Article from Paranormal.about.com - Welsh Goblin

"Your True Tales
November 2008 - Page 25

The Goblin of Groeslon
by Stephen W.

After reading with interest the tale "Face-to-Face With an Elf" by K.T. in the October 2007 archive, it reminded me of a somewhat similar experience that my father had in his boyhood. (My father, incidentally, says that he has had a whole series of amazing paranormal experiences in his life, and I will probably submit here another one or two of the most remarkable of them in time.) The important difference between this my father's experience and that submitted by "K.T.", is that whereas the latter speaks of an ethereal or interdimensional creature, what my father says he saw was not only a solid flesh-and-blood being, but also was seen and personally known by other bystanders.

Sometime between 1946 and 1948, when my father was 12 to 14 years of age, his father was asked by a smallholder to drive him some 15 miles away to a village called Groeslon (near Caernarvon, in North Wales), to look for a sheep of his that had strayed away. His father agreed to take him in his car, and my father went with them. When they had arrived in Groeslon, the smallholder, strange as it seemed, for some reason directed his father to turn right over a railway bridge and they then drove on for 1/4 to 1/2 mile until they reached a farm on the right-hand side. The three of them then got out of the car and walked into the farmhouse.

There, sitting on the edge of a table by a wall just on the inside of the door of the farmhouse, was a little white-bearded man only about 3 feet tall, and swinging his legs. The man was dressed all in a green costume, which strongly resembled that of a stereotypical British goblin, with green upturned shoes, and a pointed and turned hat. The "goblin" spoke in Welsh with a "terribly strong voice -- like thunder," which shocked my father so much that he was unable to speak. The farmer-owner of the farmhouse, speaking of the goblin, said, "This is how he likes to dress. He has ALWAYS been here, since before my grandparents' time (over 100 years)."

Then, as if my father was not already frightened enough, the goblin laughed out loud to him saying, "You have been stealing apples from the garden of Grovenor!" This really scared my father, because not only was this true, but that Grovenor was a small hotel in the village (15 miles from Groeslon) where he lived, and he swore that no one but the owner of Grovenor -- who had caught him once stealing apples -- could possibly have known this.

Then in a 1945 edition of the Daily Post newspaper, on the front cover, was a story and picture of British soldiers having caught a little man in the Trawsfynudd mountains in Wales. This man, said my father, looked just like the one he had seen in Groeslon. So who, or what, was this mysterious little man who lived in the farmhouse in Groeslon? And how was he able to know that my father had been stealing apples from a hotel's garden in a village so far away? Was he able to psychically read my father's mind? There are legends of an ancient Celtic race, rumoured to possess psychic powers, that were the original indigenous inhabitants of the British Isles. Evidence in support of this is scattered and abstruse, but in my mind this seems to be the only rational lead to go on."

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