This article logically continues yesterday's article "The Gnomes Who Scare American Children", but this time we will talk about the gnome who frightened adults, and not just scared, but did much more terrible things.
Pointed hats, long white beards and only 60 centimeters tall. Such cute gnomes were once a part of everyday life in the Scandinavian countries. John Carlson from New Jersey (USA) recalled the stories of his grandmother Alice about these creatures. My grandmother was born in Sweden in 1891 and said that gnomes were mischievous creatures. True, she did not call them gnomes, but used the Scandinavian term "tomtar".
“When I was little she used to tell me stories about tomtar. They were small creatures that looked like old bearded men. Alice's grandmother used to say that tomtars are usually good-natured, if not offended. Otherwise, they can start doing nasty things in the house, spoiling milk, breaking various objects."
According to Carlson, his grandmother not only talked about tomtar, but also showed their small footprints in the snow or mud.
But gnomes, so good-natured and mischievous in fairy tales, in real life do not get off with just breaking objects, but can do much more frightening things. This story happened to Tammy when she and her three children moved to a country house on the Toole River near Porterville, California. She did not know that something terrible would be waiting for them there.
“We immediately got the feeling that someone was looking at us all the time,” says Tammy.
One place on the farm was particularly intimidating, and it was a shed on the very edge. All their animals were afraid of him, including dogs, cats, turkeys, chickens, ducks. They carefully avoided approaching this gloomy, rickety structure. And then the chickens and ducks began to mysteriously disappear one by one.
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“I also noticed that none of the animals from the neighbour's yard came to this barn. And even stray animals that sometimes came to us avoided him. This place was no doubt very creepy."
And Tammy soon found out why.
“One evening my son, who was seven years old at the time, and I had just returned shopping from the city. We parked and got out of the car, and when I opened the trunk to retrieve grocery bags, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye toward the barn.
And then I heard a very strange and very angry giggle. I looked in the direction of the sound and saw a creature that looked like a fairy gnome. It stood about 50 yards from my son and me."
The creature was about 60-90 cm tall and wore baggy black pants and a golden shirt. A grayish beard protruded from under a pointed red hat.
“It grinned and its eerie smile was from ear to ear, and its teeth were rough, brown and pointed or jagged. He had a big potato nose and deep-set eyes."
Out of fear, the woman dropped the bag with groceries, grabbed her son and ran to the house, and the evil little gnome laughed viciously at her trail. Tammy ran into the kitchen and closed the door, and then when she called for her daughter, something stirred outside the kitchen window. A pointed red cap was visible.
Then the creature left and Tammy never saw him again, but she often heard his evil laugh from that barn. As a result, she could not stand it and left this house with the children. But the house was not empty for long. In 2010, a new family moved here. And the gnome started terrorizing them too.
The new family consisted of a husband, wife, their two young daughters and two golden retrievers. They immediately liked the two-story house on the banks of the river. “The house seemed perfect. That's it. what we were looking for,”says Cherley (mother of the children),“We couldn't wait to move. There were three bedrooms, a huge kitchen, dining room and living room, and many windows, plus a large courtyard."
The backyard faced the forest and the river bank. The front one faced the pond. Charlie immediately started decorating courtyards, put garden figurines everywhere, including gnomes, and planted flowers. Launched Japanese carp into the pond to make it cozy and beautiful. But the calm did not last long.
Once, when the woman was returning from the river to the house with her daughters and dogs, the dogs began to behave alarmed. As they approached the rickety barn, the dogs began to growl and bark, the fur on their backs standing on end.
“Something told me to go as far as possible. I grabbed my daughters' hands and ran into the house. From this barn and I had goosebumps before, especially at night, and I did not understand why."
Like Tammy, Charlie began to notice that animals were bypassing the barn, and then she heard strange screams coming from the barn. Like fighting cats screaming. It was at night and she woke up her husband and he grabbed a flashlight and ran to the barn. The screams stopped. Inside, the man found a dead cat right at the doorstep. She was completely stripped from one side, and from her neck someone had pulled a piece of meat with his teeth.
But the most terrible thing was when the man left the barn from stress to catch his breath, and when he turned back to the open door, the cat was no longer at the threshold.
“She couldn't leave on her own, she was dead. My husband and I stood there and we were scared."
Later it turned out that the killed cat is just the beginning. One day, around 3 am, a creaking sound woke Charlie and her husband. “It was without a doubt the most disgusting sound I have ever heard. He scared us a lot."
Charlie and her husband looked out the bedroom window and saw what seemed to be the product of a nightmare. “He stood on the edge of the pond and looked like a garden gnome, but creepy, like the creatures from the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. He looked disgusting."
He was no more than 90 cm tall, with a long gray beard, burgundy pants and a yellow shirt. On his head was a red-brown cap. “The ugliest were his eyes and teeth. He grinned terribly and his teeth were jagged and sharp. And the eyes were small as beads and completely dark."
The ugly gnome looked at Charlie and her husband, and then dived into the pond, grabbed one of the fish, threw it in his mouth and swallowed. Charlie's husband at that moment yelled at him to get out, otherwise he would call the police. The man thought it might just be a short bum. But the dwarf just grinned at his words and left.
Charlie's husband nevertheless called the police and announced the invasion, but all they found were small footprints as if from the feet of a 4-year-old child. After the night, the dwarf returned again and ate the fish again. In response, Charlie moved the fish to a tank inside the yard and removed all garden decorations from the yard.
"When it came again at night and found that there was no fish, and all the decorations were gone, it began to scream loudly and was in a real frenzy, as if it had gone mad." Then the dwarf ran to the house and Charlie realized that he could get inside through the unlocked dog door. The dogs, meanwhile, began to bark loudly.
Charlie locked the door and ran upstairs to her girls, who continued to sleep soundly in their beds. But neither Charlie nor her husband closed their eyes until the end of that terrible night. In the morning they decided it was time to leave here.
The researcher of anomalous phenomena Jason Offutt, who told the world about these terrible incidents with the gnomes, personally communicated with Tammy and Charlie and then decided to introduce them so that they would tell each other about their experiences. The women agreed to meet, and then even agreed to go back to that creepy house.
They found out that the house had been sold to someone again, but when they tried to contact the owners, they were asked to leave. They tried to tell about the gnome and his barn, but they did not want to listen and did not even open the door for them. The perplexed women eventually left this strange place, and researcher Offutt of new cases about the local gnome is not known.
Jason Offutt studied at the university as a journalist and is the author of several books on the paranormal in Missouri. He has written books What Lurks Beyond, Darkness Walks: Shadow People Among us, Haunted Missouri and Paranormal Missouri.