Somebody send an owl to SPEW: looks like a lost and confunded house elf has been roaming through muggle neighbourhoods.

Advertisement

A least that’s according to new CCTV footage from American Vivian Gomez, who caught a Dobby-like creature walking on her driveway and flapping its arms like a chicken. And just to make things weirder: Gomez claims the creature doesn’t appear on her other cameras.

Now muggles across the world are convinced: Dobby IS a free house elf and actually survived the events of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

However, some say we’ve identified the wrong elf.

And to those claiming that this video must be a fake as the creature disappears in the clip’s last frame: um, have you ever heard of apparition?

Yes, there are plenty of sceptics that point to "reasonable" explanations, namely that the figure was either computer generated or a robot/puppet. The two shadows at the film's four-second mark and the truck parked to the right certainly raise some questions something is awry.

Advertisement

However, to us, the mystery of this video is easy to clean up: it isn’t Dobby – there’s no way he survived that knife to the heart. Instead, it’s obvious the CCTV creature is the actor who played Dobby. Anyone who says otherwise clearly doesn’t know how cinema works.

Authors

Thomas LingDigital editor, BBC Science Focus

Thomas is Digital editor at BBC Science Focus. Writing about everything from cosmology to anthropology, he specialises in the latest psychology, health and neuroscience discoveries. Thomas has a Masters degree (distinction) in Magazine Journalism from the University of Sheffield and has written for Men’s Health, Vice and Radio Times. He has been shortlisted as the New Digital Talent of the Year at the national magazine Professional Publishers Association (PPA) awards. Also working in academia, Thomas has lectured on the topic of journalism to undergraduate and postgraduate students at The University of Sheffield.

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement