Hannibal Lector on my mind

Gnomes live in my basement. Well, I guess technically it's not my basement since I live in an apartment building, but they live down there none the less. I've never actually seen one of them, but they bang on my pipes all day long. I guess in theory it could just be a regular, normal sized person banging on the pipes, but I prefer to think of little mischievous men in red hats and long beards tormenting me late at night. My friends say its just bad alignment of the steam pipes, or that I just need to call the super to let the excess air out of the radiators, but they're wrong. These are no ordinary creaks and rattles from old piping, this is a concerted banging with purpose and intent. There's no way steam can be so malicious. I got scared the other day that maybe it wasn't gnomes, that maybe there was some person trapped in the basement and the only way they had to call out for help was to clang their handcuffs against the piping they were chained to as hard as they could. But then I realized I was thinking crazy--no one was Buffalo Bill's prisoner down there--it was just some gnomes having a little fun as they waited for winter to pass so they could go back out to the garden.