I’ve read the works of Jan Harold Brunvand, and many of his counterparts. I’ve searched Cecils archive. Urban Legend tomes always have a blurb about Garden or Lawn Gnomes that have been surreptitiously been taken on vacation by stealthy burglars. Oh, how I’ve wanted to perpetrate one of these situations with all the traveling I do, but I couldn’t figure out how to get a statue onto a plane. Pretty damn expensive I imagine, they weigh a ton. Anyone have any info on this?
Also, I know I’ve been a bit of a board hound. I just got on here 2 days ago, and have been reading and posting like crazy! This place is awesome! So appologies to the reserved pipe-and-slippers questioneers.
yeah man. The stories I’ve read have the gnomes going overseas, and photos being sent with shades and tans…the whole bit. Now, mind you, I read this a few years ago. Maybe memory has made the tale a little more fantastic in my head. What you’d need to do would be to take them to national landmarks in different countries and photograph them.
I don’t the know origins. It could have started as an urban legend and then gotten “copycats”, but it definitely happens.
My brother’s yard gnome went missing a few months ago. I went over to his house one day and there was a roll of film on his doorstep. When he answered the door I said, not thinking anything of it, “you dropped some film.” He picked it up and started flipping through it and the twisted up confused look on his face started turning into a smile and then a laugh.
Then he told me how his yard gnome got stolen and I, not knowing it was ever gone, told him it was in the front yard. The perp must have dropped the pictures and the gnome off in the middle of the night.
It was 30-something pictures with stories on the back of each one written by the gnome. “Here I am having a pina colada,” “Here I am with two chicks in a hot tub,” etc. But they were longer and funnier.
We don’t know anyone that has been on a cruise recently so it was definitely a random Gnome-napping and not a prank pulled by a friend. It sure was funny.
We’ve been meaning to scan the pictures (front and back) and put them online but we haven’t gotten around to it yet.
The gnome doesn’t weigh much because he’s hollow plastic, so I see no problem putting him on a plane.
I have first hand-knowledge of a traveling garden gnome prior to 1986 - I least I saw one personally. I lived in Auckland, New Zealand, in the early 1980s, and for a time a garden gnome was living on a balcony overlooking Queen Street, the main downtown thoroughfare. The story (which I seem to recall was actually mentioned in the weekend magazine of one of the city newspapers) was that he had been kidnapped from the garden of a middle-aged couple in the UK, and was being passed from traveler to traveler on a journey around the world, periodically sending postcards back to his “parents.” He was on the balcony for several months before he got wanderlust again and moved on. This gnome was not necessarily the first peripatetic one, but the tale dates from at least that early. (As he wasn’t that big, and I suspect he was made out of something lighter than concrete, I don’t think taking him on a plane would have been at all difficult.)
The legend is a major plot point in the movie Ameliè. I first heard of it on* Paul Harvey* (which says absolutely nothing of its truth value) many years ago when it was a statue of Grumpy from the Seven Dwarves kidnapped from a ladies house and… you know “the rest of the story”. When he returned home there was a bag of photos around his neck… and Dopey was gone.
can’t remember which book actually sorry. Just searching thru the harddrive of my mind and i seem to remember reading it in his book. I haven’t read too many other Urban Legend books than his, and I read them while at sea in Antarctica a few years ago. The books are still on the boat. Good light reading for sailors
A little googling determined it was in Curses! Broiled Again! (1989), which I have. I had forgotten it was in there. Brunvand’s earliest example was one described in the British magazine Mayfair in 1986. The original perpetrators were supposed to be British oil-rig workers traveling to the Far East. The timing is consistent with my gnome sighting in Auckland, which was probably in the first half of 1985 (although it could have been earlier) being one of the earliest ones. The practice apparently had become something of a fad in Australia by the mid-1980s.
When I first heard this, it was in an article in the Reader’s Digest about 15 to 20 years ago, and the kidnapee was a plastic pink flamingo, not a garden gnome. It was presented as a true story, but then Reader’s Digest isn’t known to do much fact checking for entertainment type stories such as this.
A plastic pink flamingo is much easier to carry around than a concrete garden gnome.
I wonder if the gnomes inspired the flamingo or the other way around.
Recently Travelocity had commercials which I found extremely amusing.
Snapshots of a gnome on his trips and explanations along with them “This is me diving in Bermuda, This is me on the plane, I love a stinky cheese, A ghastly stinky cheese”
The last one was of the gnome behind a wheel of cheese with a clothespin over his nose. Then it went on to say tavel with Travelocity or some such thing. Drove me nuts because I was always only seeing the last clip and wondering about it.
Then I saw the whole thing and I couldn’t keep from laughing.
I also remember being at an outdoor concert about 2 years back. I look over to the side of the open space where everyone was dancing and I catch glimpse of two girls snapping pictures… of a gnome. The only thing I could think of was that it was on a trip
My ex-roommates used to kidnap gnomes, but not to take them on trips. They did it to amuse themselves while on 'shrooms :rolleyes:
Around 1992 my brother’s friend’s parents got a postcard from their gnome. They were most surprised, as they hadn’t even noticed it was missing. A quick check of the garden showed that their gnome had indeed disappeared.
We did our own spot of gnome-knapping while teens.
I remember one house that had around ten or so gnomes.
Each year, we’d distribute them amongst the neighbourhood, thinking we were hilarious and original. And each year, they neighbours would find them, and they’d slowly trickle back to the owner.
My counsin’s application video for Big Brother was a recommendation from his gnome.
Another cousin travelled through part of Europe with a guy who had stolen his boss’s gnome, and was sending postcards back. It’s almost a tradition.
What can I say? There’s just something about gnomes!
The evidence would indicate that it was an actual prank before it became a widespread urban legend. In fact, it’s not really an urban legend at all, since it’s something that has happened and continues to happen. (Unlike poodles in microwaves or scuba divers stuck in trees, for example.)
This is the first I’ve heard about gnomenapping, but it reminded me…
I saw a segment on one of the tabloid shows several years ago about a group of terrorists who were abducting lawn flamingos. They would send the owners photographs and videos of the flamingos being tortured and interrogated. When enough flamingos had disappeared, with owners getting pictures of their flamingos being tormented, it became something of a local news storyk (I think it happened in South Florida) and the terrorists then released a video to one of the local TV stations for broadcast on the news.
It was hilarious. Two guys in Arab headgear wearing scarves over their faces, with obviously fake accents, stridently informing the public that “The pelican sic kidnappings will keep continuing on…”
