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Gnomes In Little Red Cars? (Wollaton Park Gnomes; 1979)

I've found a picture of the Wollaton Park Gnomes children and their teacher -

Wollaton Park Gnomes Article.jpg
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Well its interesting to see the location but a root that looks like someone's imagined drawing of a fairy is just a root and probably safe to touch...
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Talk of heart chakras and five minutes of communing with a tree and it's aura and I'm starting to zone out already! I was hoping for some evidence or investigating, not this woo!
 
Fluttermoth said:
Talk of heart chakras and five minutes of communing with a tree and it's aura and I'm starting to zone out already! I was hoping for some evidence or investigating, not this woo!
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I don't know, I think small, laughing gnomes driving gnome cars are pretty woo in the first place!
 
BS3 said:
I don't know, I think small, laughing gnomes driving gnome cars are pretty woo in the first place!
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I tend to believe an account the more ridiculous it is. Like the incident recounted in Mike Dash's book "Borderlands", of the woman who was terrorized in her basement by a giant five foot shrimp.
 
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Matt said:
I tend to believe an account the more ridiculous it is. Like the incident recounted in Mike Dash's book "Borderlands", of the woman who was terrorized in her basement by a giant five foot shrimp.
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Same here, it's like the phenomena (whatever it is) is challenging us, gnomes? Black Panthers roaming the bucolic countryside of England , blonde haired aliens from Venus, smelly swamp monsters, and much more there is either a deep and meaningful message in it all or it's just taking the P***
 
What has changed over the intervening decades and that young children and teenagers no longer spend such a large amount of time outside on their own. Woodlands and fields that were once filled with the shrieks and shouts of kids on weekends are now quiet and now these youngsters are driven everywhere by car (generalisation but you get my drift).

So do those gnomes manifest once in a while and sit in their little cars wondering where all the human children have gone..?
 
Matt said:
I tend to believe an account the more ridiculous it is. Like the incident recounted in Mike Dash's book "Borderlands", of the woman who was terrorized in her basement by a giant five foot shrimp.
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There's the account featured in Danny Robins' first podcast series Haunted of the man who encountered a life-sized supernatural 'Golly' minstrel doll! https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-thing-in-the-attic/id1299841207?i=1000583070037

Larry was a student, living a privileged, carefree life in South Africa in the dying years of Apartheid. The violence and oppression of white rule had little impact on him. Then in the dead of night he experienced a terrifying, ghostly visitation that would make him question his own sanity and the depth of racial injustice in his homeland.

It has a real metaphysical impact - and opens up (for me at least) some questions about the influence we have as individuals and populations in being the source creator(s) of such encounters, with echoes of the concept of Tulpas.
 
BS3 said:
…should enable a definitive location to be found).
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Hmmm…not so much.

I’m not confident that all of the scenes were shot in the same place / from the same viewpoint. The only positively identifiable location has a football pitch and a row of houses in the background. A (not exhaustive) examination of aerial shots of Wollaton Park seems to indicate only one spot where that shot might have been taken:

IMG_1564.jpeg


https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16.1&lat=52.95098&lon=-1.20402&layers=170&b=1

This area appears to be the sports fields of the Bluecoat Wollaton Academy.

My confidence (as to this being the locus of the occurrence),however, is not high.

maximus otter
 
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My impression is that we're (mostly) looking at the back of the Harrow Road houses, which means that the 'swamps' area is probably as identified on the map in Simon Young's book. Helpfully the film shows some of the damp waterlogged ground on the site.

I'm interested to see that one of the children here describes the gnomes as dressed in "brown and green". The same kid (I think) said they were wearing a "blue" top and trousers with yellow patches on them in his talk with the headmaster, so the descriptions do seem to be shifting a bit. They also describe the cars as "bubble cars".
 
This blogger did a write-up in 2017, and suggests that "the swamps" might be found in a conservation area within the park, which is closed off to the public. @BS3 is there any way of checking that against the map in the book you mention? They also cite two earlier sightings of "fairy folk" in the park, one undated, and the other apparently occurring in 1900, both of which accounts are apparently to be found in "Seeing Fairies" by Marjorie Johnson.

There's an intriguing comment which suggests there is a "toddler elf" to be seen in one of the images attached to the blog post. I'll reproduce that image here, as a bulwark against the original* disappearing. I think we could justify that as fair use, no? There are a couple of contenders I've found, although I'd be somewhat surprised if they were anything more than pareidolia. You'll need to zoom in.

Wollaton Park lake.JPG



* "The lake", available at https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Gu07-DbJ...QbgKo3Kl0u_GsD8N16GhqOACLcB/s400/IMG_8946.JPG, Accessed 29/1/2024
 
Krepostnoi said:
This blogger did a write-up in 2017, and suggests that "the swamps" might be found in a conservation area within the park, which is closed off to the public.
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Replying to myself might make me go blind, so apologies for any typos in what follows. Anyway, according to the Friends of Wollaton Park,
Thompson’s Wood is a small woodland area located in the southeast corner of Wollaton Park, along the perimeter of Parkside Road... The wood is a conservation area and is closed to the public.
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Screenshot 2024-01-29 14.19.08.png


So that certainly would give us a row of houses, but I can't see an obvious candidate for the playing field.
 
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Krepostnoi said:
This blogger did a write-up in 2017, and suggests that "the swamps" might be found in a conservation area within the park, which is closed off to the public. @BS3 is there any way of checking that against the map in the book you mention? They also cite two earlier sightings of "fairy folk" in the park, one undated, and the other apparently occurring in 1900, both of which accounts are apparently to be found in "Seeing Fairies" by Marjorie Johnson.

There's an intriguing comment which suggests there is a "toddler elf" to be seen in one of the images attached to the blog post. I'll reproduce that image here, as a bulwark against the original* disappearing. I think we could justify that as fair use, no? There are a couple of contenders I've found, although I'd be somewhat surprised if they were anything more than pareidolia. You'll need to zoom in.

View attachment 73419


* "The lake", available at https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Gu07-DbJ...QbgKo3Kl0u_GsD8N16GhqOACLcB/s400/IMG_8946.JPG, Accessed 29/1/2024
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I zoomed in using a bitmap editor.
I didn't see anything that triggered my pareidolia senses.
 
'The swamps' are I think the fenced off area of woodland in the north east of the park by Harrow Road. This is numbered "3" on Young's map.

download (4).jpeg

On the Ordnance Survey, below, this is marked as woodland adjacent to a "playing field" (there are two of the latter; the left hand one is the bit we're interested in)

Nottingham_Walks_Wollaton_Park_Highfields_Lake_Map.jpg

I think it's possible that the green area backing onto Harrow Road might have had football goal posts in the past that have since been removed (although the area is still marked "playing field" on the OS). This would then match the background where the children were filmed.

The film shows quite clearly why the children referred to the "swamps" as there is actual standing water on the ground at the time they were filming.
One thing seems clear; it would have been completely dark in there at the time of evening the children were there.
 
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Okay, so not gnomes but this report comes from a road adjacent to Wollaton Park:

Romans​


Location: Nottingham (Nottinghamshire) - Military installation, Derby Road
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Circa 1947
Further Comments: The Nottingham Evening News reported that the sound of someone speaking in a 'foreign language' and the noise of clashing metal led some to speculate the military installation was home to a Roman soldier. Local folklore said the site had previously been a Roman camp.

https://www.paranormaldatabase.com/recent/index.php
 
Aydee_Aitchdee said:
GAH! Another book they didn't bother to put on ebook. *sigh*
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I know, so frustrating, I simply don't have enough space for all the `Fortean books I have purchased or would wish t purchase and in the past I have had to part with books during house moves (eg when I downsized and became a mature students). Kindle is a fantastic and more affordable way to buy and store such books and support Fortean authors
 
Paul_Exeter said:
I know, so frustrating, I simply don't have enough space for all the `Fortean books I have purchased or would wish t purchase and in the past I have had to part with books during house moves (eg when I downsized and became a mature students). Kindle is a fantastic and more affordable way to buy and store such books and support Fortean authors
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Exactly. Not only is my eyesight bad enough that I can't read most print books but I lack the space to store them. Give me a tablet full of Fortean tomes and that's me sorted. So much easier. I've got a list going of books I want but have no digital version. I call it my Heartbreak Shelf.
 
Aydee_Aitchdee said:
Exactly. Not only is my eyesight bad enough that I can't read most print books but I lack the space to store them. Give me a tablet full of Fortean tomes and that's me sorted. So much easier. I've got a list going of books I want but have no digital version. I call it my Heartbreak Shelf.
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Indeed, I have a bet with my sister that I won't need reading glasses until after my 60th birthday and damned if she's going to catch me peering hopelessly at the ages of a book on little red gnome cars...
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Okay, so not gnomes but this report comes from a road adjacent to Wollaton Park:

Romans​


Location: Nottingham (Nottinghamshire) - Military installation, Derby Road
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Circa 1947
Further Comments: The Nottingham Evening News reported that the sound of someone speaking in a 'foreign language' and the noise of clashing metal led some to speculate the military installation was home to a Roman soldier. Local folklore said the site had previously been a Roman camp.

https://www.paranormaldatabase.com/recent/index.php
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Not Polish construction workers then?
 
Well this curious tale from Ireland put me in mind of the high-strangeness of the Wollaton gnomes:

"Shortly thereafter, as Herbie and Jim turned to leave the rath, along the top of the earthen ring, there suddenly appeared a herd of approximately twenty to twenty-five tiny, white horses “no bigger than cocker spaniels”, in the words of Mr. Brennan. The tiny horses galloped along the top of the earthwork, disappearing down the opposite side. Herbie and Jim ran out of the rath and to the other side to see what had happened to the tiny horses, but they had vanished. Neither man had any explanation for what they had just seen"

https://paranormalist.com/fairy-horse-ireland/
 
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