The world of strange sightings and encounters can cover some vast territory, ranging from ghosts, to aliens, to fantastical creatures of all shapes and sizes. Yet among these there is one category that seems to hold its own unique brand of bizarreness and which really seems hard to adequately categorize; that of goblins, trolls, gnomes, and other beings taken straight out of a fairy tale. Reports such as these take this label of things such as gnomes quite literally, with descriptions of diminutive beings complete with little lederhosen clothing, beards, and wide brimmed pointed hats. There is a surprisingly large number of such encounters out there, and one region of the world where they seem to be particularly abundant is Central and South America, where not only do gnome sightings come in at a regular pace, but also tend to be rather frightening.