Dear reddit,
I know, it just sounds like a neighborhood prank or something, that's also what I told myself at first too, some little snot picking on the old man down the street because he or she feels like they can. But these supposedly-inanimate invaders of my humble property are doing unexplainable things; I’m not a superstitious man, but I can’t begin to imagine the logistics that would have to be involved if this was all some kind of trick.
And for what purpose? I don’t have enemies, I’m just a regular retiree, trying to while away my remaining days in peace, enjoying the relaxing suburban paradise I’d set up for myself. OK, maybe calling it a paradise is a bit hyperbolic, but I really have come to view my nice house outside the city in its nice little neighborhood, with my neatly-kept lawn and lovingly tended garden, as a refuge from the chaotic and ever-changing world outside. I’m always polite and personable with my friendly neighbors, but I’ll admit I’m not much of a social butterfly. In fact, I’ve probably spent a significant majority of my time right here within my property lines, ever since my lovely wife Edith passed a few years ago. I just rarely feel a need to leave unless there's some specific reason to. My somewhat exasperated daughter once even called me “the little hermit of suburbia”, and was only made more exasperated when I thanked her for what I mistook as an endearing compliment.
Anyway, back to the point; it all started a couple weeks ago. I went out early one morning to check on my vegetables, when lo and behold, three little garden gnomes are already there, standing guard. I must admit, when coming out to look at my plants for things that shouldn't be there, I was thinking more along the lines of pests, or perhaps a weed or two I’d missed. Not terracotta statues of little bearded men with pointy hats. They were slightly different from each other, but were also obviously made in the same style, probably all from the same “set” or whatever one calls a gnome collection. Naive as it sounds to even myself now, At first I figured they were probably a present from some well-meaning if perhaps a tad eccentric neighbor. As someone who arguably played such a role in the lives of many of the surrounding residents, I took it in stride and left the gnomes to their new posts.
The next morning there were four. Again I didn't think much of it, just figuring I must have missed one when looking around the day before. But then on the third day there were nine, and they were no longer confined to the garden area. They dotted the front yard in seemingly random places, such as the middle of the lawn or driveway, peeking out from a bush near the font of the house, or even one on top of my roof. I almost had a heart attack when I walked out to get the mail only to open my mailbox and see a small gnome laid across some letters and bills. At this point my assumption went from gift to prank, though I still couldn’t come up with any good reason someone would be doing this, except maybe a warped sense of humor. Inquiries to my neighbors led only to a confusion similar to my own. No one knew, or at least admitted knowing, anything about the gnomes or having seen them being placed.
Over the next week or so, the gnomes continued to multiply, and though I’d started removing them and tossing them shed before locking it, they’d just be inexplicably back out the next day. I didn't know if whoever was instigating this had made a copy of my key somehow, or was just good at lockpicking, or whatever else, but getting a new lock didn’t help and I soon gave up. I was not willing to, in my mind, escalate this ridiculous battle to the level of finding and installing a more secure and expensive lock system for a rickety old wooden shed, to ‘keep the gnomes in’ as I'd hesitantly have to explain to questioning onlookers and passerbys. No thank you. I also tried just throwing them out, but as you probably could guess at this point, That didn’t do much. Either the very same ones or identically designed figures would be back the next day, in the exact same spots and positions they were in the day before, along with whichever new little scoundrels had generated overnight.
At this point by the way, from what I could tell, my increasingly interested and concerned neighbors had basically split into two roughly equal camps on whether there really was some young trickster(s) tormenting me in this elaborate farce for some reason knowable only to them, or whether my aging mind was finally going for good, degrading to the level of buying and placing lawn ornaments by night only to forget and panic about the new fixtures I’d just put on my lawn by day. None would say this to my face of course, but the increasingly subtext level of my day-to-day conversations began to clearly diverge depend on who I was talking to. My inklings were also supported by a 9 year old girl named Lucy who liked to play in her yard next door or wander the neighborhood on her bike. She’d always been as friendly as she was blunt, and openly told me not to “worry about the little gnomes, You’re probably just losing it”, even as her parents believed me and even defended me to other neighbors. I admired her honesty at least.
As if things aren’t already spiraling out of hand at this point, whatever is haunting me decided to broaden its horizons beyond just gnomes. The first non-gnome to appear was a genuinely cute little statue of a frog in a farmer’s outfit, crouched on a sign that says “hippity-hoppity, get off my property”. I became only slightly less baffled once Lucy explained to me that “its from a meme”. A part of me felt better at this point, because it seemed to bolster my theory (and hope) that this was just an elaborate teen prank. After all, as I’ve been informed from the local news I watch every evening, kids are all about the memes these days, and they can lead to some pretty wild and absurd hijinks “IRL” (see, I’m practically a youth myself!).
The larger part of me, though, felt even more at ease. What was sticking with me was how the frog figure was on actually my doorstep, facing me, rather than facing the street as lawn ornaments usually do, and as even the garden gnomes had been. Well, as they’d been at first at least, because sure enough, I soon noticed the gnomes, even the original few, had slowly begun orienting away from the street and towards my house itself, bit by bit, day by day. Their smiles and expressions even seemed to grow darker, less jolly and more sinister, though I chalked that up as likely just anxious imaginings when I first noticed. Once they turned to full-on scowls, or the teeth became pointed (the exact demonic change varied with each figurine), I quickly discarded that notion though. Suddenly the Frog no longer seemed to just be quoting a cute little saying; it felt like it was warning me off my own property, the house and land that these supernatural lawn ornaments were now claiming as their own.
Other fixtures started to appear too, each clearly off in some creepy way(s) right from the beginning, but at this point I was stubborn and determined to not let who or whatever was causing this to get the better of me. It’s not that I wasn’t still scared, I guess that it was just that this all felt so absurd and surreal that my mind was barely even processing it beyond the surface-level bafflement and anger.
So, for example, when windchimes appeared that played eerie, discordant notes as they swung in the breeze, whether or not there actually was any breeze at the time, I simply put in headphones when they got too loud and/or too reminiscent of tortured human wailing.
A birdbath also appeared, stationed in my backyard, that would fill with a foul, acidic smelling liquid and seemed to collect bird carcasses around the base as the unfortunate animals apparently didn’t notice or care about the abnormal water. I covered it with a tarp to prevent further bird-poisoning.
When the Gnomes themselves started appearing on the outside window sills, staring into my home with menacing expressions less than an inch from the glass, I just closed the curtains.
The picket fence I have surrounding one side for when my dog Rusty was still around even spontaneously developed barbed wire. Have you ever seen a white, wooden picket fence with barbed wire on top? It looks at least as ridiculous as it does menacing, though perhaps this entire phenomenon could be described that way. Honestly I didn’t really even bother reacting to or trying to fix that one.
I believe the tipping point for me finally came yesterday, when I walked outside and the bird bath was suddenly gone; in place of the area it had been standing on, there was now a koi pond style body of the same sort of not-water that the poisonous birdbath had been filled with. The pond was full of inhabitants as well. Not Koi, mid you, just these slimy, eyeless creatures strongly resembling hagfish. Small animal skeletons were visible from the bottom of the shallow pond. I didn’t stoop close enough to the water to tell exactly what kinds of animals.
You see, now I felt that I KNEW this was really happening. My yard itself was clearly turning into some supernatural/evil caricature of a happy suburban lawn. It wasn’t just some case of a weird, sadistic trickster, because I don't care how resourceful or clever you are, I don’t believe for a second that someone silently and completely excavated a chunk of my yard, filled it with a fresh pond complete with aquatic residents, stone borders, and a small walkway, all in the 8 hours between when I went to bed and woke up the next morning. I also finally knew that I was clearly not just developing some perversely compartmentalized new form of dementia or Alzheimer's or anything, because by this point I’d taken to photographing my yard every morning and night to keep track of the “progress” the denizens of my accursed property were making. Sure enough, no pond in sight when I checked the photos from the night before. Also, as sure as I am that no pranksters could realistically install a koi pond overnight, I’m even more positive that I myself couldn’t, potential memory issues or no.
So, I packed up my most important belongings throughout the afternoon, gave Lucy my phone number to call if the evil lawn-spawn did anything different with me no longer home (I know it seems a little shitty to drag a kid into this, but she was more than eager at this point and most of my adult neighbors would try to have me committed If I asked them at this point), and went to a motel. I briefly considered calling (or just showing up to) my daughter’s about an hour away, but I didn’t want to risk whatever is causing this to follow me to her home and possibly endanger her and her kids. Also, motel rooms don’t have lawns.
Anyway, that was last night, and after hours of nervous insomnia and jumping at every noise or light outside the window, I finally drifted off, probably around 4 AM or so... only to wake up this morning with 4 lawn gnomes lined up IN my room at the foot of my damn bed. This time, I swear I even heard a faint growl or two as I carried the demonic terracotta figures outside to be dropped off and shattered onto the pavement below. Without even thinking I shouted something along the lines of “and STAY out, ya little bastards!”, to the slightly bemused but surprisingly disinterested look of the woman two doors over as she entered her own room.
At this point, I’m not really so sure what to do. Obviously, drastic as it was, just abandoning my house to the invaders isn’t enough, and even though I haven’t been hurt yet, things are clearly escalating. I was hoping to somehow come across any record of similar phenomenon, but have had no luck so far. So I’m being proactive, I bet if I’m able to find anyone with some knowledge or useful tips for this kind of situation, it'll be a place like this.
Oh, I should also mention that I got a call as I was finishing writing up this recount. A few minutes ago, a call came from Lucy’s mother’s phone, with Lucy herself on the line when I picked up. First, she half-heartedly apologized for calling instead of just walking over to my door and knocking (“because, well, duh” as she put it). Before I could ask in puzzlement what she meant, she asked why I’d come back so soon, especially since the gnomes and all were still there. After informing Lucy that I was, in fact, very much NOT back at my house, she said “Mmmm But then where’d the giant basket come from?”
“Lucy, what basket?”
“The basket of fresh veggies. The note said you were sorry for your air-tick (*I’m guessing she was trying to say erratic) behavior recently, here’s some fresh vegetables from the garden, some other things I forgot but they probably just weren't worth ‘membering. But I was like, wait, you said you weren't gonna be back for a while, so I called aaaand yeah.”
After a short pause, I said “Lucy I think those vegetables are bad, do NOT you or your parents eat them!”
“Well, all vegetables are, silly!”
“Lucy I’m serious, go throw them away right now. Has anyone eaten any?” I asked fearfully, just imagining what havoc a cursed carrot or two might wreak.
“I mean we haven’t, don’t know about everyone else. Looks like every house got a basket” Lucy answered.
I'm leaving now, heading back to my neighborhood. I had to get a cab, since my car wouldn't start at the motel. It just started smoking out of the hood as soon as I turned it on, and when I opened it up to check THERE WAS ANOTHER TINY GNOME UNDERNEATH. Anyway, I can only hope now I can get to as many neighbors door-to-door to collect the baskets before it's too late. I might get put away or arrested, but I don’t care at this point, who knows what vegetables from a clearly cursed garden are going to do to my poor, mostly innocent neighbors… and that's assuming it's only vegetables inside.
I’m not sure about that assumption for the same reason I’m most worried about Lucy. When she hung up, it was abrupt, and she just stopped mid-sentence, and maybe I imagined it, but I could have sworn the last thing I heard before the line went dead was a soft growl. The same kind of growl I heard this morning.
So, let me know of any potential life saving advice if you can, and wish me Luck, internet. We'll see what happens, I suppose.
-Sincerely, Eugene
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