Mobile Leprechaun

About

The Mobile Leprechaun, also known as the “Crichton Leprechaun” or "Alabama Leprechaun," refers to a local news report about a rumored sighting of a Leprechaun in the Chrichton area of Mobile, Alabama. 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 ^[1] 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).

In TV Shows

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 29th, 2009, Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly presented the news report on his program The O'Reilly Factor^[8], asking the guest panel of pundits whether this video could be considered racist.

On July 26th, 2011, Comedy Central's Tosh.0 ^[10] 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" (shown below, left). On February 21st, 2012, Comedy Central's Key and Peele featured a skit in which the co-hosts of the show parody the original WPMI-TV report with a sighting of the mythical creature Pegasus (shown below, right).

Identity Revealed

On July 10th, 2014, an episode of "The Bob and Dan Show" on KTCK in Dallas, Texas, aired a segment on the leprechaun. During the segment, host Dan McDowell and KTCK announcer T.C. Fleming play recordings from a visit to Mobile, Alabama, where they investigated the town's mythical leprechaun. When they visit the tree from the video, they meet a local woman who claims to know the "leprechaun," a local little person she calls "Midget Sean." She says, "His name is Midget Sean… One year he decided to – on St. Patrick’s day he decided to put on green and climb in the tree… Everybody was coming to see what was going on, and it was him. So now you have the truth."^[12][13]

Additionally, the woman gave directions to Midget Sean's location, a Texaco in Mobile. There, they meet Sean, who admits to the prank and the hosts take a picture with him (shown below). In the interview, Sean explains how he dressed in green and climbed in the tree, and people came to see him. He described the streets as so packed that it was "like Mardi Gras."

“It wasn’t a real leprechaun," said Midget Sean. "It was me.”

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References