Crazy old coots / hermits

[weirmonken]

Hey Folks,

I've got a couple of upcoming interactions in my campaign with slightly deranged hermits and am looking for some inspiration. So, what books / short stories / films do you think have particularly good examples of this archetype?

Any/all suggestions welcome, and thank you for your recommendations in advance.

[gran rey de los mono]

How about the blind hermit that the monster meets in Mel Brooks' film Young Frankenstein? He may not be crazy, per se, but he could be an interesting encounter.

[gran rey de los mono]

Or maybe the guy who ran the universe in one of Douglas Adams' Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy books? I don't remember which one he is in, but basically he doesn't know whether or not anything is real or it is all his imagination. I remember at one point he started thinking that the people who come to talk to him might actually be singing to his cat, so when the protaganists ask if they can talk to him he responds with something along the lines of "Yes, you can sing to my cat if you like."

[gran rey de los mono]

Or you could corrupt the Tom Bombadil character from Lord of the Rings. Instead of him actually having powers, he just thinks he does. And his wife (Goldberry, if I recall correctly) could be a dummy he made to keep him company. She is made of scraps of cloth stitched together and stuffed with straw (kind of like a scarecrow), wears a tattered and partly rotted dress, and has a face drawn on with charcoal, berry juice, and other such substances.

[Wolfsnap]

I'd look up the old TSR module "Keep on the Borderlands". There's a weird old hermit in that module, and I just remember the Erol Otus illustration of him being intensely creepy.