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The Nain Rouge – Detroit’s Harbinger of Doom

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Cities have legends and Detroit has a fantastic one in the Nain Rouge. French for “red dwarf” or “red gnome,” is a mythical creature that haunts Detroit — its appearance is said to presage terrible events for the city. The Nain Rouge appears as “a small child-like creature with red or black fur. It is also said to have blazing red eyes and rotten teeth.” They say the Nain Rouge has appeared:

  • -In 1701 Cadillac, the founder of Detroit, is rumored to have encountered and even attacked the Red Dwarf. Within days Cadillac lost both his fame and fortune.
  • -A blundering Gen William Hull claimed to have seen it in the fog just before his surrender of Detroit to the British without firing a shot in the War of 1812.
  • -Several citizens of Metro Detroit sighted the Nain Rouge the day before the 1967 riots which marked the start of Detroit’s modern decline.
  • -In 1976, two employees of Detroit Edison saw a small “child” climbing a utility pole on March 1st. Fearing the “child” might fall the two men called out to “him” and much to their surprise the “child” leaped from the top of the twenty-foot pole and scurried away. The Red Dwarf had reared it’s face again and the next day Detroit was buried in one of the worst ice/snowstorms in it’s history.

And from Wikipedia:

  • -More recently, in the autumn of 1996, according to an article in the Michigan Believer, the Nain Rouge was spotted by two admittedly drunken nightclub patrons, who claimed to both have heard a strange “cawing sound, similar to a crow,” coming from a “small hunched-over man” who was fleeing the scene of a car burglary. The creature was described as wearing “what looked like a really nasty torn fur coat.”

We hadn’t heard of the Nain Rouge over in Windsor, but it appears that he helped us win the war of 1812, so maybe he’s on our side. It’s similar to the the legend of Spring Heeled Jack who haunted Victorian London, said to be “tall and thin, with the appearance of a gentleman, and capable of making great leaps. Several reports mention that he could breathe blue and white flames from his mouth and that he wore sharp metallic claws at his fingertips”.

I haven’t heard of anything nearly as mythic existing in Toronto — but it would be good to have something to blame from time to time and/or give drunks something to think they saw — like an evil Riverdale Racoon, some kind of North Toronto WASP (er, the insect kind), maybe an Annex Nimby (blazing eyes and a sense of entitlement).

Are there any neighbourhood myths that people know of, harbingers of doom or not?

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13 comments

  1. Harbingers of doom…

    How about the “Last Man”? I hear he’s a very ‘bad boy’!

    (sorry that groaner, i couldn’t resist)

  2. The Nain Rouge – Detroit’s Harbinger of Doom! YIKES!!! I believe it because I’ve been to Detroit.

  3. If you turn to Toronto literature, plenty of Toronto-based urban legends come up, although I don’t know that any of them have been elevated to trope status. Toronto’s ravines, for example, are portrayed in frightening and even demonic terms in Timothy Findley’s Headhunter (1993) and in a number of Margaret Atwood’s novels (see Lady Oracle; 1976 and Cat’s Eye; 1988). It isn’t so much that the ravines are populated by frightening entities so much (although they are — in fiction, usually by strange men) as that they are narrated as frightening sites. In Headhunter, a strange miasma rises out of one of Rosedale’s ravines and gives cover to unspeakable acts (commited by ‘ordinary’ Rosedaleians).

    Two excellent speculative novels, Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring (1998) and Cory Doctorow’s Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (2005) populate Toronto with surreal creatures. And mysterious (or merely annoying) barking dogs appear in a number of Toronto novels, including Cordelia Strube’s The Barking Dog (2002) and Maureen Jennings’ Let Loose the Dogs (2003).

    Perhaps the best efforts to mythologise Toronto were made by the late and lovely Gwendolyn MacEwen, in works including Noman (1972), Noman’s Land (1985) and Afterworlds (1987). Her story, “House of the Whale”, is anthologised widely. (Robertson Davies also tipped Toronto over a little in Murther & Walking Spirits; 1991, spilling out a variety of mythical entities).

    But your point — that Toronto doesn’t yet have fully developed mythical figures (other than in graphic fiction — perhaps someone else can fill in the blanks from that species) — may well be quite valid — although, unquestionably, it has mythical places (e.g., the CN Tower; the Don Valley; the Bloor Viaduct; etc.). Perhaps it’s the old curse of Canadian literature still haunting us — that landscape still overwhelms culture. Coincidentally enough, it’s something I’ve been puzzling over in my research on Toronto literature for the Imagining Toronto project (I’m working on a chapter called “Surreal Toronto”). I’d be interested to hear others’ views.

  4. I understand that over the past few years there has been a mythical, garbage eating robot lurking on many Toronto streets. It gets bigger and bigger over time, offers strange signs and annoying messages, and has no redeeming social value whatsoever. It is, fortunately, on the verge of extinction. Who knows though, it may rise from the dead as soon as our backs are turned.

  5. Are there any neighbourhood myths that people know of, harbingers of doom or not?

    Yeah, the myth that Maple Leaf Gardens would be better off having hockey in it than a grocery store which would actually be used by people in the neighbourhood.

  6. thick> If that myth had blazing red eyes, it would really be something.

    Amy> Findley’s miasma is much more pleasant than the nain rouge. I suppose that’s the Toronto way.

  8. The Maple Leaf Gardens Loblaws will be haunted by the ghosts of great hockey players such as Wayne Gretzky and Darryl Sittler. Oh wait, they’re not dead yet…

  9. Jonathan: Does something have to be wrong with the Dominion at College Park for the neighbourhood to prefer stores over a hockey arena that would (a) be used a few nights a week at the most, (b) be a blank, ugly box the other nights of the week, (c) would result in waves of people descending on the neighbourhood a few times a week, and (d) maintain some silly romantic notion about the building at the expense of the people who actually live in the neighbourhood?

  10. What about Zanta? He’s a creature that haunts Toronto’s streets… however he is very real. I saw him for the first time yesterday at Yonge and Bloor, he bought a pop from a hotdog vendor, chugged it in 2 seconds and proceeded to flex his muscles for everybody to observe.

  11. A few yeas ago, tourists — with DETROIT plates — stopped me to ask, “Where is Make Believe Gardens?” Does that give it mythical status? Perhaps not… but the next time that happens and I have to say, “It’s the Loblaws down the street”, will be sad.

  12. It’s far from mythical status, but twice I’ve seen a raccoon-like animal, the size of a dog, cross Bloor into Christie Pits. I bet it grants wishes, or steals children.

  13. Perhaps not… but the next time that happens and I have to say, “It’s the Loblaws down the street”, will be sad.

    … and people in the neighbourhood will be happy.