Goblins!

I thought with Halloween approaching, I would do a little article about goblins. If you aren't familiar with them, they are basically small, mischievous creatures that tend to play tricks on humans. My first impression of them probably came from watching the movie, Labyrinth as a kid. The movie features an entire goblin city complete with a goblin king. If you haven't seen it, you should definitely check it out.

When I started researching goblins so I could write a little about them, I discovered that they really don't have one place of origin like most of the myths and legends I hear about. There are early goblin stories from England to Japan and a lot of countries in between.

It made me wonder why goblin stories would be so common. I figure there's really one of two possibilities.

1. Goblins are real, and people were just writing down what they saw and experienced.

or

2. Goblins played some sort of role on an emotional or psychological level with human beings. Maybe people need someone (or something) to blame for the chaos in their lives, and goblins are an easy scapegoat. They are small and can't fight back. They aren't particularly attractive, so people felt no guilt in using them as dumping grounds for their problems.

Either way, they are certainly fun to read about and people will continue writing about them for a long, long time.