Dobby the House Elf Definitely Showed Up on Security Camera Footage
Source – A strange video circulating online shows an elf-like creature many are saying resembles the character Dobby from the “Harry Potter” film franchise.
The short clip has gone viral after being posted to Twitter on Friday by a user who says it was put up on the Facebook page of a woman named Vivian Gomez. A security camera at the home captured the clip, which shows a small figure with skinny legs and large ears walk down a driveway and do a dance.
In what appears to be the original post, Gomez said she woke up on Sunday to see the bizarre footage.
“First I saw the shadow walking from my front door then I saw this thing….has anyone else seen this on their cameras??” she asked.
Some eagle-eyed Twitter users pointed out that at one point in the video there appears to be two shadows, and mused that someone could have created the elf-like puppet and set it off.
Of course Twitter is reacting to this with the normal Twitter reaction, calling it a hoax and insisting there’s nothing to see here. It’s an elf-like puppet. It’s a kid in flip flops with underwear on his head. It’s CGI. It’s a trick of the light. A weather balloon. Swamp gas. Anything but this:
To me, this is the perfect Occam’s Razor. When presented with an unexplained phenomenon, one should go with the hypothesis that requires the fewest assumptions. In other words, the simplest solution is typically the correct one.
Sure, we could all believe that some woman named Vivian Gomez created an elaborate hoax on Facebook. That she’s a master puppeteer. Or she dressed her kid up like Dobby the Elf and choreographed some weirdly inhuman steps and sent him down the driveway. Or she’s got a special effects budget that puts Stephen Spielberg to shame.But I’m going with the simplest hypothesis, according to Occam’s Principle of Parsimony. A woman has a security camera pointing at her driveway. And a creature of unknown origin that looks more like Dobby than a human walked by the camera. Period. Hell, it even apparated at the end the way Dobby did. (Which is to say, the way he did before he sacrificed his life to save Harry at the end of “Deathly Hallows Part 1,” which I’ll mention no more or I’ll need to go cry face down in my pillow for half an hour or so.)
If you want to believe this is all just a ruse, you have to explain why this lady would go through all the time and effort. What’s it accomplish? I mean, what’s her endgame? To become Facebook famous? Or rich? Is there some way to monetize a video you faked and posted on Facebook? There are YouTube channels with millions of hits that are barely scraping by shutting down altogether because they lose money. If it was somehow profitable to build House Elf puppets in order to stage 11-second videos, everyone would do it. But you expect me to believe this Vivian Gomez woman was the first to pull it off. No sale. Sorry but not sorry.
If I’m wrong, I’ll admit it. In fact, I’ll bend the knee for Vivian as the greatest internet hoaxer of all time. But until someone proves to me she made this up, I’m going to keep believing this is real. And just in case it is a House Elf, I want to be on record as standing with Hermoine that keeping them as servants is cruel and they should all be given socks by their owners so they can be free. RIP, Dobby.