BS3
Abominable Showman
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2021
- Messages
- 1,813
Some interesting thoughts and theories.
As a child of the 70s/early-80s we had to use our imaginations a lot as there was little in the way of entertainment during the day. So we would go down to our local woods and make camps, explore on our push bikes, have play fights and endless kick abouts with a football and a single goal without a net. We often imagined 'enemies' who would be coming to attack our camp and were obsessed with the science-fiction of the time (Doctor Who, Star Trek, Star Wars; Blakes 7 and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the early 80s, etc..) The final moon landing had been less than a decade ago and we still imagined that in our lifetimes we might send humans to explore the other planets.
Personally, I feel there must have been gangs of young children everywhere that at one time or another found themselves running away from imagined foes that originated from local legends and the TV and many a long-since forgotten tall tale may have been told of their adventures 'down the woods'. So we owe it to the headmaster Mr Aldridge for taping the interviews and going on the record with the local media for keeping the Wollaton gnomes story alive, even more so given the silence of the witnesses ever since. That he took their experience so seriously suggests to me they had a real encounter with 'something' beyond their comprehension or a freak weather event, for example a whirlwind that sent debris flying around their heads. That there was already a local legend of the little people in the park would have given the children an explanation for their experience regardless of how preposterous it might sound to adult ears.
Agree with all of this. I think the echoes of familiar childhood experiences means the case has a certain nostalgic aura to it, which explains some of its appeal to researchers.
Thinking again about the idea of a rag-related activity being the stimulus, I'm actually now not sure that students would have owned up. Students at a lot of universities aren't particularly well embedded in the local community so may not have read the local paper, or otherwise heard the story.
By way of a further check I did see where Nottingham Uni's campus is located in the city: turns out that it pretty much borders Wollaton Park to the south.