... Way too many nuances for a hoax:
- small creatures climbing trees, running on all four limbs, glowing/metallic, with glowing yellow eyes, 'lighting up' at times, making scratching noises on the roof, performing backflips when shot, floating away when hit ...
As an outright hoax, or prank, how much of same was necessary? ...
These multifarious descriptive tidbits might be construed as 'nuances' - remarkably specific details insinuating facticity or tangibility for that which was described. However ...
They can be just as easily construed as a jumbled cluster of attributes and attributions reflecting as much panic as perceptiveness.
Let's not read too much into the number of features and actions cited, as if that alone necessarily affords weight to the observations being reported. For example, using some of the items you cited ...
There's not a single account that mentions the visitors climbing anything. The visitor seen in a tree was seen already perched in the tree. All other accounts of the visitors moving to a higher position involve some sort of flying, leaping or floating. There's only one such reported movement that resulted in the visitor being observed landing in an elevated position - the vaguely-defined kitchen roof event in which the visitor was blown or scared off the roof and landed on a fence (or maybe a barrel).
The earliest accounts don't exactly match in describing how visitors scurried away. All of them generally indicate the visitors dropped into a more prone sort of position. Some claim they scrambled away using all four limbs, some only mention the forelimbs being the primary visible instruments of locomotion, and at least one specifically claimed the lower limbs weren't used but rather were dragged along behind.
The glowing feature is mentioned as a harbinger of the visitor's arrival in the first sighting, but the visitor isn't always described as glowing persistently. It's interesting to note that descriptions of sightings later and later into the evening mention less and less about glowing.
The allusions to metallic appearance aren't identical at all. In some cases 'metallic' is invoked only in terms of describing visitors' attire as having a dull grey color. In other cases the visitors (themselves and / or their attire) are described as shiny like metal, but the accounts vary in describing this metallic quality as (e.g.) "shiny", "chrome", "nickel-plated", or even "aluminum foil." The accounts don't even match in claiming whether this metallic aspect pertains to the creatures, their attire, or both. There's not even any consistency in claiming whether the visitors were clothed or not.
The 'lighting up' / flaring bit is widely mentioned as a general characteristic, but it isn't mentioned as having occurred at any time within any specific episode or in response to any specific action. The stimulus / prompt for this flaring is variously attributed to times the visitors shouted, the visitors were shouted *at*, the visitors were or should have been hit by the gunfire, or whenever the visitors landed on the ground. The claim the visitors flared when they shouted conflicts with the general claims they made no sounds whatsoever.
The scratching on the roof bit is mentioned only in relation to introducing the kitchen roof event. The kitchen roof event is mentioned in only a minority of the accounts. The front door 'grabbing at Taylor' event is universally mentioned, but without a single allusion to the visitor's being heard moving around on the roof overhang.
The characterization of 'back-flips' is more specific than what was actually quoted in most accounts.
It is not the case that any / all visitors presumably hit by gunfire floated away. Some floated to the ground and then scurried off. Some (e.g., the one Lucky shot off the overhang and over the roof's peak) simply disappear from view.
Then there's the fact that Ms. Glennie's documented descriptions of what she personally saw are quite different from the descriptions everyone else gave the various authorities and reporters. One version has it that she saw only circular glows (halos?), with no additional details about the figures themselves. Her own descriptions of figures don't mention any movement whatsoever, and with one exception (the "clawy hands" at the window in the 0330 sighting) don't even describe a specifically humanoid figure or silhouette at all.
The wealth of isolated tidbits doesn't add up to a solidly consistent description of the visitors. Such consistency wouldn't occur until the following day, when Ledwith generated the women's sketch which then served as the seed for the actual shooters' additions and glosses.