she was getting the kids ready for bed when one complained about a “monster” under their bed. Her efforts to reassure them otherwise didn’t go quite as planned.

“When the victim attempted to show the child there was nothing under the bed, she came face-to-face with a male suspect who was hiding there,” the sheriff’s office statement said. “An altercation ensued with the babysitter and one child was knocked over in the struggle.”

The suspect is a 27-year-old man who “once lived at the residence,” the statement says, but who was under a “protection from abuse order” that required him to stay away from the property.

NPR is not publishing his name because whether he has been charged in connection with this incident is unclear. Online court records cited by CNN and KAKE News show he posted bond about 10 days earlier after being charged with criminal threat, domestic battery and violating a protection from abuse order related to incidents in January and February.

NPR has reached out to the sheriff’s office and Barton County Attorney for more information.

The statement says the suspect fled the scene before deputies arrived on Monday night, but was spotted in the area and, after a “short foot pursuit,” taken into custody the next morning.

He was arrested on charges of aggravated kidnapping, aggravated burglary, aggravated battery, child endangerment, felony obstruction of a law enforcement officer and violation of a protection from abuse order, the statement says.

According to the statement, the man is being held in county jail in lieu of a $500,000 bond. It is not clear whether he has retained a lawyer.

While fears of someone hiding under the bed are ubiquitous, they don’t materialize very often.

In 2006, a former Washington, D.C., hospital valet was sentenced to more than three years in prison for stalking a hospital employee. He allegedly made copies of her keys, snuck a video camera onto her dresser and hid under her bed for two nights before he was discovered by the woman’s boyfriend.

In 2016, a Tennessee woman discovered her ex-boyfriend hiding under her bed while she was having a security system installed to protect against him (she had already filed a protective order and changed her locks multiple times), according to a Nashville police affidavit reported by WZTV News. She shot him in the foot and held him at gunpoint until police arrived, police said.