Reminds me of this classic article from Michael Lewis:

> Alcoa, the biggest aluminum company in the country, encountered two problems peculiar to Iceland when, in 2004, it set about erecting its giant smelting plant. The first was the so-called "hidden people"-or, to put it more plainly, elves-in whom some large number of Icelanders, steeped long and thoroughly in their rich folkloric culture, sincerely believe. Before Alcoa could build its smelter it had to defer to a government expert to scour the enclosed plant site and certify that no elves were on or under it. It was a delicate corporate situation, an Alcoa spokesman told me, because they had to pay hard cash to declare the site elf-free but, as he put it, "we couldn’t as a company be in a position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people."

https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2009/4/wall-street-on...

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voidUpdate an hour ago | parent [-]

If it's a legal requirement to have the government check for hidden people before you do building, why do they need to hide the fact they did it? I'm not a Christian but I'm pretty sure I'd still need to deconsecrate a church before knocking it down

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Freak_NL an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> I'm not a Christian but I'm pretty sure I'd still need to deconsecrate a church before knocking it down

What makes you think that? If you own it, it isn't a listed building, and zoning laws allow it, you can knock it down in most countries. I'm not sure that would be illegal anywhere.

Deconsecration is part of canon law for some religions. Whether you as an individual care about those or not is a personal matter. I doubt that there are many cases where the previous owner forgot to deconsecrate the church when they sold it off.

	▲	rcxdude 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		UK law can be quite intertwined with the church in a lot of cases, so I wouldn't want to confidently say this wouldn't turn up somehow. And churches are also pretty likely to be listed, anyhow. (It could also turn up as part of the planning permission which you do need for demolishing a large structure in the UK)

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yjftsjthsd-h 12 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> I'm not a Christian but I'm pretty sure I'd still need to deconsecrate a church before knocking it down

I am a Christian and it would not occur to me that that was a thing. It's just a building.

	▲	expedition32 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Catholics have a ritual for it I think. Ofcourse the really old churches are turned into monuments and they come with free dead people under the building. Can't do much with those.