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

WeirdExeter said:
The gnomes are described as being in cars yet little Patrick has drawn a gnome walking...?
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In the interviews some of the gnomes are mentioned as being out of the cars at various points, though this part of the story has a slightly ad hoc feel to it.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Has anyone seen any documentation on the incident that provides clues to the locations of the children's homes?

The accounts I've seen only vaguely indicate the kids started out from their homes that evening and more definitely state they returned home after the incident.

The presumably 1979 newspaper article quotes a Mr. Aldridge - head of Southwold Primary School, and the person who recorded the taped interviews. If his involvement means the children attended Southwold Primary, I notice that school is located northeast of Wollaton Park. Young's blog presentation about the incident focuses on the 'Swamps' area and the main park entrance, which are in the northwestern part of the park.

One of the fundamental problems in making sense of the children's story is not knowing where they started and ended up that evening - i.e., their home neighborhood.
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The newspaper article says Kennington Rd and Bridport Avenue Radford. These are East of the park, beyond the Harrow Road entrance, so it would make sense for them to use this entrance.
 
'Leaning out of the car to turn' brings up images of dodgems and go-karts.

The golf buggies could have been parked up at the edge of the club for the night.

I've been there a few times and IIRC, some parts of the lake have grass/reeds that could be considered a swamp by a kid, especially at night - here's a photo I found: http://www.ilkcam.com/Specials/MiscWalks/Wollaton/030202WollLake.html
 
How common were golf carts on provincial English courses in the 1970s? Dad was a keen player at a fairly good club near Liverpool at the time but dragged his clubs around on a wheeled stand - my recollection is that ride-on buggies were unknown and seen only on televised games (mostly from the US or from the highest-standard courses)
 
ghughesarch said:
How common were golf carts on provincial English courses in the 1970s? Dad was a keen player at a fairly good club near Liverpool at the time but dragged his clubs around on a wheeled stand - my recollection is that ride-on buggies were unknown and seen only on televised games (mostly from the US or from the highest-standard courses)
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Good point, that is my recollection too

The drawing of the gnome car by the child witness isn’t very, well… car-like. It certainly looks nothing like a Noddy car. With the blunt front and the Gnome's legs visible It is certainly more like a golf cart,

(edit: looks like a golf cart in the link below)
 
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Mass marketed three-wheeled golf carts with steering tillers date back to the early 1950s. Carts using a car-style steering wheel and four wheels didn't proliferate until the 1960s.

For example, see the photos of vintage carts at this online golf cart parts supplier's website:

https://www.vintagegolfcartparts.com/Store

In addition, similar small carts and buggies were marketed as industrial / commercial euipment much earlier. It wouldn't be a surprise to learn that a large facility like Woolaton Park employed such vehicles for the use of (e.g.) groundskeeping and maintenance personnel.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Mass marketed three-wheeled golf carts with steering tillers date back to the early 1950s. Carts using a car-style steering wheel and four wheels didn't proliferate until the 1960s.

For example, see the photos of vintage carts at this online golf cart parts supplier's website:

https://www.vintagegolfcartparts.com/Store

In addition, similar small carts and buggies were marketed as industrial / commercial euipment much earlier. It wouldn't be a surprise to learn that a large facility like Woolaton Park employed such vehicles for the use of (e.g.) groundskeeping and maintenance personnel.
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The second one in the miscellaneous carts section (a "Motorette" according to the caption) looks more like a gnome car than a golf buggy, frankly.

I don't know - reading the 'tape transcript' again, there seem to be some elements which if taken even semi-seriously rule out men in golf carts, but what else have we got to work with here? I like the sound of several of several of the theories put forward by Young's contributors - how about a "Noddy tulpa"?
 
BS3 said:
... I don't know - reading the 'tape transcript' again, there seem to be some elements which if taken even semi-seriously rule out men in golf carts, but what else have we got to work with here? I like the sound of several of several of the theories put forward by Young's contributors - how about a "Noddy tulpa"?
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Do any of Young's contributors suggest the children may have seen animals - especially birds?

I'm starting to wonder why I haven't seen any suggestions of animal involvement.

I'm particularly struck by the taped testimony of the third witness (AP), who repeatedly alluded to the "gnomes" being on both the ground and up in the trees.

AP's only mention of a light was a light up in the trees that "came out" when the "gnomes" emerged from holes or gaps up in the trees. The second witness (PO) said the cars had "funny" lights that were activated. The first witness (AE) said the cars had lights, but they were not illuminated.

The cars are alleged to have been capable of somehow jumping or hopping over obstacles (a log) and leaving no tracks.

The speed estimates given for the little cars are ludicrous - especially the "120" claim.

I have a very hard time believing the individual children each managed to precisely count the intermittently-visible and quickly-moving beings so as to unanimously claim there were sixty total seen as thirty pairs.

It's unclear how the kids could reliably describe the gnomes' garb if the gnomes were whizzing around in the little cars.

The descriptions of the cars' color(s) don't match. Yellow was attributed to the gnomes' lower bodies, but the descriptions vary between yellow pants and yellow patches on other-colored pants.

In response to the interviewer's questioning how one could make out the gnomes' garb's colors, one witness just says they were simply visible in the reduced light conditions.

All we can reliably say is that the head / "face" area was light-colored, the bottom portion was light-colored or included light-colored patches, and the rest was medium or dark colored.

The beard colors don't match.

The pictures drawn by Angela and Patrick (in the news article) show a notably long tapered beard or goatee that comes to a point. It reminds me of a bird's beak or bill.

The gnomes made a lot of sounds described as laughing, but never said anything intelligible. Animal chatter? ...

The taped interviews vary as to when - or even whether - the gnomes actively chased the kids.

The only reference to wheels consists of their inclusion in Angela's sketch of a gnome in a little car or cart.

It seems to me there's not enough consistent descriptive detail indicating gnomes and cars, but enough peripheral consistency to support an encounter with a group of one or more types of animals.
 
But Wollaton Park isn't a "large facility" as UK provincial golf courses go. The American sales site you linked to shows things that might have been common on US courses in the 1970s, but the 1970s in the UK were a rather different, and less exotic, world. I find it hard to believe that a fleet of such vehicles existed at one club (in Nottingham, of all places) in the first year of the Thatcher government, when most things - and life itself, IIRC, being seven at the time - were still beige and brown and didn't really work properly. Sandwich toasters were an exotic luxury, golf carts surely even more so?
 
To my mind the golf cart issue illustrates why there's something not credible about the children's claims. I agree their claims exceed anything likely to have been implemented at that time (and maybe even to the present day), but not simply based on whether or not such carts were in use at the park in 1979. The most obvious problem isn't the existence of carts, but the number of carts. I don't believe for an instant that there could have been 30 carts available to be mistaken for miniature versions of themselves.

The consistency with which the documented children's testimony claims there were exactly 60 gnomes in 30 cars is a red flag.

They didn't agree on much of anything else, but they all agreed on the one thing the situation and their own storyline couldn't have permitted them to reliably ascertain.
 
EnolaGaia said:
The beard colors don't match.
The pictures drawn by Angela and Patrick (in the news article) show a notably long tapered beard or goatee that comes to a point. It reminds me of a bird's beak or bill.
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The descriptions and children's drawings made me think of "Pothead Pixies".
Wonder if any of the kids' parents were Gong fans and had albums at home?

HD-wallpaper-flying-tea-pot-gong-teapot-moon-green-universe-star-planet-pot-head-pixie.jpg
 
The précis of the new book on the incident gives the date as 23rd September 1979. This was, in fact, a Sunday.

On that date, at Nottingham, the sun had risen at 0650hrs. and set at 1902hrs. If the time of the incident was indeed 2000 to 2030hrs., this wasn't "dusk", it was full dark: 1-1½ hours after sunset on a northern English autumn evening.

As they were primary school children, and it was a school day the next day, and the Yorkshire Ripper had committed his second murder of 1979 only three weeks beforehand, why weren't the parents climbing the walls?

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
The précis of the new book on the incident gives the date as 23rd September 1979. This was, in fact, a Sunday.

On that date, at Nottingham, the sun had risen at 0650hrs. and set at 1902hrs. If the time of the incident was indeed 2000 to 2030hrs., this wasn't "dusk", it was full dark: 1-1½ hours after sunset on a northern English autumn evening.

As they were primary school children, and it was a school day the next day, and the Yorkshire Ripper had committed his second murder of 1979 only three weeks beforehand, why weren't the parents climbing the walls?

maximus otter
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Dunno but if in a city in a well lit area..?

I was a teenager during the Ripper's reign (and actually in his territory) and the night of an attempted murder - almost a year to the day after this - had enough parental indifference to be wandering across Leeds in the dark, down the very street where PS sat in a KFC or similar, watching the women go by, waiting for a victim... (Didn't pick me and within minutes I was with my then boyfriend, a six foot odd bloke, so I was safe from that point but not at the point I was walking down to meet him).

These kids were younger than me but I dunno, laissez faire parenting was still the norm, to some extent? And Nottingham was probably a city where people didn't feel it was as immediately dangerous as Leeds and Manc..?

But throughout PS's time, right in the place where he operated, when I was a younger teen, I can remember self and friends were much more independent than kids tend to be now. If there were street lights, we'd probably still be out, depending on the parent. "The past is a foreign country" etc etc.
 
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maximus otter said:
The précis of the new book on the incident gives the date as 23rd September 1979. This was, in fact, a Sunday.

On that date, at Nottingham, the sun had risen at 0650hrs. and set at 1902hrs. If the time of the incident was indeed 2000 to 2030hrs., this wasn't "dusk", it was full dark: 1-1½ hours after sunset on a northern English autumn evening.

As they were primary school children, and it was a school day the next day, and the Yorkshire Ripper had committed his second murder of 1979 only three weeks beforehand, why weren't the parents climbing the walls?

maximus otter
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Very good point. If they had sneaked away from the safety of the back garden of parental home then falling into the swamp - already highlighted as central to the narrative - would be a tell-tale sign they had been up to no good. But how does a story involving 30 gnomes in flying cars lessen the trouble they would be in when they got home?
 
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WeirdExeter said:
Very good point. If they had sneaked away from the safety of the back garden of parental home then falling into the swamp - already highlighted as central to the narrative - would be a tell-tale sign they had been up to no good. But who does a story involving 30 gnomes in flying cars lessen the trouble they would be in when they got home?

When we were that age even being out in the darkness of our garden at night was considered spooky and exciting. Which given their age and the time of night begs the question: were they ever in the park or was the whole story dreamt up in a back garden...?
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Think we'd only know by seeing and interviewing them ourselves to get a feel for whether they were from those kind of "naice" families or if they were feral. At that time, lots of kids had to be in when street light came on but equally, lots of kids I knew (including myself - nobody would have given a stuff where I was), didn't. Even primary aged. It was a different world in some ways.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Do any of Young's contributors suggest the children may have seen animals - especially birds?

I'm starting to wonder why I haven't seen any suggestions of animal involvement.

I'm particularly struck by the taped testimony of the third witness (AP), who repeatedly alluded to the "gnomes" being on both the ground and up in the trees.

AP's only mention of a light was a light up in the trees that "came out" when the "gnomes" emerged from holes or gaps up in the trees. The second witness (PO) said the cars had "funny" lights that were activated. The first witness (AE) said the cars had lights, but they were not illuminated.

The cars are alleged to have been capable of somehow jumping or hopping over obstacles (a log) and leaving no tracks.

The speed estimates given for the little cars are ludicrous - especially the "120" claim.

I have a very hard time believing the individual children each managed to precisely count the intermittently-visible and quickly-moving beings so as to unanimously claim there were sixty total seen as thirty pairs.

It's unclear how the kids could reliably describe the gnomes' garb if the gnomes were whizzing around in the little cars.

The descriptions of the cars' color(s) don't match. Yellow was attributed to the gnomes' lower bodies, but the descriptions vary between yellow pants and yellow patches on other-colored pants.

In response to the interviewer's questioning how one could make out the gnomes' garb's colors, one witness just says they were simply visible in the reduced light conditions.

All we can reliably say is that the head / "face" area was light-colored, the bottom portion was light-colored or included light-colored patches, and the rest was medium or dark colored.

The beard colors don't match.

The pictures drawn by Angela and Patrick (in the news article) show a notably long tapered beard or goatee that comes to a point. It reminds me of a bird's beak or bill.

The gnomes made a lot of sounds described as laughing, but never said anything intelligible. Animal chatter? ...

The taped interviews vary as to when - or even whether - the gnomes actively chased the kids.

The only reference to wheels consists of their inclusion in Angela's sketch of a gnome in a little car or cart.

It seems to me there's not enough consistent descriptive detail indicating gnomes and cars, but enough peripheral consistency to support an encounter with a group of one or more types of animals.
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All, valid points.

Well we have the names of the children who like me will be in their 50's now, so shall we try and contact them and find out what they think all these years later...?

Edit: someone tried locating them just last year:

https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/local-news/bid-uncover-truth-behind-wollaton-5738505

Incidentally, a forum member has tracked down the adult children of the late Len and Cynthia Gisby, one of the two couples involved in the the 1979 French hotel time-slip as featured elsewhere on this forum. Regretfully, as of yet they have yet to reply to the specific questions put to them.
 
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Well one of the boys was Patrick Olive (not Oliver) which is a sufficiently unusual name that he shared with the bass player of Hot Chocolate. A Patrick Olive is to be found as a company director but the date of birth is incorrect (it would have made him 14 not 9 at the time of the event).

Olive however is a surname found in the Nottingham area:

https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/nottingham-news/residents-speak-frightening-fight-aspley-3345315

"Esther Olive, who has lived in Broxtowe Lane for the past 15 years"
 
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This has already been linked to on the first page of this thread, however the link was dead. It seems there was another Wollaton Park encounter with laughing gnomes driving around in little cars:

"In the summer of 2021 I tried to locate any of these children, now adults, to see if they would still stick with their story, or come clean about a hoax. An appeal in the local newspaper in Nottingham and local BBC Radio brought no result. Where they hiding away, or had they moved county? Another Wollaton Park account, chronicled in the excellent Fairy Census, – at www.fairyist.com/survey/ – an attempt to gather, scientifically, details of fairy sightings from the last century – detailed how another young witness had also seen a number of laughing gnomes driving around in little cars that seemed to hover above the ground jumping over logs and fallen trees, the cars making a buzzing humming noise. He had been so scared that he hid up a tree."

https://blog.world-mysteries.com/gu...k-fae-come-out-to-play-arousing-with-dowsing/

I can't see a date for this other encounter but if it occurred before the encounter being discussed here then it opens up a number of possibilities
 
It would be interesting to find an expert on late-Seventies telly; someone who might recall a plotline in a popular programme that could have sparked kids’ imaginations along these lines.

Candidates for the series might include:

Mork and Mindy
Sapphire and Steel
The Young Merlin
Worzel Gummidge
Tales of the Unexpected

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_in_British_television

https://www.listchallenges.com/classic-kids-tv-shown-in-the-uk-in-the-70s80s

https://metro.co.uk/2015/01/20/14-bloody-frightening-kids-tv-shows-from-the-70s-and-80s-5021640/

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
It would be interesting to find an expert on late-Seventies telly; someone who might recall a plotline in a popular programme that could have sparked kids’ imaginations along these lines.

Candidates for the series might include:

Mork and Mindy
Sapphire and Steel
The Young Merlin
Worzel Gummidge
Tales of the Unexpected

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_in_British_television

https://www.listchallenges.com/classic-kids-tv-shown-in-the-uk-in-the-70s80s

https://metro.co.uk/2015/01/20/14-bloody-frightening-kids-tv-shows-from-the-70s-and-80s-5021640/

maximus otter
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Not to forget Children of the Stones (1976)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_Stones#Plot_outline
 
In the podcast it is specifically mentioned that there have been attempts over the years to contact the children concerned but neither they, nor anyone associated with them (family members etc) have ever come forward. Which could indicate, as the podcast mentions, that either they want it all to die a natural death because they genuinely don't know what happened and are still slightly fearful, or out of embarrassment at an event that was subsequently perfectly explicable (and/or hyped up by slightly scared and thrilled children into something it wasn't).
 
WeirdExeter said:
... Another Wollaton Park account, chronicled in the excellent Fairy Census, – at www.fairyist.com/survey/ – an attempt to gather, scientifically, details of fairy sightings from the last century – detailed how another young witness had also seen a number of laughing gnomes driving around in little cars that seemed to hover above the ground jumping over logs and fallen trees, the cars making a buzzing humming noise. He had been so scared that he hid up a tree." ...
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The Fairy Census 2014 - 2017 was compiled and edited by the same Simon Young who authored a book on the Wollaton gnomes incident.

The Fairy Census is accessible as a 5.3 Mb PDF file at:

http://www.fairyist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/The-Fairy-Census-2014-2017-1.pdf

There are 3 additional (non-1979) Wollaton gnome-related incidents listed in the census document (pages 83 - 84; cataloged as items 102C, 103C, and 104C). Two of the three incidents are noted by Young as having been collected in 2016 via emails from people who'd read an article he'd written on the 1979 incident.

The incident described above is item 103C. This is the only one that mentions little cars. It's a second-person account remembered as something the writer's childhood "best friend" had related to him(?) years earlier. The description of the friend's experience matches the 1979 story in terms of an early evening timeframe, little cars, laughing gnomes driving them, and the cars' ability to jump over obstacles.

The description diverges from the unanimously-reported aspects of the 1979 witnesses' accounts in claiming the cars made a buzzing sound and the cars hovered over the ground rather than sitting upon it.

No timeframe is given or suggested for the friend's experience. Except for the claim the friend stayed out all night and didn't return home until morning, one can interpret the story to suggest the friend was one of the four primary 1979 witnesses. It also doesn't rule out the possibility the friend was one of the children who'd separated from the quartet of witnesses back in 1979 prior to their encounter.

As a result, item 103C could conceivably refer to something that happened prior to the famed 1979 encounter, after it, or to some child involved in the famed encounter.
 
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WeirdExeter said:
https://blog.world-mysteries.com/gu...k-fae-come-out-to-play-arousing-with-dowsing/
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This 2021 blog page specifically claims the 1979 sighting occurred by the park's lake, near the Fairy Mound - not the "Swamps" area to the north / northeast.
On 23rd September 1979, at about 20:15 the evening of the Autumnal equinox, several young children witnessed a number of gnome-like figures leaping over fallen logs in small cars (with no sound of engines) coming from out of the bushes in a swampy part area South of the lake there.
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This blog page also cites Marjorie Johnson (fairy / dowsing enthusiast mentioned elsewhere in relation to the 1979 case) alluding to the lake as well.
Wollaton Park, however, has a history of fairy sightings, as collected in the book ‘Seeing Fairies’ by Marjorie Johnson, who herself thought that there were an ancient tribe of gnomes in the park. In 1900 a woman whilst passing by the gates at the park saw ‘little men, dressed like policemen standing just inside the lodge entrance, height between 2-3’. She also recalled fairies having been seen dancing around the lake.
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EnolaGaia said:
This 2021 blog page specifically claims the 1979 sighting occurred by the park's lake, near the Fairy Mound - not the "Swamps" area to the north / northeast.


This blog page also cites Marjorie Johnson (fairy / dowsing enthusiast mentioned elsewhere in relation to the 1979 case) alluding to the lake as well.
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I think the text of the blog post was written by Dan Green, who is the person who put forward the golf cart theory in Young's book (which I still feel to be the most credible explanation - despite the appeal of an egregore, "Noddy tulpa" or elaborate wind-up, as per other contributors).
 
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