I think this is true, based upon who told it to me - they aren't the sort to take an email and convert it to sound like they knew the people it happened to.

One of the our local realtors works in Loveland and lives in Windsor, both smallish towns here in northern Colorado, about 30 minutes apart. She has a burly 17 year-old son with Down Syndrome, and he's old enough to stay home alone but they talk on the phone a lot during the day.

The other day he called her at work all excited and said: "I have a troll! I have a troll! You have to come home and see it."

"I don't have time to come home right now," she said "put it in the closet and I'll see it this afternoon."

But he called several times more with updates such as the troll was really insisting that he call his mother to come home.

Finally, she decided there was more than imagination going on so headed for home. When she got there, all the furniture in the bedroom was shoved up against the closet door where the troll supposedly was.

But wait, what's that noise? Oh, my goodness, there really is someone trapped in the closet! She moves the furniture away, and there is a poor little dwarf census taker who had come to their door that day, patiently waiting to be freed. That morning when the son answered the door, he saw the wee little man, scooped him up, and imprisoned him in the closet.

Fortunately the census taker was a good sport and didn't make a big deal about it.

I am not sure whether I believe this really happened quite this way, there might be some embellishment, but I do believe the son for a time thought he was looking at a real mythical creature.