{"id":937,"date":"2006-06-29T19:58:14","date_gmt":"2006-06-29T23:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=937"},"modified":"2006-06-29T20:16:37","modified_gmt":"2006-06-30T00:16:37","slug":"the-nain-rouge-detroits-harbinger-of-doom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2006\/06\/29\/the-nain-rouge-detroits-harbinger-of-doom\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nain Rouge &#8211; Detroit&#8217;s Harbinger of Doom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" align=\"right\" src=\"http:\/\/www.geocities.com\/tom_slemen\/red_gnome.jpg\" \/>Cities have legends and Detroit has a fantastic one in the Nain Rouge. French for &#8220;red dwarf&#8221; or &#8220;red gnome,&#8221; is a mythical creature that haunts Detroit &#8212; its appearance is said to presage terrible events for the city. The Nain Rouge appears as &#8220;a small child-like creature with red or black fur. It is also said to have blazing red eyes and rotten teeth.&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidaspitzley.org\/MythicDetroit\/\">They say<\/a> the Nain Rouge has appeared:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>-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.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>-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.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>-Several citizens of Metro Detroit sighted the Nain Rouge the day before the 1967 riots which marked the start of Detroit&#8217;s modern decline.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>-In 1976, two employees of Detroit Edison saw a small &#8220;child&#8221; climbing a utility pole on March 1st. Fearing the &#8220;child&#8221; might fall the two men called out to &#8220;him&#8221; and much to their surprise the &#8220;child&#8221; leaped from the top of the twenty-foot pole and scurried away. The Red Dwarf had reared it&#8217;s face again and the next day Detroit was buried in one of the worst ice\/snowstorms in it&#8217;s history.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And from Wikipedia:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>-More recently, in the autumn of 1996, according to an article in the <\/em><em>Michigan Believer, the Nain Rouge was spotted by two admittedly drunken nightclub patrons, who claimed to both have heard a strange &#8220;cawing sound, similar to a crow,&#8221; coming from a &#8220;small hunched-over man&#8221; who was fleeing the scene of a car burglary. The creature was described as wearing &#8220;what looked like a really nasty torn fur coat.&#8221;<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" align=\"right\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/a\/a6\/Jack6.jpg\" \/>We hadn&#8217;t heard of the Nain Rouge over in Windsor, but it appears that he helped us win the war of 1812, so maybe he&#8217;s on our side. It&#8217;s similar to the the legend of Spring Heeled Jack who haunted Victorian London, said to be &#8220;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&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t heard of anything nearly as mythic existing in Toronto &#8212; but it would be good to have something to blame from time to time and\/or give drunks something to think they saw &#8212; 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).<\/p>\n<p>Are there any neighbourhood myths that people know of, harbingers of doom or not?<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Detroit, Michigan\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Detroit%2C_Michigan\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cities have legends and Detroit has a fantastic one in the Nain Rouge. French for &#8220;red dwarf&#8221; or &#8220;red gnome,&#8221; is a mythical creature that haunts Detroit &#8212; its appearance is said to presage terrible events for the city. The Nain Rouge appears as &#8220;a small child-like creature with red or black fur. It is<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2006\/06\/29\/the-nain-rouge-detroits-harbinger-of-doom\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;The Nain Rouge &#8211; Detroit&#8217;s Harbinger of Doom&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2717,854,2714,593,359,21,2716,19,2715,853],"class_list":["post-937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-car-burglary","tag-detroit","tag-detroit-edison","tag-location","tag-london","tag-other-cities","tag-spring-heeled-jack","tag-toronto","tag-william-hull","tag-windsor"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Nain Rouge - Detroit&#039;s Harbinger of Doom - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2006\/06\/29\/the-nain-rouge-detroits-harbinger-of-doom\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Nain Rouge - Detroit&#039;s Harbinger of Doom - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Cities have legends and Detroit has a fantastic one in the Nain Rouge. French for &#8220;red dwarf&#8221; or &#8220;red gnome,&#8221; is a mythical creature that haunts Detroit &#8212; its appearance is said to presage terrible events for the city. The Nain Rouge appears as &#8220;a small child-like creature with red or black fur. 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