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The Great Gremlin Caper
By Dave Stern
FATE :: December 2001
During WWII, the toxic mental climate of fear, terror, and the mindset to kill or be killed rippled through the atmosphere. The intangible fabric of the ether was severely affected by such tremendous negativity, thus upsetting nature’s reasonably tranquil balance. The long-haunted United Kingdom and Europe possessed numerous traditions of little people that lent support to their modern reappearance between the World Wars.
Nearly every culture possesses myths and legends concerning miniature biped creatures that harass, vex, interact, and interfere with man’s life. They describe numerous diminutive creatures with a variety of names that reach far into man’s ancient history. The most popular term used in children’s books is “fairy.”
This term comes from antiquity, and is possibly derived from the Persian word peri, later rearranged in Old French as faerie, fae, or faierie. Near Eastern cultures also record a similar category of little people in the djinn, or jinnee, eventually corrupted into the English term “genie.” The word “gnome” also represented a wise little person, or “one who knows things.”
The European continent was also haunted by the goblin, imp, fay, nymph, puck, pixie, sylph, troll, and gnome; Germany had kobolds, gnome-like creatures, said to live in mines, while authenticated reports speak of Bean-sidhe, or Banshee, a woman-fairy. The Hawaiian natives spoke reverently of the little menehunes.
Ireland has its leprechauns (also called Good People), supposedly living within or under prehistoric earthworks called tumuli, raths, forts, or duns. Also in Ireland, the strange term Na Fir Glorm referred to a breed of little blue men. Greek and Roman legends describe maidens called dryads living in trees, while brownies were little creatures that loved old farmhouses. Near Ulster, Ireland, there were even little spirits called geancanach or sprites. The ancient Celts had their tales of miniature people who mysteriously went about their earth business. For lack of a better idea, some believed that fairies were God’s fallen angels.
In recent times, a 20th-century counterpart to the ancient legends of little people suddenly reappeared out of nowhere while humanity was engaged in two World Wars. The uncanny aspect of their visitations is that they seemed specifically focused on interacting with airmen and their flying machines.
The phenomenon did generate lighthearted moments among the Allied forces, thus momentarily relieving the nightmare severity of combat. The violence of WWII is peppered with accounts of many extraordinary physical and occult events that remain unsolved to this day, although the strange gremlin capers levied against the Royal Air Force and the USAAF became public domain in 1942. According to the British, the first modern recorded appearance of these little people dates back to the 1920s.
The modern legend began when they supposedly popped out of a bottle of beer being consumed by a Fleet Air Arm pilot in 1923. This particular naval pilot max-grossed his weight on beer one evening prior to a scheduled a.m. flight. Next morning, the pilot strapped himself into a marginal reconnaissance aeroplane that suffered perpetual engine troubles. Once airborne, he was catapult-launched from his ship, the engine stopped dead, and said aeroplane crashed into the sea ...
Read the rest of this article in the December 2001 issue of FATE
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