Case file · Folklore / legend
The Nain Rouge of Detroit
The red dwarf said to appear before Detroit's disasters is first recorded in Marie Caroline Watson Hamlin's Legends of Le Détroit (1883): in it, Cadillac strikes the creature with his cane and his luck turns.
1883 CE · 42.33, -83.05 · status: legend
The account
Later tales say it danced among the dead after the Battle of Bloody Run in 1763 and was seen before the surrender of Detroit in 1812. Since 2010 the Marche du Nain Rouge parade has 'banished' it each spring.
The sceptical view
No record of the legend exists before the 1880s; Hamlin was collecting and shaping French-Detroit lore.