Old Man McGumbus on Shelter Island Turned into an Internet Sensation on Reddit
As my readers know, I’ve been writing about Old Man McGumbus for many years now. He’s a character on Shelter Island who gets into all kinds of trouble, and each week he does something different. I love writing about him every week—it’s one of my favorite things to do.
Yesterday, Reddit.com—one of the largest websites in the world—was trending about Old Man McGumbus. He was the number one story on the site, which means that it was voted to the top page of the website. Reddit.com works entirely through a voting system, where a user can submit a story and, if people like it, they vote for it.
I found out about it by getting a call from my sister who lives in Chicago and reads the website daily. I read the website every day as well, but on Sunday I hadn’t gotten to it yet, as I was traveling by ferry from Fire Island. I looked up the story on my phone and, sure enough, there was Dan’s Papers right there, showing the Police Blotter section. Just like that, millions of people were reading about Old Man McGumbus.
There were more than 1,200 comments on the story, and a lot of people kept asking whether or not Old Man McGumbus was a real person or not. One person even commented that he called the police department to find out if McGumbus was real or not.
So, as the person who covers Old Man McGumbus and will continue to write about him every week in Dan’s Papers, the answer to the question of, “Is Old Man McGumbus real” is an easy one:
“Yes, Virginia, there is an Old Man McGumbus.”
I hope that clears things up!