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Saturday, December 11, 2021

The Bridgemont Gnome Race

 The Bridgemont Gnome Race

By Cole Herrold

Faeries as a concept are perhaps one of the most difficult phenomena for people (and this includes Forteans) to wrap their heads around. Almost anyone who you ask about the existence of faeries will say that they are the figments of the Brothers Grimm's and Hans Christian Anderson's imagination and that such entities simply do not exist. Even amongst Forteans, fae encounters are treated almost as a kind of joke or at best second, third, fourth, or fifth fiddle to other more "acceptable" phenomena such as UFOs, Cryptids, Ghosts, and psychic phenomenon. The Forteans who do take these accounts as authentic tend to point towards these creatures being something akin to cryptids, usually hypothesizing that they are diminutive hominids that have remained undiscovered. I myself was in this camp of belief and still am for some encounters; however, there are some encounters that are so bizarre that the traditional cryptozoological approach just does not work. One of perhaps the most famous encounters of this variety is the Wollaton Park Gnomes, who were seen imitating police officers, leading a woman on a spiritual scavenger hunt, and chasing small children around in 30 bubble cars. Other encounters describe similar-looking fae disappearing before the witness's eyes, something a biological entity just cannot do. In Bridgemont, England, a very bizarre case of faeries was reported, and in the encounter, the entities not only seemingly disappeared but also rode countless tiny horses in a situation, not unlike the Wollaton Park case.

In the Summer of 1909, seven-year-old L.A. Bardsley of Cheshire spent a vacation at her grandmother's house in Bridgemont, Derbyshire, which was near Whaley Bridge. Her grandmother's house had a flagged backyard that sloped steeply and also had a low flat-topped stone wall which was about a foot wide and enclosed the backyard, thereby separating it from the rest of the garden. This long wall formed a narrow platform that became an integral part of their playtime. L.A. would dance atop the stone pinnacle and run along it as though she was some juvenile Spring-Heeled Jack. The height of the wall was tall, and that the area where it separated the garden was particularly steep and thereby exceptionally dangerous, but L.A. was not concerned by this; in fact, this juvenile daredevil got a euphoric thrill from the potential hazard and would only increase in the range of her gymnastics.

It was on one such bright summer day as she clamored onto the stone wall, and she was in complete giddiness as her other siblings and cousins were not around, and she had the complete wall to herself. Her grandmother was in the kitchen but close enough that should something go awry, she was in calling distance. Knowing the potential aid she could get, she began to do her typical dances on top of the wall. As she continued to spin and groove, she was suddenly filled with an overwhelming sense of euphoric joy and an incredible sense of happiness in being alive. She felt the warmth of the sun on her skin and the cool hard stone under her feet and took in the complete peace and beauty of the garden that was near where she danced. She could feel fully at one with herself and her surroundings. The overwhelming feeling of this ultimately stopped her dancing, and she stopped and proceeded to stare out at the sea of green hills that stretched well beyond the garden.

As she stared out into the distance, she noticed one of the most peculiar things she had seen in her entire life. There some distance away in a nearby field was over a dozen of remarkably miniature horses bridled and harnessed to tiny open trotting-traps and that they were going round and round in circles in the field as if in some sort of race. The horses were chestnut and darker colored and were seemingly well-groomed. Their harnesses were seemingly polished and incredibly bright and shiny, and the same goes for the rest of their equipages. As she examined this equestrian event more closely, she noticed that these horses were not doing this on their own accord but were being driven by tiny, diminutive gnome-like beings. One gnome per each horse, much like how a jockey at a horse race would be; however, these gnomes were being pulled in golden-colored light-built sulkies (a kind of two-wheeled cart attached to the back of the horse in trotting races). The gnomes were holding the horse's reins in one hand and in their other a kind of whip to help keep the horses going. The gnomes wore a variety of clothes, each vibrant in color, such as bright green jackets, bright scarlet jackets, and they also all wore hats that matched and bright black boots that shone in the sunlight like patent leather. These gnomes also wore gauntlet gloves to protect their hands seemingly from the reigns or to match their already impeccable fashion sense. She could clearly see these diminutive beings' faces and could tell that they were "perfectly formed" and had rosy complexions and high cheekbones. L.A. watched these gnomes and horses race round and round, noting at how keenly they were attempting to win the game and seemingly unaware of her presence.

Image of what a trotting racehorse and sulkie looks like 

She could hear the voices of the gnomes commanding the horses in their sulkies, the horses seemingly obeying intently every inch of their master's commands. The race became exceptionally fast and furious as L.A. could see the horse's muscles flex and ripple as they ran around the field. The gnomes she could tell were full of glee, and the whole area where they competed was bathed in sunlight, which made the area appear greener than what it actually was. L.A. stood there watching in awe at the equestrienne event that broke out in front of them, but soon the overall excitement of the event overtook her, and she in this excitement had to show someone else, so she began to call emphatically for her grandmother. Calling out "come quickly, come quickly," but as the older homeowner began to come out of the house, the young girl had begun to regret calling her guardian.

The elder caregiver seeing the young girl on the wall, was clearly not in the mood for any youthful shenanigans and came out from of the house grumbling about her 'rheumatics' all the way over to her. The insistence in the girl's voice annoyed the old woman because she was relaxing in her favorite chair, and it was in this moment as L.A. watched the woman approach her that she began to feel an increasing diminution of consciousness. It was as if the woman who L.A. would describe as "earthy-earthy" was causing the girl to lose sight of the world around her. When the old woman was by her side, the vision of the gnomes and their racing horses was gone. L.A. felt that the old woman's aura either scared the entities away or that simply being around her stopped her from being able to see the faeries anymore. The grandmother, however, stood there, arms crossed as she listened to the girl's story and, seeing that the field was now devoid of the wee folk, simply refused to believe her granddaughter and instead chastised her for "disturbing her for 'no reason at all'." L.A. was completely downtrodden and finished her holiday with her grandmother, which after that continued to be uneventful.

L.A. kept her story to herself for years until she was fully grown. One day she was hanging out with her Aunt (her grandmother's daughter), and for some strange reason, she felt compelled to tell her about what she saw in the field that day. Her Aunt listening to her account did not treat it in disdain like how her grandmother did but instead was surprised and clued her into why she potentially saw what she saw. Her Aunt, hearing this went into details in how the field where she saw the gnome race was the same spot that her father (L.A.'s Grandfather) held trotting races that were common practice when he was a young man. The area was so well known for this that young sportsmen from miles around would come to the area for the chance to compete in the field. The sport in the area had died out some time ago, and so it was particularly bizarre that such an occurrence would have happened when L.A. saw the event. L.A. had never heard of trotting races and was unfamiliar with the vehicles attached to it, but she was able to describe to her Aunt the exact descriptions of how they raced and the vehicles showing that she had seen some sort of antediluvian equestrian game that day. When discussing her account to the Fairy Investigation Society, L.A. said the following about her sighting "Even today I can still vividly recall and relive the sudden mood of joy that I experienced as I witnessed that entrancing scene. It must have been an exact replica of a human trotting race, except that everything was on a diminished scale of about a quarter the normal size with every detail standing out perfectly”.

Encounters with gnomes are surprisingly common, and many of perhaps the most bizarre faerie encounters involve this particular fae. One thing that many of the early faerie researchers discerned about gnomes was that they were imitators. Gnomes are believed to be able to use energy and matter in a peculiar way that includes creating varieties of objects, creatures and even changing their general appearance. There is even a claim that the gnome as how we know it is not their original form but simply a guise they take. It is in this way that gnomes are by far in this kind of research more ethereal than other fae like trolls, brownies, or leprechauns. This ability to seemingly create objects from nothing like diminutive versions of the Dark Horse character the Mask has been used to explain their rash of particularly bizarre encounters associated with them. I've already mentioned the Wollaton Park Gnomes Case, which featured 30 Bubble cars, police officer outfits, and some more bizarre elements that appeared in a scavenger hunt they created (which I plan to write a full article on); there also was an encounter where a small gnome-like entity was seen driving a car in circles in their yard in 1940, and another encounter where a small gnome-like entity was flying a tiny airplane while waving to the witnesses. So perhaps the trotting vehicles and even the horses are other examples of this kind of matter transformation which is what Marjorie Johnson and even L.A. years later felt was the case.

While matter manipulation, in this case, is a possibility, the most interesting thing to me is the diminutive horses, and that trotting vehicles are rather simple compared to a car, so there's also the chance that this is non-magical wooden vehicles but faerie crafted vehicles. Faerie animals are incredibly common in folklore around the United Kingdom and Ireland. The most famous is perhaps the Kelpie, the shape-shifting water horse that consumes the flesh of those it drowns. Other faerie animals exist, such as the Cu Sith or Cu Sidhe; the faerie hounds, they are bright green in color and covered in shaggy hair. Many stories of the Cu Sith are almost identical to accounts of hellhounds or black dogs as their howls, specifically hearing them in sets of three, are often precursors to death. Another example of a faerie animal is the Cat Sith, a dark black shadowy, spectral cat with a white spot on its chest; these malevolent fae were believed to steal the souls from the dead when they pass over a corpse, and much like the Cu Sith was a creature often linked to death. While most faerie animals seem to be malevolent, they are not all that way; in fact, there is a variety that matches the kind seen in Bridgemont and has appeared in countless tales these faerie horses while at least from what I’ve been able to glean do not have a specific name like their more nefarious relatives like the Kelpie, Each-Uisge, and Cabyll-Ushtey but appear to be very much typical horses in behavior and form but are faerie versions of them. These horses are often seen being ridden by the Seelie Court and the Gentry, and there are countless stories revolving around them. The Bridgemont Gnome encounter seems to show this same variety of faerie, but with the complicated and highly speculative nature of faeries and encounters with them, this cannot be for certain.

Now while I've discussed the faerie theory for this encounter, there is one thing that I think should be mentioned, and that is the hypothesis that the entire encounter could have been something biological. Before I really started doing research into the faerie phenomenon, I felt that all encounters with diminutive beings were examples of hominids. That they were pockets of undiscovered relatives to us that due to island dwarfism or some other evolutionary factor led to them being the creatures we associate with elves, leprechauns, gnomes, and red caps. With their short stature, they could evade us more easily, and perhaps they built subterranean lairs or were nomadic hence why they didn't have evidence of civilization outside of the occasional faerie pipe and other small artifacts which have been found on extremely rare occasions. Perhaps that is the case here the gnomes are examples of this and that they are technologically sophisticated enough to build devices on par with us or maybe a few years behind us hence why devices of antiquity built to their stature yet seemingly new are seen in times when such devices should not be around. If we go this route, there are all sorts of anthropological elements one could speculate, such as that perhaps these hominids had been able to breed diminutive horses in the same way we have teacup poodles which if possible means that they are much smarter than us as such reports have predated any Mendelian attempts at cross-breeding or selective breeding and if that's the case could add to why we only have legends and no hard evidence for their existence. If this is a highly advanced species that wishes to remain elusive, and they are potentially smarter than us, then they could have all sorts of methods that would to us seem like magic but, in reality, be either a kind of science or illusion that they created after how many countless years. However, all of this is mere speculation, and while fascinating to think about, I personally do not think this to be the case in this encounter.

I've discussed in earlier articles, particularly on Trolls, how difficult faerie investigation is as there's no real methodology to it. One seemingly cannot go out and track faeries in the ways one would a bigfoot or use sonar to find lake monsters. Ghost hunting equipment seemingly has no effect on these entities, or if it does, it's never been reported. Most encounters with faeries are often described or investigated by those of a more spiritual mindset, and they will describe encounters through meditation and emotional output and for someone who attempts to study this phenomenon from a scientific point of view, while interesting, it is very difficult to conduct any kind of experiment or inquiry outside of simply collecting encounters or the off chance that one is caught on camera as there have been a few photographs and videos over the years that seemingly show faeries, but as with most evidence nowadays and the easiness of hoaxing, there's a good chance that most are either fake or some natural phenomenon like a bug on the lens or something similar. However, I am completely fascinated by these reports partly because of my ancestral Irish heritage and because, as a Fortean, there are so many encounters that have been reported and are still being reported to this day that there just has to be something to it. Just what I can only speculate, but perhaps someday we'll find the gates to faerie land, or they will come from their dark corners and share their technology and secrets with us… the big folk.

Quick Facts:

Species/Potential Species: Faeries/hominids

Location: Bridgemont, Derbyshire, England

Sighted: Summer of 1909

Works Cited:

Seeing Fairies: From the Lost Archives of the Fairy Investigation Society, Authentic Reports of Fairies in Modern Times By Marjorie T. Johnson

Main Image from:

 Gnelsome Gnome. https://gnelsongnome.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/saratoga-race-course/

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