Mobile Leprechaun

About

Mobile Leprechaun, also known as “Crichton Leprechaun”, refers to a local news report from the Chrichton area of Mobile, Alabama, about a rumored sighting of a Leprechaun in a tree. Due to its comical moments including a poorly drawn sketch of the leprechaun and colorful commentaries from the residents, the news clip became a popular subject of parodies and remixes on YouTube following its broadcast in 2006.

Origin

In March 2006, NBC affiliated news station WPMI reported on a rumored sighting of a leprechaun in Mobile, Alabama, which included various commentaries from several Crichton area residents. On March 17th, YouTuber botmib uploaded the newscast onto his channel, which quickly went viral on the then newly launched videos sharing site. The YouTube clip has received over 21 million views and an additional 1.8 million views from a reuploaded version as of July 2012.

Spread

On March 23rd, 2006, the pop culture blog The Modern Age^[2] published a post titled “Leprechaun Sketch = Brilliant”, which highlighted the amateur sketch seen in the newscast. The same day, the video was reuploaded to the Internet humor site Break.^[4] On March 24th, Snopes forum member reflex posted the video in a thread titled “Topic: Leprechaun in Mobile, Alabama.”^[3] The same day, YouTuber markslidesquad uploaded a hip hop remix of the news report footage titled “Leprechaun dimme da gold rap video”, which received over 2.5 million views in the next six years.

On April 3rd, the New York Times^[6] published a post titled “Now Playing on YouTube: Web Videos by Everyone”, which questioned whether the leprechaun video was a hoax. On April 6th, a Myspace^[5] page for “The Crichton Leprechaun” was created. On April 9th, the website Where Da Gold At^[11] was launched, where several t-shirts with the news report amateur sketch printed on the front were sold.

On August 18th, 2007, Sci Forums^[7] member jessiej920 posted a thread titled “Leprechaun: People this is no joke”, which linked to the original video and YouTuber markslidesquad’s remix. On March 12th, YouTuber wickedawesomefilms uploaded a parody video titled “Liam The Leprechaun in a Tree” (shown below, left), which featured a California leprechaun discovered in a tree. On April 3rd, 2008, YouTuber Leprechaun404 uploaded WPMI’s follow up news report, which featured Crichton residents staring up at the tree looking for the leprechaun (shown below, right).

On March 18th, 2009, the animated comedy television series South Park released the episode “The Coon”, which featured a news report segment parodying the leprechaun video (shown below). On July 30th, 2009, the Alabama blog Al^[8] published a post titled “TV’s Bill O’Reilly asks: Is Crichton Leprechaun news story racist?”, which reported that of panel of pundits discussed whether the video could be considered racist during an episode of The O’Reilly Factor. As of July 17th, 2012, a Facebook^[9] page titled “Leprechaun of Mobile Alabama” has received over 13,500 likes.

Tosh.0 Episode

On July 26th, 2011, the comedy television show Tosh.0 aired a segment about the leprechaun video in which host Daniel Tosh interviewed one of the men from the original video who had presented a pipe claiming it was an “ancient flute.”

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References