In European folklore, we can observe an abundance of various mythological characters, distinguished by their small stature - gnomes, elves, dwarves, miniatures, humans, etc. For Belarus, such a picture is not typical, although our country borders on Poland, where legends about dwarfs and skshat are widely represented. Here we, as a rule, deal either with spirits of various loci - natural (goblin, field, water, mermaid) and domestic (brownie, kikimora, barn, bannik), or simply with evil spirits in general, among which certain character types also stand out … According to popular beliefs, they can appear in various forms (even zoomorphic ones), including in the form of small creatures. But, as a rule, there is no tendency to separate mythical dwarfs into a separate class.
However, occasional reports of encounters with dwarf creatures do occur. Several such messages ended up in the Ufokom archive, and it is difficult to unambiguously attribute them to ufological incidents, and some are rather folklore in nature. They were told by adults who had a chance to encounter such creatures in childhood and who are simply sure of the reality of what happened. These stories are:
1) Ivanovsky district, ag. Motol
According to an eyewitness, Sophia M., at that time she was about 8-10 years old, and the events themselves date back to about 1963-1965. One spring morning, her family rested, completing all the morning household chores. Having run out of the room where she slept with her mother, the girl went to the kitchen and, running past the hall, noticed someone's face in the glass doors (see diagram). In one of the lower windows of the door was the head of a strange creature. The head was oblong and elongated upward, with gray skin and no hair. On the face - huge dark eyes. Taking into account the proportions of the door, the height of the unexpected "visitor" was estimated at about 1.2 meters. Eye contact lasted no more than five seconds, after which a frightened Sophia rushed back to her mother's bedroom and lifted her. Having calmed her daughter, the mother walked through the house,but no one else was found.
Schematic outline of the case in Motol
Sophia still remembers this terrible event for her from her childhood, which left quite vivid, but unpleasant impressions. An eyewitness believed that she had seen the "devil". But, interestingly, she later noted a great similarity between the creature she saw and the image of a typical "gray" - one of the most popular types of aliens in UFOlogy.
Promotional video:
2) Luninetsky district, ag. Kozhan-Gorodok (the message is published for the first time)
Eyewitness - Oleg O. from the Kamenets region. At the time of the described event, when he was about 6-7 years old (about 1971-1972), he lived with his family in Kozhan-Gorodok. They lived in a large one-story wooden house designed for several families. The old house built in the 1870s was once an elementary school, which also housed the teacher's apartment. One summer evening, Oleg stayed late at the neighbors' house and, when it got dark, went home to sleep. To do this, he only had to go around the building, where on the other side was the entrance to his apartment. Rushing skipping, he abruptly jumped out from around the corner and then in front of the veranda froze sharply in a stupor, colliding "nose to nose" with a strange humanoid creature.
This creature looked little like a man. Now, after so many years, it was already difficult to remember the details of his appearance. And the unexpected meeting lasted only a few seconds. I only remember that it was small in stature - about 60 cm - below the child. He had a terrible nasty face and strange legs that looked more like chicken legs. Perhaps he was wearing some kind of unremarkable clothing, but these details were no longer preserved in his memory.
Incident in Kozhan-Gorodok: eyewitness drawing and situational diagram
The dwarf also did not expect such a meeting and froze in a surprised pose, looking at the boy who stopped a meter away from him. His expression of surprise was replaced by a mask of disgust and anger. Here Oleg, frozen in shock, triggered a reaction: he turned around and quickly ran back to his neighbors. Shock gave way to fear. The neighbors were surprised at his return and listened to a confused story about the meeting, but they attributed everything to a childhood fantasy. Oleg flatly refused to return home on his own, and adults took him back. After that, he did not tell anyone about what had happened, because he felt that no one would believe him and that except for trouble it would bring him nothing. Since then, the eyewitness had only unpleasant sensations when remembering this incomprehensible creature.
3) Baranovichi district, village Krepachi
This story came to us "from third hands" after the expedition in the specified region. Having learned about our interest in the "witch's house", which once lived on the outskirts of this village, one of the residents of the neighboring village told our friends about an incident from her childhood. We give the recorded story in full, so as not to introduce possible distortions into it from our side:
“She was a witness in her youth, even in childhood, how the same witch healed. And she said that it was not the witch herself who healed. When she was little and living in Krasevichi, a neighbor woman asked her parents to ask the Krepachey sorceress to help her. The woman was pregnant and the pregnancy was very poor. They all went together to Krepachi. She, a little girl, was asked to stay outside. And everyone else went inside. But the girl was very interested in what would happen there, and therefore through the extension she climbed into the attic, where through a gap in the ceiling she saw the following. The future woman in labor lay down on the bed. The sage turned away from the bed and stopped just under the crack in the ceiling. She took out some kind of metal triangle, flat, poured water on it, sat down by the bed with the woman in labor and waited. All the rest (the girl's parents were at that moment in the hallway) in the hallway. Further, here is what, in her words, she saw. Without making a sound, a dwarf, shadow-black, approached the bed. He bent his big head over the belly of the woman in labor, put his hand (the hand was thin, even skinny) on the belly of the woman in labor. The girl clearly saw that there were four fingers on her hand. The girl became sharply ill, she barely crawled and got out of the attic. In the yard she felt better, she went up to her parents and began to wait. About an hour passed. A woman in labor and a witch left the house, and they went back to Krasevichi. The birth, in her words, went well. She later asked her parents what kind of dwarf had entered the house, but they said that no one had seen anything. Nor did the woman in labor see him either.a dwarf, shadow black, approached the bed. He bent his big head over the belly of the woman in labor, put his hand (the hand was thin, even skinny) on the belly of the woman in labor. The girl clearly saw that there were four fingers on her hand. The girl became sharply ill, she barely crawled and got out of the attic. In the yard she felt better, she went up to her parents and began to wait. About an hour passed. A woman in labor and a witch left the house, and they went back to Krasevichi. The birth, in her words, went well. She later asked her parents what kind of dwarf had entered the house, but they said that no one had seen anything. Nor did the woman in labor see him either.a dwarf, shadow black, approached the bed. He bent his big head over the belly of the woman in labor, put his hand (the hand was thin, even skinny) on the belly of the woman in labor. The girl clearly saw that there were four fingers on her hand. The girl became sharply ill, she barely crawled and got out of the attic. In the yard she felt better, she went up to her parents and began to wait. About an hour passed. A woman in labor and a witch left the house, and they went back to Krasevichi. The birth, in her words, went well. She later asked her parents what kind of dwarf had entered the house, but they said that no one had seen anything. Nor did the woman in labor see him either. The girl became sharply ill, she barely crawled and got out of the attic. In the yard she felt better, she went up to her parents and began to wait. About an hour passed. A woman in labor and a witch left the house, and they went back to Krasevichi. The birth, in her words, went well. She later asked her parents what kind of dwarf had entered the house, but they said that no one had seen anything. Nor did the woman in labor see him either. The girl became sharply ill, she barely crawled and got out of the attic. In the yard she felt better, she went up to her parents and began to wait. About an hour passed. A woman in labor and a witch left the house, and they went back to Krasevichi. The birth, in her words, went well. She later asked her parents what kind of dwarf had entered the house, but they said that no one had seen anything. Nor did the woman in labor see him either.
The ruins of the witch's house in the village. Krepachi (photo by V. Gaiduchik, 2009)
As we can see, in all three cases, it is said about a meeting with supernatural beings of small stature. Nowhere here are eyewitnesses linking them to a specific type of mythological characters, with some exceptions in the first story from Motol, where an "ufological" outwardly dwarf within the framework of traditional folk ideas was attributed to a generalized class of evil spirits - devils. In all three cases, the meetings took place in a house or on a personal plot, but no attempts are made to connect these creatures with the traditional mythological characters of the locus of the space inhabited by a person by the informants. The creature in Kozhan-Gorodok, within the framework of the traditional worldview, could well be called a brownie or something like that. The creature from Fortress also does not receive an appropriate name from the eyewitness, but, judging by the logic of the narrative,he can be attributed to the category of demonic helpers of "knowledgeable people" - in this case, the witch. All this is the folklore aspect of this type of material. But here it is worth paying attention to one more circumstance.
Despite the fact that all these messages were received from adults, it should not be forgotten that all the described observations took place in the childhood of eyewitnesses. This allows us to connect them with a topic recently raised on the pages of our site in the article "Observing ghosts by children: materials for study." It seems that the class of creatures observed by children should be significantly expanded, and the topic itself can be extremely interesting when considered at the intersection of developmental psychology, psychiatry, physiology, and neurophysiology. Just to begin with, it is necessary to collect sufficient static material and develop an appropriate methodological apparatus for this.
Victor Gaiduchik