~KRANDLEKEEP~
The Wisconsin Gnomelore Database
The Drone Hunting Duende
"As they searched they started getting pelted with rocks and hearing a strange, chanting language they didn’t recognize."
From There Be Hodags, by C.A. McAllister:
The legend of the drone hunting duende comes from an account posted online in 2014. The witnesses reported that they were flying a drone over a private, fenced-in property in Wisconsin, when their drone was suddenly knocked out of the air by a thrown rock, crashing to the earth below. The drone operators traveled to the location where the drone had gone down, but all that remained of it was a single propeller.
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They were then surrounded by strange chanting, and had stones thrown at them by creatures that they said looked like dwarves or duende. The term “duende” was originally the name of a specific type of legendary little people from the folklore of Iberia and Latin America, but the word has, on the modern Internet, evolved into a catch-all term for all types of little people. The drone pilots were driven away by these rock throwing duende, and never recovered the captured drone.
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These duende as described have obvious parallels to the rock throwing gnomes of Fifield, as well as the modern legends of the dwendi. Their dislike of human trespassers and their ability to destroy human machinery further gives them parallels to the armouchiquois little people. They might also be likened to the tree dwelling, branch throwing, highly territorial agropelter from lumberjack folklore.​
From "People Claim to Have Spotted ‘Little People’ Resembling Dwarves Roaming Around Wisconsin," by Cassandra Yorgey:
Tales of duende, aluxe, and other mythical ‘little people’ of the fae have been on the rise since the Mexican President recently posted a picture he claims to be one of these elf-like creatures. These sightings aren’t limited to the southern regions though, and a report of the little beings from the unlikely location of Wisconsin has risen to public discussion.
The strange story first surfaced on Reddit in 2014 with a post describing a drone they flew on private property that was brought down by an object whizzing through the air. The group of friends decided to hop the fence and retrieve the drone, but when they got to the location the drone went down all that was left was a propeller. They start hunting around for the rest of their equipment but as the searched they started getting pelted with rocks and hearing a strange, chanting language they didn’t recognize.
The Reddit user believes the creatures were mythical dwarves or duende of legend that chased them off the property, but not knowing what else to do they called the police to ask them to retrieve their drone. The police decided the story was so outlandish that they detained the group and dismissed their claims as teenage antics without any investigation into their claims at all, but did say the owners were tired of people trespassing on their property to search for the the ‘little folk’ so it seems like it wasn’t new information to them.
Native Americans told stories of a smaller people they interacted with, alongside tales of a taller people many believe to describe bigfoot or sasquatch. The wee folk were often described as variously good or mischievous, much like fairies and fae folk from European mythology. There is evidence to support an ancient people smaller in stature than modern humans, such as the “hobbit” people of Flores and the abandoned dwarven city in Iran, but skeptics doubt they could have survived in secret populations unbeknownst to the rest of the world.
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