Articles related to gremlins and their depictions in fiction. Gremlins are mischievous folkloric creatures that cause malfunctions in aircraft or other machinery. The term "gremlin", denoting a mischievous creature that sabotages aircraft, originates in Royal Air Force (RAF) slang among the British pilots stationed in Malta, the Middle East, Australia, Canada, and India in the 1920s, with the earliest recorded printed use being in a poem published in the journal Aeroplane in Malta on 10 April 1929.[1][2]