Courtesy of Alex Boese's Museum of Hoaxes I had my attention drawn to the following story…and what a story it is. Residents of the Crichton area of Mobile, Alabama (a 'black neighbourhood' in case you’re wondering) have recently reported sightings of a 'leprechaun' crouching in the branches of a local tree (yes, I did say 'leprechaun').
NBC 15's report on the incident is a classic (and wretched) bit of "And finally…"/"People are so crayzeee!" TV journalism, with lashings of smug incredulity all round (the female presenter even throws her hands up in the air and mouths "What?!" at one point).
According to their man on the scene "Eyewitnesses say it only comes out at night. If you shine a light in its direction it suddenly disappears". Hmmm…well obviously someone got a long enough (unlit) look at it to produce the following 'amateur sketch' (the artist in question remains unknown).
One local resident, named here as Alice Sellers, gives her mischievous take on the goings-on:
It could be a crack head that got hold to the wrong stuff and it told him to get up in the tree and play a leprechaun
The highlight of the whole report, though, has to be the unnamed character who arrives fully suited up in combat gear telling people not to be afraid1. Part of his outfit, he informs us, is used to "ward off smells" (or possibly "spells"2), while his most prized tool is a special 'Leprechaun flute' that has been "passed down from 1000s of years ago" from his "great-great-grandfather - who was Irish".
Unsurprisingly, given mentions of crack and the general tone of the reporting, commenters on Museum of Hoaxes have raised questions about implicit racism, stereotyping etc., while over at allhiphop.com a reader chips in with the closest thing to a last word on the whole shebang:
Well I'm from Mobile, AL where this story comes from. This s**t was a joke made up by a few people in that area to see how far they could get the joke to go. They were going to stop but the s**t exploded like wild fire. The hood hyped up the story because they were able to charge people $1 to park in their hood to see this “Leprechaun�. One guy made between $150-200 in a 2-week span from this complete bulls**t. They got so much buzz going that the media came out to do a story on it. Two of the people in the news story are from that area and showed they a** on TV to increase the hype. The only sad people in this story are the media people who spent time covering this s**t. So lighten up people it was just a joke. If you noticed, no one spoke real serious about seeing the Leprechaun. They all said it with a joking smile. The funniest shit in that story was the black guy saying he was a leprechaun hunter and the flute he had was passed down to him through his Irish heritage. I get so sick of people trying to make everything into a racial issue. There are hundreds of stories done every year in small hick towns in the Midwest about White people seeing aliens and everyone in that city plays along to increase the revenue in that area. That is all that happened here.
A final note - Randall Rego ("a struggling college student from San Francisco") saw an opportunity knocking…and…er…decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. His Café Press T-shirts, featuring the 'amateur sketch' and (of course) the 'Leprechaun Flute', are now available to buy, for all those who enjoy lasting souvenirs of 5-second news stories.
Update: An 'Emcee Lepracon' has recorded a tribute to the little tree dweller called "Where da Gold?"
Tags: leprechaun, leprechaun flute, mobile, alabama, museum of hoaxes
It’s not the first time the little pests have been spotted in the hood making shoes and fretting about their finances. Sightings are so frequent that there have been TWO movies made about the subject (‘leprechaun in da hood’ and ‘leprechaun back 2 da muthafeckin hood’ (or something).
These two ‘masterpieces’ will either shed some light on the situation, or, most likely, are the cause.
March 31st, 2006 at 4:25 pmHow did I know you’d be the first to comment on this devo? Regular fústarers may recall that it was this ‘devo’ who dragged me to a film fair in Camden to buy a DVD copy of the very same Leprechaun in the Hood. Not only that, but he forced me to watch it in its entirety. I’m hardly the better of it yet…
March 31st, 2006 at 4:29 pmIncidentally, the ‘amateur drawing’ in question reminded me of a vaguely similar figure I spotted in a photo I took of the destruction of Limerick’s Savoy Cinema last year.
What it tells us is probably that simulacra can be found in places where rough and uneven shapes abound, but I thought I’d share it with all you Leprechaun/Alien chasers out there.
Here’s the original image, totally unedited. See if you can spot anything. It’s like a paranormal “Where’s Wally?” (you may have to zoom in).
March 31st, 2006 at 11:01 pmI’m going to go out on a limb here and say I’m pretty sure that combat guy with the magic flute said his flack jacket could “ward of spells” rather than smells.
See, not so crazy after all.
Man, the American news sucks though. Talk about editorialising - not to mention failing on an epic scale to get the joke, or at least not the right joke.
April 1st, 2006 at 11:55 amHmm…you may be right, and I may have wronged our paranormal flautist friend.
You’re definitely right about the suckiness of American news though…it’s bloody hard not to watch without cringing every 30 seconds…
April 1st, 2006 at 12:07 pmDoesn’t foolhardy have a very different meaning for “magic flute”? I’m pretty sure I overheard him asking a girl in a dark corner of Feet First in Galway if she wanted to see it, then there was a scream, the pistol crack of hand smacking face, and she was gone.
April 1st, 2006 at 12:21 pmAs if by magic.
April 1st, 2006 at 12:21 pmdidn’t hr puffinstuff have a magic flute? or the kid, or something?
April 3rd, 2006 at 8:13 amIt was the kid. The witch, though, wanted that kid’s flute real bad.
April 3rd, 2006 at 11:14 amAs for Puffinstuff, he wasn’t that musical but it seems he liked it very much when things got rough.
An odd bunch.
Copernicus,
April 3rd, 2006 at 1:14 pmI remember the incident well. That was when I finally realised my approach was all wrong. Much muttering of “if only I knew then what I know now” followed. I’ve since changed tack dramatically and instead lead with the line “have you seen my friend James Last?”
It works a treat.
“have you seen my friend James Last?”
It works a treat.
or
April 3rd, 2006 at 1:31 pm“have you seen my friend James Last? It works a treat.”
?
The former, but the latter certainly has promise. Is it not a bit cocky though? I wouldn’t want to put them off.
April 3rd, 2006 at 1:58 pmI have a pretty horrible feeling that “cocky” is the mot juste all right.
April 3rd, 2006 at 4:39 pm