With the exception of the Thunderbird and its aquatic serpentine enemy, the little person is perhaps the most ubiquitous preternatural entity in the folklore of Canada’s First Nations. From the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic, native peoples across the country have traditional tales about tiny elusive people who live in the mountains, in riverside cliffs, or in underground caves. Incredibly, people today continue to have strange experiences in the wilderness which seem to verify these ancient tales. In this piece, we will recount three subscriber encounters with little people in Canada.
The Memekwesiw of Cross Lake
Our first story was told to me by my friend and long-time subscriber Jason T., a Manitoba native who has sent me a wealth of interesting information over the years. Jason heard this story from his co-worker; who heard it from his sister-in-law, ‘C’; who, in turn, heard it from her former boyfriend, a member of the Cross Lake Cree Nation whom we will refer to as ‘D’. The incident in question took place on the shores of Cross Lake, roughly sixty miles northeast of Manitoba’s Lake Winnipeg.
Jason cautioned me that it had been a while since he first heard the story, which took place in September 2020, and suspected that he may have misremembered some of the details. When I asked for his permission to publish the story, he very generously got in touch with C so that a more accurate account could be reproduced here. C, in turn, kindly got in touch with her former boyfriend and received a full report of his experience by text, along with permission for me to publish the story, which follows.
In September 2020, D and three of his friends from the reserve drove up to their trap line on Cross Lake, where they built a fire and shared some beer. Roughly two hours into the session, at around midnight, their conversation was broken by some rustling in the forest beyond the light of the campfire. One of the friends shone his flashlight in the direction of the sound and saw something moving in the tall grass. D and one of his friends, both of whom had reputations as tough guys on the reserve, got up and walked over to investigate.
To their astonishment, the pair came upon a tiny man crouched in the grass. Although there are no details regarding the physical appearance of this creature in the primary account provided by C and D, Jason recalled his co-worker telling him that the little person wore clothes which looked like they were made for a regular human, but had been roughly tailored to fit his tiny frame, as if they had been stolen from a clothesline and torn to size. He also recalled hearing that the little figure stood about three feet tall; had a round face with dark, deep-set eyes; and mumbled something in a high-pitched voice which D and his friends couldn’t understand.
Recovering from his initial shock, D’s friend aimed a half-hearted kick at the creature, either missing it, or grazing it and finding it to be as solid as a boulder. Stiffening, the little man swiftly grabbed D’s pant leg with a power belying his size. D freed himself from the iron grip, and the four friends bolted for the truck and took off. On the drive home, D discovered that the little man had left a dusty hand print on his pants.
For several weeks after the incident, D rarely left his house, constantly plagued by a sense of formless dread. His days were clouded with illness and malaise and his dreams were haunted by nightmares. The incident prompted him to give up drinking, and to resolve to never return to the site of his encounter.
There are several elements of this story which have eerie parallels with themes in both native and settler little people traditions. First and foremost, the Rock, Swampy, and Woodland Cree of northern Manitoba have a strong tradition that the many lakes and rivers which crisscross their country are inhabited by memekwesiwak – elusive, diminutive, preternatural entities which have been described as sprites, dwarfs, mermaids, and monkeys.
The “dark, deep-set eyes” of the creature on Cross Lake, that detail appearing in Jason’s initial recollection of the story, evoke indigenous dwarf legends across the country. One Plains Cree dwarf story describes the eyes of the “memegweciwug” of the Saskatchewan sand hills as “hollow”, and the Upper Thompson Indians of British Columbia’s Fraser and Thompson Valleys told an ethnologist that the mountain-dwelling dwarves of their own country had eyes which were “sunk very deep in their heads.”
The dwarf’s round face has a parallel in the Skraelingjar of the Icelandic sagas – diminutive New World natives discovered by Norse explorers on Canada’s Atlantic Coast in about 1000 A.D., which some writers, as early as the 16th Century, have interpreted as dwarves or pygmies. According to the Saga of Erik the Red, which depicted the Skraelingjar as little people who lived in holes in the earth, these natives “were short in height with threatening features and tangled hair on their heads. They eyes were large and their cheeks broad.”
The dwarf’s physical prowess is another common motif in native ‘little people’ lore. In the aforementioned Plains Cree story, a native warrior once wrestled with a dwarf, and found that his arms were “like bands of iron”. The Shuswap people of British Columbia’s northern Interior Plateau have tales of squat, stocky, 4-foot-tall people called tema’ut, who lived in holes in the ground, whose half-human progeny, born of a captured tema’ut girl, were said to be “great wrestlers.”
Finally, the mental and physical maladies from which D suffered in the weeks following his experience echo a tenet of Newfoundland fairy lore which contends that those who encounter ‘little people’ often accrue wounds and psychological ailments, which are side-effects of exposure to the fairies’ powerful magic.
The Leprechauns of Vancouver Island
We owe our next story to Joe Matheson, a resident of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, who sent me an email in October 2023 in which he described his terrifying personal encounter with ‘little people’ near the southernmost tip of Vancouver Island. Joe proclaimed that this experience was by far the most memorable and terrifying of his life.
“Let me start at the beginning,” Joe wrote, “and give you a general layout of what I went through. This happened in the middle of a stormy rainy night in the mid-80s on the acreage I lived at, [on] East Sooke Road on Vancouver Island. I was an electrical apprentice at the time, putting myself through trade school and living with a beautiful native girl [named Melody] and her two children. We were both only twenty at the time…
“It was the middle of the night. It was dark and it was storming, raining with thunder and lightning all night long… I don’t know what initially woke me up, but I do remember sitting up in the bed in the living room, looking out the window at the garden, and the yard was lit up with a motion light in the rain. And holy smokes, if you’ve ever had a sight that would turn your hair white, this would have been it. Around ten feet from the windows, moving from right to left, was a group of between four and five goblin-type beardless men around 3.5 feet tall, very skinny, slightly exaggerated oversized narrow faces with large ears, large noses, and strange eyes. They were wearing these really plain simple clothes like I remember Robin Hood and his Merry Men would have worn in those silly 1950s movies. They almost looked like they were made of felt, and they were only shades of green and brown. All of them were wearing these silly triangular hats that were shaped like a newspaper boat that you’d fold for children. No weapons or tools or anything, just the snug-fitting clothes. And what was silly, but I’m positive about it, was that they were wearing these silly sock-like booties with pointed toes that curl upwards. I’m embarrassed to describe that part, but damn, that’s what they were wearing.
“One detail I strongly remember was that they were not obeying the laws of physics. They were walking a little too slowly, and they were leaning a little too far forward to look natural.
“So here’s the part to turn your hair white. There was a kind of dominant alpha character slightly in the lead, even though they were in a tight group walking towards the creek… The alpha one turned, and I swear he made eye contact with me and smiled, and gave me the most untrustworthy ‘I know a secret you don’t know’ type look that made me actually jump.”
Joe described how he proceeded to shake his girlfriend awake, telling her that there were “leprechauns outside”. By the time a discombobulated Melody got around to looking out the window, the little people had melted into the darkness. On her advice, Joe tried to go back to sleep, attempting to chalk his experience up to a strange dream. Try as he might, however, he could not shake the feeling that his experience was legitimate.
“Anyway,” Joe continued, “after a couple of minutes, when maybe a tiny sliver of my mind was beginning to accept that it could have been some type of imaginary hallucination, I hear the most blood-curling scream I’ve ever heard in my entire life coming from the horse corral, which was in the direction that those things had been walking.” Joe explained that there were two horses in the barn at the time. One of them, a quarter Arab horse named Rosebud, belonged to Melody. The other was a pregnant Clydesdale cross named Misty or Smoky, who belonged to Cheri and Joe, a young couple who lived in a suite at the back of the house.
Joe frantically pulled on his gum boots, grabbed a flashlight, and headed outside into the downpour. “And you know damn well I’m looking for leprechauns as I’m walking to the barn,” he wrote.” He was joined by Cheri, similarly bedecked in rain gear, who had also decided to investigate the commotion.
The agitated horse proved to be Cheri’s pregnant Misty, whom they found kicking and snorting in the barn, illuminated by the amber glow of a sodium-vapor lamp. As Joe and Cheri tried to determine the cause of Misty’s irritation, the corral door burst open. In strode their assertive neighbour, Mr. Bell, irate, rainwater dripping from his cowboy hat and denim jacket, demanding to know what the commotion was about. When Cheri explained that her horse was pregnant, and suspected that she might be giving birth, Bell inspected her and determined that she was far from being due.
“So we stood around and chatted in the dark,” Joe wrote, “with the wind and the rain blowing around us outside, until Mr. Bell left and Misty had calmed down. As Cheri and I left the barn, we spotted something lit up by the sodium lamp. It was this tiny pure white newborn male lying dead and drowned in the only puddle in the corral. Cheri screamed and cried. It was a horrible moment. We were so confused because there was absolutely no way that foal could have gotten out of the barn. No way, other than being lifted and carried…”
Determined to make sense of his strange experience, Joe began to research the legend of the leprechaun and discovered that, according to the Druidic traditions of the ancient Celts, pure white male newborn livestock were regarded as perfect sacrificial material. He also unearthed an old tradition which holds that sightings of little folk are omens portending the death of livestock and the failure of crops. “Further research,” Joe concluded, “shows that they love running water, they love the dark, and they love horses.”
The Elves of Toronto
Our next story comes from Tom Andritsos of Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, who runs a YouTube channel called the Scarboro Sasquatch Station (link in description). Tom reached out to me in November 2023, telling me that he encountered ‘little people’ on two different occasions in Toronto.
Tom explained that his first experience took place in 1971, when he was seven years old. At that time, his family lived on the east side of Toronto’s Dufferin Street. Although his uncle’s family lived on the west side of the street within walking distance, Tom’s parents forbade him from crossing the busy thoroughfare without their permission.
One Saturday morning in May 1971, Tom felt a strange attraction to the west side of Dufferin Street distinct from the typical tantalization begotten by the forbidden sidewalk. “As I was standing there,” he explained, “I sensed an external energy source from across the street, sort of beckoning me to come closer and investigate.” Risking the sting of his father’s belt, Tom gave in to the creeping compulsion and let the mysterious energy guide him across the street.
Tom soon found himself in a field behind a junior high school, heading towards a brick wall at the northwest end of the yard from which the energy seemed to issue. “The wall stood about four feet tall,” he wrote, “and was made of older turn-of-the-century bricks. I now placed my hand upon this wall. I followed the energy flow to its strongest point, now emanating in waves at this junction where a newer brick wall had been added around WWII.”
Tom examined the wall for some time and confirmed that the strange sensation he felt indeed seemed to be strongest at the junction of the old section and the new. In the process, he noticed that the face of this structure was marred by the faint outline of a circle, slightly darker than the surrounding bricks, which was perfectly bisected by the line of mortar which separated the two walls. Tom conceived the notion that this circle was a sort of doorway or ‘portal’ which was closed at the moment.
In the two weeks succeeding his discovery, Tom made Saturday morning pilgrimages to the circle on the brick wall, where he experienced the same uncanny sensation that had first drawn him to the spot. On the second escapade, he found one of his neighbourhood friends playing in the schoolyard with his older brother, the latter having the reputation of a bully. For fear of ridicule, Tom kept tight-lipped about the profound sensations which the wall aroused in him, and his idea regarding the nature of the dark circle.
On his third trip to the schoolyard, Tom found that the ‘portal’ on the brick wall was considerably darker than before. Suspecting that it might have opened, he seized a stick and, careful to conceal his actions from his friend and his intimidating older brother, who were playing in the field, thrust it at its centre. To his amazement, the stick disappeared into the bricks without encountering any resistance.
Hoping to further examine the mysterious opening, but afraid to put his hand inside it, Tom asked to borrow his friend’s kickball, which was lying unused nearby. Having received permission, he began kicking it at the wall, and finally mustered the courage to launch it directly at the portal. To his delight, the kickball vanished into the hole.
Joy turned to fear when the ball did not bounce back. While he pondered how he would explain the ball’s disappearance to his friend’s older brother, Tom was astonished to see a tiny, wizened old man with white hair and a beard jump out of the portal with the kickball in his hands. “He was thin,” Tom wrote, “about sixteen inches in height, wearing blue clothes and a cap, with small hands and thin arms and a stern look on his face.” This dwarf was soon joined by another little person, this one an androgynous character with delicate and uncanny facial features, dressed in green. The two entities proceeded to admonish Tom for his carelessness, expressing their amazement that he was able to see them, and enjoining him not to tell anyone about the portal, before retreating back into the hole from which they had emerged. In spite of the injunctions, Tom promptly described his incredible experience to his friend, and received a thrashing after the latter repeated the story to his big brother.
Tom’s second encounter with a little person, which took place twelve years later, closely resembles another experience recounted in a previous piece, told by a witness who asked to be identified as ‘Bob’. Both of these run-ins took place in the Rouge River valley in Scarborough, Ontario, at the southeastern edge of Toronto.
The Pukwudgie of New Hampshire
Our final story is not set in the Great White North, but rather in the American state of New Hampshire. Sent to me by Jason M. in April 2024, this encounter took place on the William Furber Ferry Way Trail, not far from the Maine border, in January 2015. The following is Jason’s story in his own words, written shortly after the event in question:
“I live in Salisbury, Massachusset, now with my wife and two small kids – currently two and four. I am from the South Shore in Massachusetts, so I am not that familiar with the area up here.
“Last summer I had come across this ‘Great Bay’ up in New Hampshire. I never knew there was a big bay up there. I always just thought it was a little stretch of coastline, and that was it.
“This past winter, I noticed there was some kind of nature preserve on Great Bay, so I tried to go up there for a little day trip with the family.
“As it turned out, the nature preserve is right next to the runway for Pease Airport, so there were thunderously loud jets taking off every few minutes. I fail to understand how that would be good for the wild animals…
“Anyway, on the day we went, there were only a few cars in the parking lot. We had passed a couple of people walking or jogging along the road on the way in, so I suppose those were the people whose cars we saw.
“After we got out of the car, we went over to a kind of raised boardwalk, which I gathered was supposed to go off through the woods. It was covered with about two feet of snow. I remarked to my wife that I thought the federal government probably had enough money to pay a guy to come out with a snow shovel and clear off the walk.
“In spite of the snow, we tried to get down the walk a little ways, since we had driven up there just to see this place. This was about when I notice the planes taking off, at about 150 decibels I would guess.
“My wife was lagging behind with our younger son, and my older son ran off ahead until I couldn’t see him around the corner and through the trees. After a couple of minutes, he came walking back.
“He said he had seen a little man who had a basket of candy around his neck, and told my son to reach in and take some candy.
“I was a little startled by that, because we have never really talked to him about not taking candy from strangers. He is rarely out of our sight, but it doesn’t seem like strangers offer candy to kids like they used to, so it has never really come up. So this immediately piqued my interest. I supposed there must be some kind of unsavory character up the path. So I went along ahead, but didn’t see anything, or any signs of footprints in the snow.
“My son pointed to a particular spot by a tree next to the path. He insisted a little man had been there, but he had told him he wouldn’t take the candy and had to go back to see his parents. He was very insistent and specific about it.
“After we were back in the car, he said that the little man had ‘metal colored’ skin. He kind of seemed to be struggling to come up with appropriate words to describe it. He said it was kind of like a robot, but not exactly. It had metal-colored skin, it was small, etc. Anyway, it stuck in my head a little bit just because it was so odd.”
Jason went on to explain how, sometime later, while browsing the web, he clicked on a succession of links which ultimately led him to an article on the pukwudgie, a diminutive elf-like creature of Wampanoag Indian tradition said to haunt the northeastern woodlands of New England and the Canadian Maritimes. “It seemed about the size he was describing,” Jason wrote of the mythical creature, comparing it with the mysterious figure described by his son. “But the thing that really caught my eye was a statement that the pukwudgie is supposed to have grey skin.
“I have heard people mention pukwudgies sort of in passing, but I had never really read a description of one before. I never really knew what they were supposed to do or look like or anything. I was surprised to read that they had grey skin, which reminded me of my son’s encounter with a person with ‘metal colored’ skin…”
There is another aspect of Jason’s story which has a disturbing connection with two very different folkloric traditions endemic to Canada. It is said that the mischievous fairies supposed to dwell in the bogs, berry patches, and barrens of Newfoundland sometimes offer food to travelers whom they disorient in the wilderness. Anyone who partakes of this enchanted repast will become trapped in fairyland, the other-dimensional abode of the little people. On the opposite side of the country, in the rainforests of western Vancouver Island, the native Nootka and Kwakwaka’wakw have a traditional belief in the bukwus, or “wild man of the woods”, a frightening spectre said to haunt rivers and streams. Native tradition contends that the bukwus sometimes offers food to lost travellers which, if consumed, will transform the partaker into a bukwus himself.
Sources
The Memekwesiw of Cedar Lake
Private correspondence between Jason Tucker and Hammerson Peters, February 13th 2024
The Plains Cree: An Ethnographic, Historical, and Comparative Study (1979), by David G. Mandelbaum
“The Thompson Indians of British Columbia,” by James Teit in the April 1900 issue of the American Museum of Natural History
“The Shuswap,” by James Teit in Volume II, Part VII of the Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History (1909)
The Saga of Erik the Red (13th Century)
Strange Terrain: The Fairy World in Newfoundland (1991), by Barbara Rieti
The Leprechauns of Vancouver Island
Private Correspondence between Joe Matheson and Hammerson Peters, October 24th, 2023
The Elves of Toronto
Private Correspondence between Tom Andritsos and Hammerson Peters, November 14, 2023
The Pukwudgie of New Hampshire
Private Correspondence between Jason M. and Hammerson Peters, April 17th, 2024
Strange Terrain: The Fairy World in Newfoundland (1991), by Barbara Rieti
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