• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

"Gnome" video, and my friend's "gnome"

lkb3rd

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Jul 19, 2004
Messages
296
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... 902014.ece

So, this has me sort of creeped out.
20 years ago, my buddy told me that he had seen a "gnome" in his yard while he was walking home late one night. The thing that has me interested is what he told me about how it walked. He said it walked sideways! If you watched the video linked above, that creature does also. When i read that, and saw the description of how it walked, It immediately reminded me of my friend's story. The thing he described was smaller than the thing in this video, although it is hard to tell its size from the video. He said it was a foot or two tall.
Over the years, he has gone back and forth between saying he really saw exactly what he said, to denying he had ever said any such thing. This suggests to me that he he may have really seen something, but realizes it sounds crazy, so denies it when he doesn't want to get into it.
 
:shock: !! (That's my 'just been totally creeped out in a reading-Reader's-Digest-Strange-But-True-when-you're-8-years-old kind of way' face)

Just got linked to this from another forum. That's proper exciting forteana, that is! Wish I'd seen this earlier and not just as I was about to go to bed though!
 
There's not much gives me the creeps but... :shock: here too.

Can someone please reply and completely debunk this for me, or I fear I'll never venture into my garden at night again :(
 
Easy - it's a hoax - these clowns gave different videos of the 'gnome' to different media - the one from the Sun's page isn't the same one as the one on the Argentine newspaper's youtube video.... http://www.eltribuno.info/verContenido.php?id=7901
- I can't imagine how stupid you've got to be to give TWO DIFFERENT VERSIONS to the media and hope no one's going to check!
 
You're right, it's a different video.

I feel better now - cheers :)
 
I guess that means you are safe from garden gnomes lol.
Take one, take two.
Still strange to me that they made it walk sideways, just like my friend said. Is it part of "gnome lore" that they walk sideways? I googled for sideways walking gnomes and only came up with a pile of links to this story.
 
Argentinian Gnome!

I'm sure most of you by now have seen this footage, but if not:


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,336750,00.html

" A town in South America is living in fear after several sightings of a 'creepy gnome' that locals claim stalks the streets at night, The Sun reports.

The little person — who wears a pointy hat and has a distinctive sideways walk — was caught on video last week by a terrified group of youngsters."

Real or not, it is undeniably creepy.
 
.........well I though it was either a viral advertising campaign for a "Blair-Witch" style horror movie, or a video of a hand with two fingers for "legs". Actually I'm kinda relieved it's a fake!
 
What really puzzles me is that I'm a Spanish-speaker but I'm not able to understand a single word of what they say. Maybe is the quality of the recording, but it does not even sound Spanish to me.
 
Epicurean1 said:
What really puzzles me is that I'm a Spanish-speaker but I'm not able to understand a single word of what they say. Maybe is the quality of the recording, but it does not even sound Spanish to me.
Is it Portuguese?
 
Why would it be Portuguese in Argentina? Brazil's where they speak Portuguese.

It wouldn't surprise me to find that the Spanish spoken by Argentinian teen-agers sounded wrong and incomprehensible to someone speaking a different Spanish dialect. Tex-Mex speakers often have trouble when they go to Mexico (the most common complaint being that Mexicans speak "too fast") and I've heard plenty of British speakers on TV who didn't sound like English to me!

What puzzles me is that anybody finds that video spooky. The figure isn't threatening anybody and the sideways gait could just as easily be a dance step.
 
PeniG said:
What puzzles me is that anybody finds that video spooky. The figure isn't threatening anybody and the sideways gait could just as easily be a dance step.

It's just the sheer bloody weirdness of it that makes it so creepy. I for one am very glad it's a proven fake ;)
 
lkb3rd said:
I guess that means you are safe from garden gnomes lol.
Take one, take two.
Still strange to me that they made it walk sideways, just like my friend said. Is it part of "gnome lore" that they walk sideways? I googled for sideways walking gnomes and only came up with a pile of links to this story.

I think the distinctive gait is what's commonly known as "arseing about". I thought it was funny enough in a ridiculous way, but really the perpretators should be banished to Gnome Man's Land for trying to pull the wool over our eyes.
 
PeniG said:
Why would it be Portuguese in Argentina? Brazil's where they speak Portuguese.

...
Because, there were two separate Threads and I didn't read the 'Argentinian' in the original title of one of them.

I've merged the Threads and lkb3rd's friend's backyard gnome has precedence. ;)
 
Gnome video

So what does everyone make of this video?
it was on the sun website. Yes, i know, it's the sun, but I think it's very interesting. Some Spanish kids are messing about, one making a mobile video, then towards the end a strange gnome- like creature starts running towards them. Freaky. The kids were certainly freaked out, apparently one of them went to hospital after and none of them will leave their houses.

What do you think? My first thought was a toddler, but it's in the middle of the night and the whole thing just seems... sinister to me.

Vid here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8ebg_JMMM8
 
It's a hoax - see this thread.



edited by TheQuixote: removed link as both threads are now merged
 
This is (at least!) the third recent thread on this topic! :shock:

Shome mergerisation called for, shurely?

WAKE UP, MODS!
 
Eek, sorry! The truth is I haven't been on FT for months and that story made me think to come here. I'm going to stay around and catch up now!
 
I haven't been here for a while either and I also came to post this. Anyone else I told about it would laugh at me and tell me my friend was hallucinating(which I am not ruling out lol, but it's still a strange coincidence)
 
I found it interesting/somewhat convincing because it triggered a memory of those supposed alien visitors with conical hats holding little boxes. I could have sworn that was in South America.

Or France.

Unfortunately, my copy of the Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters, while otherwise excellent, doesn't have an index that works the same way as my mind... (i.e. cone-headed alien with a box, page 123) :roll:
 
Ok, the Sun's version of the video is better than the one I'd seen before. It definitely is Spanish, plus the incident appears in the Argentinian press... mostly because it was published on the first page of the Sun.
 
I talked to my friend last night, and sent him a link to this video. His reaction was "that's some little kid with a pointy hat on" lol.

I asked him about what he saw again, and he gave me the story again. It has been a while since I asked him about it, so I had forgotten some of it.

He said he was coming home on his moped, and had cut the engine so as not to wake up his parents. He was walking the moped across his yard, and his dog started barking, with her hair standing up. He said that this dog had a habit of killing skunks and raccoons, yet it was only barking and not attacking this thing. He was concerned that the dog was going to wake up his parents (and he would be in trouble lol for sneaking out on his moped), so he went over to try and quiet her down, and that is when he saw what he describes as a small unknown creature, that was at the tallest up to his mid-thigh.

He said what struck him as odd was the fact that it was walking on two legs "just like a little person." I asked him about its proprtions, and he said it was similar to his proprtions, except that it was so small. He said it walked sideways and slightly backwards as if it wanted to get away, but not let him out of his sight. This also struck him as odd, because he lived near a large salt marsh and some woods, and had seen many animals there. They would always run away like a bolt of lightning.

I asked him what details he saw, and if he saw any fur. He said if he had to say fur or not, he'd say yes it had fur, but it was dark and he can't be positive. He said he didn't see a face or any other details, again due to the darkness.

It slowly back/sidestepped away from him, and disappeared into the brush leading to the salt marsh. He said he didn't hear any noise after that, like you'd hear when an animal ran through brush. I suggested that maybe it froze when it felt hidden.
 
Since your friend would have recognized a skunk or a racoon, it might have been some kind of rare animal - like a fisher or marten - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_%28animal%29 - they can stand on their hind legs and it might have been doing that as a defensive posture to make itself look bigger to the dog.
 
O.K., so we know the video is a hoax because there are two separate videos with two different series of events leading up to the Gnome sighting. So, why did the hoaxers decide to fake a Gnome sighting? Was it because (as the article states) that there had been Gnome sightings in the area before the video had been made and the perpetrators had decided that would be a convenient subject for a hoax due to the existing buzz of "Gnome Hysteria" in the region?

" A town in South America is living in fear after several sightings of a 'creepy gnome' that locals claim stalks the streets at night, The Sun reports."


.....or alternatively is this just a piece of lazy journalism where-in they had the story of the Gnome video and decided throw in a suggestion that the video is not the whole story?
 
I still think there's a Halo connection. It's the first thing I thought of when I saw the clip. Also the clip appeared just days before the Xbox price cut.

Viral advertising, anybody?
 
It's a protest against the rumor that gnomes are being omitted from 4th Edition D&D.
 
Back
Top