It has been a tradition that all blockbuster movies depicting some high-tech or alien science fiction must eventually have some conspiracy theories behind it. It all started when movies depicting aliens cropped out of Hollywood, creating an alien sighting frenzy as well as conspiracy theories. These sighting claims and conspiracy theories have lasted to date. This is similarly the case of the 1984 blockbuster movie the Gremlins, whose main characters were inspired by some claims of real Gremlin encounters.

Despite the movie being one hundred percent fiction, the stories behind it do not place it exactly as fiction. During the peak of World War II, a barrage of Gremlin sighting claims cropped up. Most of these stories were from the aviation industry, specifically from pilots who claimed that these sightings were real.

But were they?

What’s funny about this Gremlin sighting frenzy is that it all ended immediately after World War II was brought to a halt. However, some still lived on. But on further investigation, these sightings were concluded to be highly unlikely, though they ended up inspiring the main characters of one of the biggest blockbuster movies of the ’80s. For some of these claims however, no satisfactory explanation has ever been given on the bizarre events. We have compiled 15 of those crazy claims of real life encounters with Gremlins below.

15. “L.W” and the B17 plane incident

Another account came from a World War II era pilot, L.W, who claimed that while he was flying a mission over European skies, he suddenly saw a beastly menacing creature looking at him from outside the plane. Shortly after, another similar creature perched on the plane’s nose and stared at him. According to his account, both creatures were 3-4 feet tall, had many teeth and red glowing eyes. Their hands were also disproportionately long.

Shortly after, the disoriented L.W came back to his senses and started flying the B17 Flying Fortress erratically in an effort to dump the two creatures off the plane, which he managed to do successfully. However, he never got to see what became of the creatures after they let go of the plane.

14. A pilot ditches his plane off the coast of England

Back in 1923, a respected Royal Air Force pilot crashed his plane into the waters of the England coast after “little creatures” interfered with his flight mid-air. However, his interactions with the purported gremlins did not start on the plane.

According to the pilot, the gremlins first appeared to him the previous evening after they popped out of a beer bottle. He later suspected that they followed him into the plane, where they started messing around with the controls of the plane and the navigation system. In his account, the pilot claimed that the creatures became too much of a nuisance that he had to dump the plane off the coast of England.

13. Captain Wikner’s account

Delivering his account to author and researcher John Laming, captain Wikner described a bizarre occurrence during his service time in World War II, which may be linked to the work of gremlins. In his account, the experienced captain was flying an Avro Lancaster Bomber which was to be delivered to another base in Britain, in August 1944.

Since he was flying over friendly air, he decided to put a younger pilot to the test. As the younger pilot was flying the plane, the engines suddenly cut off, forcing captain Wikner to take control of the plane and glide it to an emergency landing in the closest airbase. Strangely though, immediately after the plane’s wheels touched the runway, the engines roared back to life. But that was not the end of the story.

The plane was immediately put under tight security and an unknown pilot assigned to complete the delivery.

12. The famous flight of Charles Lindbergh

The aviator Charles Lindbergh is a legend for having completed what was the longest solo flight in history back in 1927, when he flew directly from New York to Paris. However, he is remembered for more than this historic flight. According to Lindbergh, he had an encounter with grim-looking mystical creatures who appeared to him occasionally during flight. These transparent creatures were friendly and would often have conversations with the aviator, despite other accounts depicting them as mischievous and full of mayhem.

Lindbergh disclosed that the beings appeared more spiritual than human and in his conversation with them, they imparted mystic knowledge. Lindbergh however failed to disclose what this mystic knowledge was, probably fearing ridicule. However, critics have discredited his story as mere hallucinations from a tired aviator after a long flight, especially considering the fact the creatures appeared to him 9 hours into the flight.

11. The military offers official advice on gremlins

Following the barrage of sightings by Royal Air Force pilots of gremlins, the military got so concerned that it started offering official advice on how to deal with these creatures. Part of the measures were to design planes with round edges that would not give any anchoring point for the creatures to cling onto the planes and cause havoc.

Conspiracy theories also cropped up, with sections of the military suggesting that these creatures are being released by the Nazis. After the war, this theory was refuted after German pilots complained of facing the same creatures on flight, with similar stories coming from American and other British allied pilots.

10. Chris Jarret had to leap off a falling plane

Chris Jarret’s story was similar to that of captain Wikner’s though at its end, there were a few fatalities. Chris Jarret was flying a night mission to Germany with his crew when all of a sudden one of the Lancaster Bomber’s engines failed. This was immediately after they had entered French airspace. As he was trying to gain control of the plane, all of the three other engines failed simultaneously, which was unexpected.

Chris said that after noticing that they only had a load of bombs and petrol going down, he opened the hatch at the front of the plane and jumped off to safety, leaving the plane to crash with the rest of the crew was on board. As it was the norm back then, the whole incident was blamed on gremlins which were suspected to have caused the mishap.

9. Documentation by Gremlorist Pilot officer Percy Prune

As the gremlin sightings craze soared, a documentation in the military emerged, written by “Gremlorist” Percy Prune, who was a pilot officer in the Royal Air Force. According to her documentation, Percy gave the other soldiers the description of the gremlins, a list of their exploits, a guide on how to distract and placate them plus another guide on what to do in order to avoid accidents when confronted by them.

This official documentation explained that displaying bravado, overconfidence and arrogance would attract the creatures to the planes. Her documentation was followed by posters and bulletins that touched on everything the soldiers needed to know concerning the creatures.

8. Gremlin attack of a newspaper company back in the 1960s

Gremlins have been regarded as little monsters that cause mischief or mayhem. This ideology was used to explain a couple of newspaper mishaps back in the ’60s, in one case where it was claimed that the editors were attacked and brainwashed by gremlins to feed the wrong information in a newspaper.

This incident took place in Texas where, in one of the local dailies, a men’s clothing store had bought a two-page ad to advertise a clearance sale of shirts and other clothes sold in the store. The page advertising the shirts sale was to have the title “BIG SHIRT SALE”, but gremlins deliberately removed the R from the cut-out and brainwashed the editor to ignore the mistake. As a result, the mishap led to the biggest sale in the history of the store. Some people suggest it was initiated by the gremlin attack.

7. The massacre midair

This account was recorded by UFO researcher Jerome Clarke in a San Diego newspaper publication, Flying Saucer Review, back in the 1950s. According to his account, a U.S. Cargo plane bound for Hawaii from San Diego was intercepted mid-air by an aerial beastly creature. Apparently, the creature unleashed an attack on the crew of the cargo plane, forcing the plane to abandon the mission and head back to base.

What’s weird is that the plane managed to make a successful emergency landing, but when the emergency crew got in, they found all crew dead with large gaping wounds. Both the pilot and co-pilot had withdrawn their standard-issue pistols and emptied their magazines. No satisfactory explanation to this incident has been provided to date.

6. The Goblin incident in Hopkinsville

Two families recounted what was the most bizarre occurrence in Hopkinsville. In their testimony, the Taylor and Sutton family claimed that after they had just finished dinner together, they were attacked by strange, glowing creatures. The two families described the creatures as having disproportionately long arms, being 2-4 feet tall with claws at the end of the long arms – which befits the description of gremlins.

The attack supposedly lasted for hours before the police came in only to find the creatures gone, but having left visible signs of outside disturbance. The gremlins supposedly had bullet proof skin, which made it harder to fight them as the bullets would simply bounce off whenever the families opened fire at them. The incident to date remains unexplained.

5. Fake gremlin sighting in Indonesia

The Internet went berserk for a while after there were reported rumors of real life sightings of gremlins in Indonesia. It was reported that in the remote island of Sulawesi, at the mountaintops, real gremlins were found after close to 80 years of their rumored existence. However, these claims were not true as the discovery made was not of gremlins, but rather pygmy tarsier, a mammal that was thought to be extinct.

The animal closely resembles gremlins, but they are not of the same species. However, they have smaller ears and are way shorter than the fictional gremlins. They can turn their heads 180^o, which is pretty cool, but not enough to qualify them to be labelled as real gremlins.

4. Sighting in a Nottingham, England club basement

A night club in Nottingham, England, has been described as the host of a couple of real life gremlins. According to the claims, the gremlins were discovered by BBC wildlife expert and sesh advocate David Attenborough, who attracted them through a series of hand gestures, grunts and bumps of ket. Following this discovery, the wildlife expert claims that he has gained insight into the life of gremlins.

Further reports stated that government officials took the gremlins to London where they would be housed and observed in their “natural habitat”. This was simply a big hoax and probably fake and misinterpreted news.

3. An “alien” spotted in Red Mountain

Ralph Lael claimed to have had an encounter with the gremlins, though his did not take place in the skies. Instead, it took place in some mystic cave in Red Mountain, back in 1961, while he was investigating the “Brown Mountain Lights”. He claims that an orb scanned him and led him to a cave which opened up to a network of underground tunnels. At the end of it was a huge chamber where Lael claims the orb spoke to him and revealed cosmic information. But his story did not end there.

He claims that he was later taken to Venus where he copulated with a beautiful Venusian woman. Upon his arrival back home, he claimed that he saw the mutilated body of a gremlin. Although he recovered and photographed the body, critics argue that the body may have been taken from a suspicious fire that consumed his shop earlier.

2. Hank Snow recording mishap

In 1954, Hank Snow was recording his hit song “I don’t hurt anymore”, but when the song had been released, the opening line had been sung as “It don’t hurt anymore”. This mishap by Mr. Snow, according to gremlin crusaders, was caused by gremlins who attacked the singer’s mind when he was recording the song. The attack was not only to Mr. Hank Snow, but also the producers who never noticed the error until the song was playing on the radio, jukeboxes and retail markets.

However, this mishap worked for the good of the song as it became Hank’s fourth number one song on the country music charts.

1. Gremlin reports in the spectator

One of the earliest accounts of gremlin encounters was in the British newspaper, The Spectator, which published two well-known articles documenting what was “evidence on the existence of gremlins”. The first ever report, which has never been dated but is rumored to have been written in the early 1920s, stated that Britain’s finest in the air had detected a horde of creatures in the skies, starting in 1918, which were responsible for a host of mishaps. This article has been a primary reference point for most researchers.

Another article was written on January 10^th 1943, describing the gremlins as creatures about 4 feet tall, with large ears and teeth. Critics however argue that the article was either a joke or a stunt by Walt Disney to attract attention to its plans to make an animation film of mischievous little creatures such as the gremlins, a plan which never materialized.