Faerie? : A small data-set indicating the possibility that folkloric entities or something very much like them could be real, Part Four.

Part four of our tour: more encounters from the pre- and post-1900 era. Still mainly to view the landscape and not try for many soft conclusions yet [a time which possibly might NEVER come, but some pattern seems vaguely arising to me]. Let's see what we can see today.

Let's begin with a case which everyone in the business is familiar with, but since it is in my files and we're not selecting for anything but that, [and not every blog reader is well-read in Wee Folk literature], here it is: 1). Mid-19th century, Isle of Man: A member of the house of parliament [TC Kermode] gave his story personally to our great foundational scholar, WY Evans-Wentz. He and another young man were walking along their country road, going to a party. his buddy told him to look across the brook that they were paralleling if he wanted to see the fairies. There in a flat area between two hills was "a supernatural circle of light". This light was almost like a stage into which traipsed couples and threesomes of Little People [apparently circa 2-3' tall] who lined up and began marching ["trooping?"] within the circle. Kermode wanted to get closer, but his friend simply wanted to get to the party [fairies were "old hat" to him, I suppose]. Kermode stopped to watch for a while but his impatient friend rapped on the roadside wall with his walking stick and shouted out. The light vanished with the fairy procession.

2). 1757, Wales: a well-known cleric, when a young child, was playing in a field with several other children. There at football-field distance away, were several dwarf/gnome-sized creatures, apparently in couples, all dressed in red and flourishing white kerchiefs. One of the males spotted the children and rushed at them, nearly catching them. The child described the gnome as having an "ancient, swarthy, and grim complexion". The other gnomes were shouting at the chaser the whole time in a language which none of the children could understand. Dr. Edward Williams, the cleric, summarized his encounter in a charming way: "I am forced to class it among my unknowables". One suspects that we will have to do the same as to this whole menagerie of beings.

3). Mid-19th century, UK: The famous historian, Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, had an experience when he was very young in which he saw "legions of dwarves" two feet tall keeping pace beside the carriage in which he was riding and trying to climb up on the horses, laughing all the way. His parents saw nothing at all.

4). Mid-19th century, Yorkshire: If that youth experience might be waved off as some oddity of the very young, S B-G's wife had an encounter when she was 15. She was walking down a lane when she came across "a little green man, perfectly made, who looked at her with beady black eyes". [I am almost certain that the phrase "little green man" refers to him being dressed in green in such stories]. This frightened her badly and she ran home.

5). Late-19th century, UK. And S B-G had a further encounter in his family. One of his sons was fetching peas in their garden when he came across a member of the Good People wearing a green jacket, brown knee britches, and a red cap [just about our ideal garden gnome]. He had a weathered old face, gray beard and stark black eyes. His stare unnerved the son and he ran inside. Doubtless, Sabine Baring-Gould had little reason to disbelieve him.

4). Probably late 1800s, Wicklow Mountains, Ireland: This one will stretch you on how far you want to go. A farmer and his wife worked their farm just after their marriage and along came a winter's snow season. The man saw a Wee Folk outside and "brought him in and sat him on the dresser". [peculiar to say the least, but I'm not of the times....] . The farmer was telling this story to some folklore luminaries visiting him [including Lady Gregory and William Butler Yeats]. He said that the being stayed with them for about a week. His wife promptly interrupted him to remind him that it was two to three weeks. [!!!].

The being was described as 15" high and very friendly. He was dressed almost entirely in red: cap to checked coat to skirt to stockings. The being had to be fed by spoon by the farmer himself. His meals consisted of bread in milk, it seems. His appearance was young and fresh at first, but rapidly he began to appear old and wrinkled [yep, I remember the Changeling legends]. He was no secret locally, and tipsy knuckleheads from the town pub would come over and they would laugh at him there on his dresser.

One day the farmer saw another like being outside. That being was dressed in a grayish theme and looked more feminine. When the farmer remarked upon this to his wife, the Little Man who had never spoken, cried out: "That's Geoffrey-a-Wee that's coming for me!!". At that, he leapt down from his dresser and bounded out the door. If this story is true [two interviewed witnesses and several well-known interviewers], then just about anything goes as far as the typical historic folkloric fairy stories go. Encounters passing in the lane are one thing; stay-around family house gnomes are another. And the changeling-similar thing.... it is almost a line-in-the -sand over which the mind resists crossing.

5). Well, we might as well follow that with another "heavyweight" case, which could be the "poster child" for Jacques Vallee's Passport to Magonia. Late 1800s, Portmeirion, Wales. Many of you will have heard this one, also. A young woman and the household servant, a brute of a man nicknamed Dafydd Fawr [which I believe means something like Strong David], were walking back to their home. She wanted to get there before night and hurried on, as he walked a slower pace with a big parcel of meat that he was carrying from the neighbors. She got to the house promptly, but Dafydd did not arrive until three hours later. What happened?

Dafydd said that shortly after she left he observed a meteor flash through the air, and soon after that a hoop of fire descend. Standing on the bottom on the fire hoop were two small beings, each grasping the side of the hoop as if balancing themselves and one another with their other arm. As the hoop touched the Earth, they jumped off and began to draw a circle on the ground [It is not said how this was done, but the circle seems to have been a place of light.] The hoop of fire apparently left back up into the sky at this point.

The well-dressed Little Folk watched as a large number of diminutive men and women appeared out of nowhere and began dancing round and round the circle to beautiful music. By this time Dafydd was totally entranced and the three hours flew by in what seemed to him to be minutes. Then the "meteor" again flashed, and shortly the Hoop descended. It touched the Earth near the circle of light and dancing, the original pair jumped onto it, and rose away. At this the circle of light and the dancing fairies vanished, leaving Dafydd alone in night's darkness. Well ... wow I guess is all you can say. Where does that lead us? The simple mental state would be to forget it and lead a quieter life, but is that "honest"?

6). 1850, Martindale, Sandwick Rigg, UK: A short yet high strangeness incident. A man was walking the country road at night heading for his home. The moonlight gave him plenty of light to see up ahead a troop of Little Folk engaging in their reveries. The witness referred to them as "Dobbies" [so Harry Potter fans can take heart]. He was not put off by this and kept walking closer. Whether it was due to them spotting his approach or not, the dobbies began to climb up a ladder and disappeared into the sky. You can almost feel your cranium begin to pop after these last few incidents.

Well, no relief for the open-minded weary yet. Here we go into Ron Quinn's tales of upper NY state. I don't know Ron Quinn personally, so I'm going a bit on faith here. He seems to have had his own Little People encounter in 1942 as a kid of ten growing up in New York, and vacationing upstate at the time. ( We'll call his experience case#7, upstate NY, for this post.) His critter was roughly like the picture that he drew for his book cover above, but not colored so brightly. The gnomish or leprechaunish being was a foot tall, and balancing on his window ledge tapping it with his walking stick. He had a crumpled dark hat but his clothes were generally gray. He had a broad friendly smile. His shirt's sleeves fell loosely and he had a wide belt and boots. Quinn opened the window in order to try to touch him, but he jumped down and bounded away with great leaps. No doubt this inspired a lifetime of interest in things like bigfoot, ghosts, UFOs, and, of course, Little People.

In 1989 this incident was reported in town newspapers across upper NY state with the inclusion of Quinn's address for anyone to comment upon the tale and tell him about their own story. He said that he received "dozens" of such encounter claims, of which about thirty were selected for this book. I've picked seven of them that I like for different reasons. And there is a non-Quinn throw-in which seemed proper to place alongside.

8). 1976, Mongaup Valley, NY: A mother was just in the process of leaving for a special family get-together, but the young son of one of the woman refused to get in his mother's car. He would run towards the woods saying that he wanted to stay and play with his friend "the little man". Absolutely refusing to budge on this, the child talked his mother into going into the woods to meet him. Relenting, she did. When they reached a clearing, there stood a 2 1/2 foot tall gnomish creature, who was she said the ugliest individual she'd ever seen. She and her son left the scene, and reaching their car, drove out rapidly to meet the rest of the family. Upon arriving at the meeting place, she jumped out and excitedly told everyone what had happened. No one believed her, despite the young son backing up her story. [as an aside, the woman thought that the gnome may have been trying to warn her of something. On driving back to her home, she wrecked her car just near the woods where she'd had the encounter, hospitalizing herself. Take that for what it's worth].

9). 1976, near Liberty, NY: A man was out on a bird-watching trip. While walking a woody path, he heard voices up ahead. They sounded as if they were arguing but in a language he couldn't understand. He saw that they were two little men about two feet tall, and dressed in dark green. Each had a beard and a wrinkled cap. One was really yelling at the other vociferously and pointing into the hilly woods. Shortly a third man similarly sized and dressed emerged and they all began arguing and pushing each other about "like the three stooges". Then they walked into the woods and all he could hear were their voices trailing away.

10). mid-1940s, Catskill Mountains, NY: This story's only witness is so young that perhaps it shouldn't be included, but it could be that this is just why it should. Regardless it is entirely too charming to resist. There was a family gathering at a relative's home in the woods of the Catskills. The adults were mainly inside while the children were playing outdoors. While the others did whatever they were doing, Jill, a little girl of 5, became fascinated with the flutterbyes and no one noticed her chasing after them into the woods. Ultimately, the adults checked back in to find that she was lost. Many people searched many hours in vain and dusk was coming, bringing a great deal of despair with it. Then, suddenly, a be-smudged Jill came running happily out of the woods unharmed. What had happened?

Once Jill had followed the flutterbyes for awhile, she lost them and realized that she was lost herself. She tried to find her way back to her aunt's house, but only got deeper into the forest. She thought she heard someone calling for her, but it was too far away, and she couldn't get a direction on it. Finally she came into a small clearing. Feeling very tired, she took a candy bar from her pocket, sat on an old dead tree and ate a little. She felt lonely and started to cry.

She looked up and saw standing at the edge of her clearing two small living "dolls" with silvery hair to their shoulders. They were dressed in shiny green clothes and had caps. She offered them some of her candy bar, but they didn't respond. Beginning to cry then she asked them if they knew the way to her aunt's house. They nodded and motioned for her to follow. As dusk came on and the forest darkened, the little "dolls" became accompanied by small balls of blinking colored light, which illuminated the way. They all seemed to be going faster and faster as they went, and Jill was surprised at how fast she was moving [she said : like a sped up movie]. The "dolls" then abruptly stopped and pointed to the aunt's house. Jill happily turned to thank them, but they were gone. And she ran to embrace her parents.

There is something about that narrative that is just so "right" that if it's not true we should find a way to make it true. Yes, I know that it doesn't work that way. Tinkerbell-Talk: wishing makes it so.

11). 1929, Lackawack, NY: Nothing can follow little Jill's story, but this is close. A man was walking the mile or so from his friend's house on a dirt road running through the woods. There was an unusual Silence to everything, an uncannyness which made the woods seem to be closing in around him. There was a weird light off the road, pulsing on the ground among the trees. Too curious to just walk on, he carefully left the road and negotiated the tangle of plants between him and the light. On the ground was a dome of light four feet in diameter and a foot and a half high. It was yellow-green. He wondered if it could be some weird fungus effect, and went closer, reaching below the illumination to feel the ground. Nothing unusual.

The dome suddenly brightened greatly, scaring him into cover. Within the area of the dome, two beings slowly materialized. They were one foot high. They stepped out, looking like "classic" Little People of the folktales. They stared in his direction, unnerved him and he stumbled backwards with a crash. Quickly the Little Folk jumped back into the glow-dome and everything vanished. The witness was left trying to relax and collect himself. Upon examining the spot the next day, nothing was disturbed at the spot of the glow.

12). 2003, Richmond Park, Kingston-upon-Thames, UK: This isn't a Ron Quinn case, but this is where it fits. Two persons were strolling in the park in the evening when a flexible Orb of light began "pouring" itself over a wall. As it hit the ground, it bounced a little ways away, encountering a tree, against which it seemed to "rub" up and down. Disengaging itself again, it bounced in front of a moving auto, finally disappearing off the road. As it disappeared, a figure the size of a small boy manifested, but with an abnormally large head. Then came a flash of light and everything vanished. Lightforms accompanying "portals" between the worlds??

13). 1977, Catskill Mountains, NY: a different way of "crossing"? A hiker/hunter had spent many hours in these woods; he knew them well...he thought. About one hundred yards into the forest that summer's day, things began to get strange. For a few seconds, while passing a large rock formation, he felt a tingling go through his whole body. Soon after he began noticing that the environment had changed. The previously overcast sky was now sunny clear. It seemed to be tinged with green rather than just blue. The country was now more open than it should have been, certain plants grew which shouldn't have been there, large granite outcroppings that were not part of his hiking areas. There was a narrow canyon cutting into those cliffs.

Convinced that he had somehow gotten completely lost, he trudged up the canyon. Then he heard pretty music ahead. Peeking around, he saw four little men sitting on boulders by a waterfall, playing flutes. Another one gathered water from the fall. Our hiker had a camera [which almost never happens] and remembered to use it [which is one in a million]. The water-gatherer returned, the little folk got up, and moved off further up the canyon. Our hiker retreated the way he came with his pictures. Wandering about for around a hour, he suddenly spotted his car. Another tingling then hit him, and turning, the strange environment was gone. The tint of the sky was back to normal, and overcast again. His watch said that thirty minutes had passed, but he felt that it was at least three hours [before getting too excited, note that this is the OPPOSITE of "missing time" folks]. Back home, no one believed a bit of his story. The film came back all pictures perfect, except of course for the ones taken in the "other reality canyon". They were all dusty smudges tinted in a light green.

OK, people, you've just gone further than "Out Proctor" with that one.

But since we're there, let's go again. #14). mid-1950s, Neversink Reservoir, WA: a hiker was walking the shore of the reservoir when he saw a bridge which he hadn't noticed before. It seemed to extend out into a large fogbank from the shore. More than mystified, the witness saw that the bridge was made of something like brass, with handrails and designs upon it which looked like some strange form of writing. He walked across into and out of the fogbank to discover a small island there [which absolutely should not have been]. This island was completely surrounded by the mist. Unfamiliar plants and animals populated the place. Thirty yards further along the shore were three small men. They were three foot tall, bearded, with long hair flowing down their backs and white robes. The central figure carried an object, but the witness wasn't close enough to see what it was. The group then walked away into the trees. Our witness, deciding that he'd risked enough, found the bridge again and moved swiftly across. Once on the shore again, the bridge and the mist slowly faded away. The little island, however, remained, as did a "new" mountain which had somehow manifested between two prominent peaks. Then that mountain and the island disappeared leaving the witness with the world that he understood. [Quinn then briefly mentions another case which is quite like this one but from another area. His language here is unclear and I don't follow precisely which incident happened at Neversink, and which happened at "Lake Washington". Suffice it to say, the second case involved a hiker, a bridge into a mist, a small island, and strange animals and one solitary old man inhabiting the place. In both cases neighbors stated that they'd seen unusual mists with something inside them the mornings of the events.]

One last case from this 100 which doesn't easily fit elsewhere, but definitely deserves mention: #15, sometime during the 20th century, Provo River valley, UT. Two Ute native Americans were fishing on the river. They came across several human-like beings occupying rocks along the shore. They were small children sized, about three foot tall or less. They were drying out their long black hair and making noises like cries of "walla-la-loo-lo". The fishers tried to get closer, but were spotted and the beings dove beneath the water. The water began to rise suddenly and the witnesses became alarmed and panicked and ran.

These beings are said to be well-known among the Utes and are called "pawapicts" and also, in English, "water babies". There are also related traditions to this sort of creature involving beautiful women who lure men into the water to their deaths, Celtic "siren" style.

The final incident above was the only Native American encounter in that 100 cases, but serves to remind us that such encounters abound in those traditions. Also some of the motifs, once you strip off some of the imagery, are surprisingly similar to Celtic world beliefs. The general theme of the trickster is one prominent one.

Now, an indefensible thought: Native American spirituality sees the world as created by a supreme figure [a Creative God, if you will] named as Manitou. Manitou is, among other things, the Bringer and the Guardian of Life. There is a lesser known, or believed?, or spoken about, concept called "manitoug". A "manitoug" is a spirit entity which represents some portion of Nature --- a forest, a mountain range, a species. A manitoug is a "living" entity of the Spirit World, but one which might interact with our material world and ourselves. It is a manitoug, to some persons' way of seeing it, that one "meets" in vision quests, when Bear or Raven or the Spirit of an Ecosystem shows up to give council and warning.

I mention the manitoug because such entities would be folkloric beings of the Spirit or paranormal realm. And if such existed at a grand scale, might not others exist "all the way down"? A manitoug of a "fairy glen" for instance...of an oaken woods...of a rhododendron bush? It is an indefensible thought, but .....

Another: the fairies seem often to hang onto the old megalithic sites. Who knows why? But someone else did too--- the druids. It makes no difference at all whether pre-Christian druids originally made these structures. It is pretty obvious that they used some of them. Why? Simply because they are "awesome"? Because they have an uncanny "air" about them? Or because "somebody else" was there? Or, are all three of those the same thing?

And, of course, most mundanely of all this astoundingly non-mundane stuff: what does all this mean for the "muddied middle" of the pile of ET-Air Force-style UFOs and the pile of the magical glen dancing world of brightly clothed Faerie? The illustration above is for a recent case taken place near a Native American settlement in northern Quebec. ET? or Faerie? Let it be a non-humble man who thinks he clearly can decide.

Faerie? : A small data-set indicating the possibility that folkloric entities or something very much like them could be real, Part Three.

Part Three of our wild trip into the woods: the primary thing which has arisen for me is that these old folklore creatures did not cease to manifest sometime in the dim past. Thankfully, persons of lively interests and open-minds have tried to keep the encounter stories from simply being forgotten by a "culture" rapidly pursuing the next hamburger, and have at intervals attempted to collect clusters of such accounts in the spirit of Charles Fort, at least in that regard. Admittedly these folks believed in the stories that they were collecting more than Saint Charles seems to have [for most things].

One group who collected and believed was the Fairy Investigation Society. This organization is pretty confusing to me and I cannot find a proper "history" of it. It may have been founded in England in the first half of the 20th century and it may have ultimately shrunk and transplanted to Ireland. Whatever, it allegedly actively collected "fairy encounter" stories from hither and yon, but I can't find a good source of any rich number of the things. It would be extremely interesting if someone had access to their files and would let the rest of us see them.

A hint of the FIS's cases occurs via Nandor Fodor in his Between Two Worlds. He presents these: 1). 1st half 20th century, Gloucester, UK. Person had walked away from her house into the Birdlip Beeches woods and was lying back drying her hair. She felt something tug on her head, and turned to see a very ugly small being about 9" high. It was a fine example of a wrinkled misshapen bogan thrashing about and struggling to escape from her entangling hair. It was the color of yellow-brown dead aspen leaves. It's voice was high and squeaky and it complained vociferously about her hair strangling it and that she had no right to be there, "troubling honest folk". It finally freed itself and vanished. The witness later mentioned this encounter to a professor at Bristol University, and he surprised her by saying that the Birdlip Beeches were one of the few areas left where one might encounter Fairyfolk.

2).1st half of the 20th century, Putney, UK. The woman who became the secretary of the FIS told Fodor that she lived in a house whose garden was "overrun with fairies and gnomes." Recently, she said that her son had run into the room which she was in and excitedly told her that a "pig" was in one of the rooms. It turned out to be a fat gnome sitting in her chair. It looked upset and made non-understandable grunting noises. Later she saw the gnome trying to climb a blinds cord and prat-falling. She laughed and it vanished.

These cases are interesting enough to hope that the FIS files have not been lost/destroyed.

Fortean Times in 1993 published a handful+ of cases which originally came from the British Weekly John o'Londons of readers' letters collected in 1936. This date seems suspiciously similar to the beginnings of the FIS, so maybe there was a bit of an upsurge of interest in fairy encounters around then. [I can be well off on that, as I haven't the FIS origin date at all clear]. We can safely label all the following as "1936 0r earlier 20th century":

3). Cornwall/Devon border: Witness saw a small man dressed in black "strutting about". Shortly he shape-shifted into something like a black, long, furry "roll". Minutes later she came upon two more roundly shaped pixies who were apparently operating a two-man saw...but it was invisible. She stumbled on stones in the path and the beings vanished. Inspecting the site, she noticed that one of the two pixies must have been either airily lightweight or suspended in the air, as there was nothing but a gorse bush under it.

4). Wigan, UK: Several times the witness saw in a field of daisies seven or eight pairs of little people dancing, suspended about three feet off the ground. They were dressed in brown with long pointed caps and pointed feet. They sported impish grins. One fairy was different in that she was dressed in a shiny pink beautiful gown and had an aura of pink about her.

5). Southwest London: Witness and her daughter saw 18" beings [none of these cases state wings for any of the fairies], wearing flimsy gowns, all female. On three occasions the female fairy wore a pink gown. Sightings occurred eight times in the garden near flowering bushes and a small stream. Other times the fairies wore bluish dress.

6). Cookham-Dean, Berkshire, UK: This witness didn't want the grief of being called a nut, so, unlike others she just gave her initials [familiar problem, eh?]. Out picking blueberries [I can't think of a better way to encounter a fairy than in a blueberry patch], the woman was straining with the bush to get at harder to reach berries when the branches suddenly parted and something came out. It was a "lean, brown man, dressed in brown with pointed cap and scraggly beard." The being was solid from waist up, but "transparent" from waist down. As he ran away "like lightning", he entirely disappeared.

7). Hertfordshire: As spectacularly strange as that last was, this one is almost mundane. A man was driving down a rural road with nothing going on. He spotted a roadside tree stump up ahead. Sitting on the stump was a small [18" high] round-face being with a pointed cap which slouched over to one side. Before being able to secure a better look, the being was no longer there.

8). Nottingham: A young girl sat staring at the fireplace in her room. A cobweb had formed across the bars of the grate and on it sat a very small [4-to-6"] elf. It had very large ears and a body which shimmered green. It always had a broad grin on its face. I say "always" because the creature kept reappearing in the same position. The girl would try to approach, but the bogan, I'd call it, would immediately disappear. It was never seen again after the girl brushed away "its" cobweb.

9). Western Wales: This is charming even if it's nuts. An older woman saw out in a field a congregation of the Little Folk. They were all gathered around a little fairy woman who sat on the centered stone. She was giving them news and a protest in Welsh. The fairy woman was warning her kind that the meadow in which they were residing would be no longer livable for them, as the owner had purchased a "chariot which would run without the need for horses". That man shortly bought the first car in the neighborhood. [I always knew that there were deeper reasons why I've hated cars all my life, and now here's one more].

10). Three experiences by a man in our favorite Isle of Arran: a]. Ten fairies playing in the gorse bushes near grazing sheep. The sheep ignored them unless they got too close. b]. Silvery voices alerted him to a troop of fairies scurrying along a path. They seemed vociferously angry about something. c]. There was beautiful music coming from a group of rhododendron bushes. He cautiously snuck up upon a scene of wonderful dancing. The fairies noticed him, unfortunately, and sped away. One small female turned, looked him straight in the eye, and gracefully whisked away like "Pavlova herself".

Not bad. Wonder how many incidents the weekly received and were not printed.

I'm getting a bit tired this evening, so let's end this part with a few cases from Janet Bord's Fairies: Real Encounters With Little People. This book is the "guidebook" of modern works in this field vis-a-vis actual encounter incidents. To my knowledge there is nothing comparable.

Here are a small number of the modern incidents from the 1950s-early 1960s:

11). 1951, County Wicklow, Ireland: Two girls were walking in a country lane. A little man, two to three feet tall was standing in the road near an old thorn tree. [Thorn trees are said to be fairy haunts by some]. The girls walked by, noticing his youngish looks and his clothing, all black with a black cap. Looking back, and suddenly afraid, they opened the gate to the nearby field and ran across it. Turning again, the little man was gone. There on the top of the field's gate sat a strange object which looked like a kitchen clock. Another enigmatic projection from Faerie?

12). 1952, Dartmoor, Devon: A woman was walking near a stony path on a hillside when she saw a small man, three to four feet tall, who seemed to be regarding her. He appeared old, and was completely dressed in brown, including a flat cap covering brown hair. His smock was tied with a cord [apparently monkish style]. Her son was in the vicinity so she was unafraid and climbed upwards towards him. At a forty yard distance, the little brown man disappeared behind a boulder. Upon inspecting that location, she and her son could not see anyway that he could have vanished.

13). 1961, St. Asaph, North Wales: A man was walking his dog when they encountered a small being three foot tall. The dog growled and was ready to attack if further provoked. The being was dressed wholly in green and had an ugly brown face. It had suddenly appeared when the walker had tapped his walking stick on a metallic roadsign "as if the tapping had summoned it". The creature exuded an air of malevolence. After a moment or two, it simply vanished.

14). Early 1960s, Mynydd Llanginidir, Wales: Amateur botanists had been exploring the mountain. The men set one day to loud arguing just as the farmer who owned the property dropped by to see how they were doing. One of the two swore that he had just seen "hoards of tiny people" playing around one of the collecting sites. When he showed the farmer a map location for this site, the farmer told them that this place was known as "Fairies Bog".

I think that I'll let this post stand for now. I'll try to wrap up the "first 100" soon. What these tales tell me is that we can conceivably still interact with this reality under the right circumstances, despite our unhelpful [in so many ways] "modernity". The Moyra Doorly experiences as we saw earlier take us right up to the present and fit well within the context of the cases that we have been reading. I have never had such an experience in my life, sadly, nor have any of my family [though mischief-makers have invisibly made their presences known, especially to our female members]. But I have one very good friend whose mother had two little people interactions while a girl, and another very good friend [the redoubtable Jerry Clark himself], who has a very good friend who encountered dwarf-like critters in an indoor urban setting. And all that is good enough for me.

Tomorrow or the next day, I'll try to complete this series. Some of the featured cases will be a cluster from a very intriguing set of incidents reported by Ron Quinn in his all-to-short book Little People. Till then, keep an eye out for that mysterious presence.... just there... see... just darting around the bushes, the trees, the flowers. Just don't disturb the dancing.

Faerie? : A small data-set indicating the possibility that folkloric entities or something very much like them could be real, Part Two.

UFO Aliens. Folkloric Fairies. Non-terrestrials all, but who is who?? As I plough through my various files, I find a very strong thread of technological flying machines extending from WW2 to 1952, and then a big interruption of this technological "sanity" in 1954. There then begins a "dance" [in the files] between the far-in-advance technologicals and the relatively simpler but strikingly whacky folklorics. Is this "dance" a dance between two very unlike groups of entities? Or is it a dance staged separately by each for us? Or are the dancers the same beings wearing different masks? I have not earned the evidentiary right to answer such questions. I will just say that my files are polluted with these matters, and it is my belief that it is a cross pollution between two ontologically different groups. That is just the feeling that I have. Call it intuition only, or call it intuition buttressed by a very long career studying the UFO and military intelligence documents and seeing therein a consistent technological phenomenon making, for me, perfectly good sense as advanced physical technology. I have no convincing proofs. But I can do one small service: show you a bit more of my Little People files and some of the "polluted middle", and let your own intuitions go to work. One last thing: my studies and my files tell me that a large number of these sorts of encounters are true.

In my opinion one of the best places to begin the oversight of this pollution is in Kelly/Hopkinsville, KY in 1955. All of you already know this "UFO" case. It, on almost any criterion, is a great case. It has multiple witnesses, several investigators [including the military], and good character bona fides on at least most of the family by the local sheriff and other town members. Something very strange happened that evening. But what?

Many of you know the Kelly/Hopkinsville case. If you don't just google it; it is all over the internet. In a thumbnail, one evening, with a large family celebration going on, one man stepped outside and saw a rainbow colored round object coming to Earth in the woods some way off. Another man joined him and the two saw weird silvery glowing creatures approaching from the forest.

Scared at the weirdness, they went inside only to see the creatures keep coming on. A type of siege ensued with creatures going all about and climbing on the roof. Shots were fired at nearly point blank range to no avail. This strangeness continued most of the night. In the morning, upon going outside, no evidence that anything had been there was discernible except for empty cartridges, and damage by the bullets to farm property. [I'm telling the story off the top of my head, by the way, so a small detail could be off here or there].

The police were informed and the family gave witness. The military sent an investigator [he was from the Army base] to also write up a report. The two drawings on yellowed paper [on the left of the accompanying illustration collage] are his, [It is possible that the Army guy just took the drawings made by Bud Ledwith who was on the scene rapidly] taken from the witness descriptions. Following that, many news outlets also came by, and most importantly, an engineer/scientist named Bud Ledwith, who had worked in the Moonwatch Program, and knew Allen Hynek well. [He was working at a nearby radio station at the time].

Somehow, not exactly known, Ledwith's very positive views of the veridical nature of the family testimony made it to CSI-NY and two of our finest-ever UFO researchers, Isabel Davis and Ted Bloecher. Isabel and Ted collected all the data associated with the incident and several others in what seemed to be a mini-creature flap going on. Exactly how long after the information collected by the military and Ledwith Isabel and Ted got involved, I don't know, but it was they who put together the bigger picture. This is published in the well-known but rare-to-own monograph called, I believe, Close Encounter at Kelly and Others in 1955, by the Center for UFO Studies in the 70s.

As was said, although the family literally felt the physicality of the experience, no such physical evidence persisted. The whole thing smacks not only of the Uncanny but also the paranormal. These were country people who don't miss shooting things at close range. These are outdoors people who would laugh at your face [if you were lucky] if you suggested that they couldn't recognize an owl [certain "intellectual" clowns have recently suggested that this was nothing mo0re than owls protecting nests --- note the "unusual" owl crawling on all fours behavior in one of the drawings --- these sorts of people are societal criminals deliberately confusing the search for truth with their hung-up garbage].

Throughout her life, the central female figure in the Sutton family was engaged in reflection about that night by prominent townspeople. The sheriff said that there always came that time in those reflections where she would just go silent with a look of awe on her face. The Kelly-Hopkinsville event happened, whatever it was. My belief is that it was not "biological"; that is not part of the evolution of lifeforms of the Universe of physical laws. Why? Even setting aside for the moment the apparent unhittability by rifleshot, and the floating slowly about the landscape, the form of the creatures is "unlikely".

These things, if biological, are not water creatures and are sizable. They look sort of like they should be like mammals or something which would have a chance for a large brain and intelligence, and if they are to be guessed as UFOnauts must be quite brainy. But their heads are absurdly gigantic in proportion to their bodies. This next thought doesn't HAVE to be true, but if it is not someone needs to do some real thinking as to why not: Those heads could never come through a birth canal of anything remotely shaped like the creatures drawn. Could the females be wildly different in shape than the males? If so, there is nothing on Earth remotely comparable in terms of divergent sexual morphism in large animals. Could the things be birdish and come from eggs? Eggs have real structural size limits and so the heads would have to be small and do a tremendous amount of growing while "outside" exposed to natural threat. Growing and remaking skulls to accommodate growing brains would take a very great risk-taking time using soft malleable skulls. Anything's possible, I suppose, but these things REALLY don't look like normal evolutionary biology to me. The only hope I'd believe would be that they were artificially grown. If so, why bother with the out-sized ears if you had that technology? Nothing about these critters says anything but "bogan" "bauchan" "trickster" to me.

And the Bogans were out those nights elsewhere. Isabel and Ted found several other cases, none of which sound UFOlogical, scattered both near and far in the US, on and around that night. The drawings above are from some persons driving near the Georgia border [I think this one was] and passing a group of "gnomes" standing as if mock-working on something on the road. It has also been suggested that these were owls. Large owls. Large owls manifesting very un-owl-like behavior like not budging as a car passes close by. Yeh, Owls... that's the ticket.

This cluster of very strong but very non-UFOlogical experiences serves to somewhat anchor my opinion that many explanation-resistent folkloric type encounters still go on, and that some of them fall into UFO case files. Let's look at a few of the others.

I start inauspiciously with an apology: the drawing above is my own, and although it COULD be representative of the case intended, the amount of descriptive material in the case is insufficient for me to defend my whimsical details. I based my colorful drawing on Otto Binder's black & white line drawing, but Binder's description didn't indicate the details that HE put into it. If Binder had more info than he printed, then maybe the illustration is not too bad. Well, here the case is anyway:

A). Person was fishing in upper NY state. [1960]. He heard a humming and an object came low over the water and landed. Two small beings left the thing dragging a waterhose, and stuck its end into the creek. Both creatures began playfully jumping around as if gravity wasn't much of an issue. While they were outside their "object" [this isn't described] they began "creating colors" out of the air as if exchanging information, or whatever, with one another. Well, whether my drawing is accurate or not, I kind of like the idea.

B). 1956, Chester, CA. A deputy sheriff of a local community was out bow hunting with other family members. Hearing movement on the slope, he turned to see a 4' tall man clad in green and gold. He had fine [i.e. not gnomish] facial features under a red and gold cap. Brown leather boots. He leapt away in twenty foot jumps. The deputy, who hadn't been drinking, retreated to camp where he remedied that oversight. [from MUFON Journal].

C). 1965, Luumaki, Finland. People were out picking berries. One heard an odd bubbling sound from higher up the hill. Looking closely, there was a small man staring at him. The 3' tall being began walking towards the witness. It was stoutly built with skin-tight green coverall and a carrot-red face. One of the other berry-pickers saw this from a greater distance. The being abruptly changed directions, walked to the edge of a bog, and vanished. [from the UK UFO magazine SPACELINK].

D). 1973, Bedarrides, France. A person was out collecting mushrooms. There at the edge of a clearing was a 4' tall man clad in beige coveralls and black beret. Soon he was joined by another who could have been a twin. They looked at and laughed audibly at the witness and ran into the woods. Shortly thereafter the witness saw a blue-gray oval rise from the woods, make a whistling noise and shoot off, its rising greatly disturbing the dead ground-clutter leaves. The researcher on the case said that he had at least six other cases of beings laughing at the witness. [From the MUFON Journal].

E). 1968, Coleraine, Quebec. Several kids playing near a cemetery saw a 4' tall dwarf on three consecutive days. Bald head, black beard, naked chest. The skin was red and scaly [lizard-like]. Some kind of craft colored red, white, and blue then rose trailing smoke. On a subsequent day, the kids' uncle alleged to have also seen the creature. [From Saucers, Space, and Science].

F). 1950, Canby, OR. a woman working outside in her yard saw a 1' tall man. He had a heavily tanned face, coveralls, and a plaid shirt. He was stoutly built and wore a skullcap. The being waddled away, walking right under a nearby car. [HUMCAT].

G). 1905, Perm, Russia. While visiting a cathedral, a young man [12] was walking in a dark corridor, when confronted by a red light of fiery color. This "aureole" was uncanny in that it radiated no heat and just hung there. Inside the lightform, a black 3-4' creature jumped around and stuck out its tongue at the boy. It had large owlish eyes reflecting red, a small beaked nose, large pointed ears, and a huge mouth. The boy, showing courage created by his belief that this must be someone tricking him, rushed at the lightform only to see it keep its distance from him. When he reached a position that he could see that no such trick was possible, he began shaking [and, presumably, ran away.] [Letter to Dr. Hynek].

H). 1942, Prouvy, France. A woman came into her garden and found herself face-to-face with three dwarves. they were c.4' tall, bearded, with large round heads. Their eyes were large and luminous yellow. They were dressed in metallic shiny monk-like cowled clothes. They were absolutely motionless. She ran to call her husband, but they disappeared. [HUMCAT, from an unpublished Ms.]

I). 1925, La Mancha, Spain. A man was confronted by a dwarf. The being was c.4' tall and wore all-green clothing. It held a blowpipe-like thing in its hands. It was standing atop a vertically-oriented disk, which was rolling along the ground like a wheel. It passed soundlessly six feet away. [Ballester-Olmos' Spanish Close Encounters catalog].

J). 1956, Derry, NH. A man was out in the country gathering Xmas greens, when he saw a 2' tall dwarf colored green. It had a large-domed head, floppy ears, and a face and skin with folds like at fat bloodhound dog. Its eyes were snake-like. Both arms and legs were stumpy. After watching a few minutes, the witness decided to move forward. The dwarf then broke into a scream and charged. The witness beat it out of there. [HUMCAT; Letter to Walt Webb].

K). 1973, Springfield, IL. This is a tale from the Timmerman files. This is an elderly lady who was walking her dog outside her house and getting an object she needed, when she saw a slow-moving light in the sky. Shortly, a little man [<4'] just appeared floating in the air beside her. He had on a black coverall with a pointed hood. His face was ghastly pale. His feet seemed pointed. He smirked at her. Unnerved, she decided to brazen it out and kept walking as if he wasn't there. Shortly he just vanished. [Interview by John Timmerman, CUFOS].

L). 1920, Nontron, France. A bunch of young people returning from a dance, when near a small woods, noticed a lighted area in the sky. That area was a group of beings of small stature moving through the air producing musical sounds. The scene was pleasing to view and not frightening. You could see the beings' legs move about and fiery colored balls move along with them. [HUMCAT from an unpublished Ms.].

M). 1914, Caerphilly, Wales. Two children were going home on the side of a mountain when they encountered a large but localized white mist. At the edge of the mist were two small entities [apparently child-sized or a little smaller] who were white all over. These beings had, comically, very tall chef-like hats, and, much less comically, piercing eyes. They advanced on the children who ran. [HUMCAT from an unpublished report to Contact UK].

N). 1974, Chingford, UK. Two men, one a BUFORA UFO researcher, watched through binoculars a "woman", almost as a silhouette, with long blond hair, a long black dress, and a featureless face. This figure never moved. Then a second like figure was seen moving among trees. The first figure then vanished. The second did likewise shortly. The first then reappeared 150' away standing motionless. It then vanished again.

Less than an hour later, the witnesses again saw two figures dressed this time all in white. One was again motionless while the other darted about in quick movements. These movements were not biological but gliding/floating type. At this time they were distracted by a lighted object rising up over the trees. It seemed lens-shaped with central white light, blue light revolving about its edge, and two other lights blinking. It passed directly overhead making a throbbing or thrumming sound. [HUMCAT; from a personal report to Allen Hynek].

O). 1922, nr Estoraoa River, Portugal. A young man was walking and crossing a bridge. He spotted a 6+' tall figure dressed in a monk's habit but having no facial features. The figure passed to within about 6' of the witness giving him a "sense of strangeness". This is related to the next incident.

P). 1976, nr Estoraoa, Portugal. Many years later, the brother of that witness and his wife had their own encounter. While walking they were approached at a distance by a 6+' tall figure, appearing slightly transparent and gliding more than walking. It was dressed in a one piece long garment, dark-colored which reached the ground. Their dog cowered and slunk away. No noise was discernible as it passed. [HUMCAT, from Joaquim Fernandes].

Q). 1936, Kazakhstan. A teenage girl was going home in the snow. Ahead in the air a dark object was approaching. It was a man-like figure, normal height, dressed entirely in black, and seen only in profile. It had on a helmet and a napsack, and held its arms tightly to its sides. Then it suddenly changed to come directly at her. Now she saw that it had no features, only a black surface. It emitted a rumbling sound. The girl panicked and ran. Turning to look, the thing had vanished. [HUMCAT; from Rubtsov in FSR].

R). 1968, Ulfshale, Denmark. A lady went outside at night and noticed a light shining through the hedge. It was some "thing" gliding over the near hillside. It looked like the silhouette of a powerfully chested man in a dark monk's robe and cowl. The object itself was dark with a shining aura around it. She crept out further and saw three more of these things passing over a brook. They seemed identical except that the lead "thing" had a dark red aura. She estimated the things as 9' in height. [SUFOI Reporter].

S). 1952 or 53, Rouge Valley, OR. A family was driving along when three weird objects glided in front of their car. They braked to a stop and watched as the things crossed the road, slowly heading into the trees. They were 3 to 4 feet tall, completely white, and featureless. The bodies were egg-shaped, with neck extending and rounding off to no head. They looked most like the strange comic creations called "shmoos" by Al Capp in Li'l Abner. [this is, admittedly, putting the mind well into the twilight zone]. [HUMCAT; letter in a magazine].

T). Lastly, for this set: 1948, Yuste Monastery, Caceres, Spain. A sheepherder had to seek shelter for the night in a distant cabin, due to the sudden arising of a bad storm. He heard voices outside and opened the door. There was a short "man". The herder invited him in and the person walked by without speaking. The herder took a closer look and saw that the visitor had goat-like hooves instead of human feet. Screaming in panic, he caused the [Pan-like?] creature to run from the cabin. Shortly, he thought that there was a fireball which rose into the sky. [Ballester-Olmos catalog of Spanish close encounter cases].

That is enough of that for now. All the cases in today's post are from my files which originally were included in the UFO filing cabinets, rightly or wrongly. Many other "UFO-ish" sorts of things [such as the incidents illustrated just above] could lengthen this list until it was very long. The point is, of course, that many such things exist which either "muddy the middle" between the Faerie World and UFOs, or are "purely" FaerieWorld candidates which the witnesses knew of nowhere else [but UFOlogy] to report them to. What we can make of all this boggles my mind at least. But more from this first 100 set will follow when I can manage.

Through all of this, I get the image of the neglected denizens of the Faerie Kingdom watching the naive ETs come in here with their technological disks and thinking: Well, how can we have some fun with this? It's probably a Middle Kingdom HOOT --- and not with luminous owls.

FAERIE? : A small data-set indicating the possibility that folkloric entities or something very much like them could be real.

It has been about a week and a half since I've been able to post something here, and I apologize. Life has been crowded with certain unusually stressful family care situations, increased UFO book editing pressures, some rare book purchasing, selling the old family house, and generally being gassed. This Little People topic, also, has not lent itself to easy, off-the-top-of-the-head posting. But, one hundred of my case file encounters have now been logged, and I guess, ready or not, I'll unload them. I can't make any good sense out of this topic yet folks, so it's going to be: let it fly, and it's up to you to see if it's of any value to you.

Let's get the boring preliminaries out of the way first. As said, this material comes from my case files collected from published encounter claims over several years of "collecting". As with my UFO files, these cases were not collected systematically, but merely as I ran into them and thought them interesting. The sources are quite varied. About a quarter of this particular hundred were taken off one internet site where people write in their "fairy" claims. About a like number were taken from my "UFO" files, and picked out because they didn't ring particularly true as UFO cases. Others come from books and magazine articles. The only things that they have in common is 1). they struck me as interesting potentially-true encounters; and 2). they seemed to have a "folkloric entity" feeling to them. So, this is entirely idiosyncratic to me and as such hardly "scientific" to start.

The crude data arrays are to the left. The majority of these characters are "smalls" [1 1/2--4 1/2 feet tall]. They are the "Little People" we expect. About a quarter of these are "tinies". They are almost the only critters said to be winged. "Tinkerbells", if you will. They come almost entirely from the internet site "Fairy Encounters", which seems to attract mostly young girls who want to see fairies. I waded through a very large number of these claims some time ago, and weeded out a couple dozen which were reported by adults and seemed to have some redeeming characteristics. There were very few normal sized creatures in this list, and just one, I believe, extremely large one. Perhaps the folkloric big entities are all masquerading as Bigfoot or Nessy-like creatures. Normal-sized humanoids may be shunted off into the "apparitions" category and not make the Faerie listings. There were a few fairyish things which had no entity seen but included for other reasons. [fairy music, etc.]

The files for this hundred are almost entirely 20th-21st century, which is of some interest to me, as it may be saying that the phenomenon continues to today, regardless of being ignored. Had it been true that I had just collected material out of WY Evans-Wentz, Wirth Sikes, or even much of Janet Bord, the previous centuries would have been more widely represented.

As usual, with my language-constricted reading ability, all the citations are in english, and as a consequence, mostly US and UK, in about equal amounts. There are 16% European citations, though, mainly from UFO files. Ireland has very few cites as yet. There should be a few more of those in a second hundred if I ever get it done.

A general comment [therefore not universally true] about states of consciousness: Many cases of Faerie claims occur, as reported, at bedtime, lying down, dreamily staring at something, etc. This phenomenology [in these cases reported upon here] tend to concentrate heavily in the Tinkerbell-type tiny winged fairy reports. Reports of "small" dwarf, leprechaun, gnome, etc sized denizens of Faerie typically do NOT occur in these states of consciousness, but rather "normal" consciousness at least as far as the reports indicate. What this says about reality, I will leave up to you.

Despite my comment about states-of-consciousness and the Fairy Encounters site that I made above, there still were quite a few reports that I found interesting. In VERY truncated form, I'll describe some of them. They will be a selection picked to illustrate a wide range of possible experience. All of these were from the 1970s through to circa 2005. Almost all are from the US with as sprinkling of UK, and one Belgium and Germany. Almost all these stories were written in by the observers when they were much older.

1). Four young girls find tiny footprints in rural Colorado. They make a fairy house to encourage activity. Only a glowing silhouette is seen, and an arrangement of sticks like a person.

2). Three teenage girls were in countryside in Wales to paint landscapes. Saw slim thread with something riding on it. It was a very tiny "egg" within which was a "man" with a purple-colored dwarf's hat apparently joy-riding the "egg" as a minicraft. Two of the girls drew the same thing separately.

3). Two girls were playing in the backyard at night. A "firefly" showed up. It turned out to look like Tinkerbell and it stayed briefly, smiling, and assuring the girls not to be afraid.

4). One girl used to sit out in nature a lot, and built fairy houses. Nothing for a very long time. One day she saw a rainbow-colored glowing tiny winged creature flying around where she usually sat. It stayed there a while, the two looking at one another.

5). A girl and her brother were out to play in nearby woods. He ran off to pick apples. She just sat, not going after him, picking flowers. In one flower a flutterbye [I refuse to use the modern degradation "butterfly"] flew out and danced away. It appeared as a tiny fairy. It led her on until disappearing. There was her brother fallen from a tree and unconscious. She stopped the bleeding in his head. They rested and got back home safely.

6). Two guys decided to go fairy-hunting in a place deemed likely by others [one of the reasons that I am particularly suspicious of this one]. They go to a rural cemetery just as dusk falls. This reminds me of knuckleheads looking for trouble, but OK. There they are hiding behind cover in order not to be spotted by police when they saw a rapidly dancing 5" high person. It danced continuously for 5 minutes and disappeared. Making ready to leave, they found that somehow they were at the very opposite end of the cemetery with no recollection of having gotten there [this is the element of this that I found interesting enough to include this one]. This constituted a ten minute run to get back to where their car was. There are plenty of reasons to discard things like this, but the reporter didn't make himself sound too flattering in his tale, and the spatial slip is reminiscent of the Irish concept of the "Stray Sod".

7). A woman told of constantly finding that things were "going missing" and then reappearing later exactly where they should have been and where she had looked for them [thoroughly] . She attributed this to fairy-tricksters of some kind [never saw them] and finally began to just say "Come on you guys this isn't funny anymore!" and the item would pop up soon thereafter. "Fairy" or not, this phenomenon is all over the literature [usually buried under Poltergeist phenomena] and I have a sister who is burdened with these same sorts of temporary diversions.

8). A girl living in the English countryside regularly visited a friend and experienced the beautiful garden there. She began to sketch a flower when a flutterbye landed on it. But it wasn't a flutterbye afterall but rather a golden miniature person [female] with wings. It left the flower and flew up and posed a few inches from her face. Then it flew up and away. No one believed her, but she returned often hoping to see another, which she never did.

9). Two girls used to play in the woods when they began to tell one another that they thought they were seeing creatures out of the corners of their eyes and then retreating behind the trees when the girls would turn on them. Unlike other claims on this site, these were "smalls", and the girls compared them to "Santa's Elves" in size. While this would go on, the environment would be like a dreamy, fuzzy state, which would snap back to "hard reality" only once they got back home and inside.

10). A teenage girl [16] was walking down a country lane when she saw a flutterbye-sized tiny girl with wings singing beautifully while seated on a hedge. She flew up and beyond the hedge not to be seen again. The 21-year-old reporter never told anyone of this due to not wanting to be mocked.

11). An 11 year old girl was upstairs in her home while her parents held a party downstairs. Watching the raindrops on her window, she saw within one a tiny almost see-through female playing inside the drop. After a while, she decided to try to get her Mom to see it too, but the fairy disappeared. The reporter was 38 at the time of the telling.

12). A woman was sitting on the edge of her bed in a dimly lit room. Then time/action seemed to slow down and small half-inch diameter balls of light of different colors began manifesting. She was able to concentrate on one which was quite nearby. It was a tiny winged creature fluttering so rapidly that you could not resolve exactly its appearance, and whose motions gave it the more distant impression of being a ball-of-light. She felt that this went on for perhaps twenty seconds, but the rate of time made it seem much longer.

13). A young man was walking his girl in a "romantic" forest setting. They heard a strange language-like cry, and suddenly were no longer on their forest path. The environment was wrong, now featuring water-sounds burbling on rocks. They turned and were confronted by a beautiful normal-sized girl all dressed in green. She then turned into a green ball-of-light and flew off. They had to walk a ways to get back to the path leading to their house.

14). Four people in a temporary house [a camper] were outside watching a meteor shower, when two retired to bed. The other two, mother and daughter, stayed up with the family dog. The dog began barking at the back gate. Mother and daughter turned to see a large ball of white light about 20 feet from the gate. It disappeared while they ran in to wake up the father. They interpreted this as a fairy lightball.

15). Two boys and their dog were in the woods camping. The dog ran off. One boy followed. He heard beautiful music and looked to see two-inch tall men and women with wings doing the singing and partying. Shortly thereafter his friend arrived and watched too. Then after ten minutes of this, the dog came romping out of the woods barking. The fairies immediately disappeared. The next morning the friend described everything he had seen, but said that it happened in his dream.

16). Two young women [sisters] were home alone baking cookies. As they looked out their window, a small man looking like a "leprechaun" but not dressed in green, floated up over their neighbor's fence riding on what looked like a motorcycle. It raced across their yard and floated up over the next fence and away.

17). A young man and woman were driving in a scenic hilly area. They saw a large ball of white light, which disappeared into the woods. They got out and looked for it in vain. All they heard was some giggling. They continued their drive and there again was the light; this time in the middle of the road. He couldn't stop and went right over it. They stopped and jumped out. Looking under their truck, there was the ball of light making giggling noises. Apparently it then went safely away, as the young woman expressed her relief that the playful fairy/lightball was unharmed.

18). A young man at a time just prior to Halloween, had heard some tiny playful giggling in his garden which he couldn't locate. Then just on or right after Halloween, he and a friend saw two bluish glittering winged figures. They were nearly transparent as if made of gas. These two experiences tripped off memories of him having a childhood "imaginary playmate" whom he hadn't remembered in years. The imaginary playmate had been a fairy.

19). A girl was in her bedroom on a full Moon night staring out the window. Into the yard came a fuzzy figure made of light. It was a woman in a silvery long gown with bright golden hair and a crown. She was winged with glittering diaphanous silver. She stopped, looked at the Moon, turned into a ball of silvery light, and disappeared. The woman, in her thirties when she reported this, stated that she didn't know whether to call her encounter as being with a fairy, a ghost, or an angel.

20). A young person [sex not determinable from the report] was unable to sleep one night, and had an odd urging to get up and go outside. Once there, the urge continued and the witness was almost put to the ground without willing it. Immediately, Alice-in-Wonderland-like, the grass seemed growing tall all around [as the person shrunk]. A large group of fairy personages came talking and smiling and circling about. They then suddenly scattered away [the person had a blade of grass laid over one hand completely covering it]. Increasing to normal size, the witness wondered if it was just a dream. In that hand was grasped a small blade of grass. Once back in the bedroom, the brother said that he had watched it all from the window.

So be it to give you a largish dose of modern alleged fairy sightings. Note that there is quite a bit of scope phenomenologically here, but not far outside the expectations of a Fairylore sighting. I, as a UFO researcher, find the frequency of Ball-of-Light phenomena interesting, especially as many of these things found in UFO files don't sound very UFO-like. Also, though this is a "Fairy" website, one expects "Tinkerbells" but one also gets several larger critters. The majority of these things happen outside in woods or garden settings, or looking out one's window into a yard or garden. The changed environment cases smack of various forms of the OZ Effect in UFOlogy. Poltergeist phenomena and apparitional things seem to crop up. The Realm of Fairy, in fact, threatens to expand to potentially contain many other paranormal claims. These cases as presented also have a very powerful gender slant to them, which speaks to a strong sociological filter. Doubtless it is OK for girls to report fairies but not guys. Guys of course can make up for this by reporting Bigfoot.

Consider this Part One of this madness. I will move on to the other sorts of sources, such as UFO file cases, book and magazine article cases, in the following parts. Those types of sources tend to produce far higher percentages of "Smalls" rather than "Tinkerbells". The cases tend to have some chance of having had an investigation as well. We will meet several "cousins" of the character above, as it turns out that they make garden gnomes for sale looking like this for a reason. Till then.....

ELEVEN

I like Eleven. Eleven feels good to me. The Olde People seemed to like Eleven too. You can always find good and bad about anything in this great big world, but generally speaking, the Olde People rated Eleven high. Idealistic. Visionary. A Teacher. An Inspirer. A Spiritual Person. Someone attracted to the Unknown. Yes, Eleven would be a good number to be.

And....Eleven is a PeaceLover and a PeaceMaker. Much to live up to there.

We, our Old World, are about to be flowing over with Eleven of course. It is Eleven/Eleven/Eleven coming now, as it does once a century. Maybe a special day??

Some folks are certainly gearing up for it. Big idealistic, romantic, and often slightly dotty celebrations are being planned. All hoping that the whole world might become Eleven. Even just one day would be nice.

Applause for a World of Interconnectedness! But I thought that we already were. It's our lack of respect and concern for that interconnectedness that's the problem.

A Kundalini Yoga Festival in India...wish them all the best. The music at least should be inspiring to the properly oriented soul.

Harmonizing the New Consciousness... hmmm... doubt that we have a new one, but Harmony is our friend.

Entering into the Love Portal of Oneness .... double hmmmm. That seems about a thousand percent over-the-top to me. But whatever makes you a Lover, I guess.

Las Vegas has their own ideas of course. They are on the bandwagon with Platinum Wedding Specials. Somehow I doubt that Spirituality and the search for the Unknown plays much of a role here.

Eleven, noble as it is, seems to be taking a beating in all this ... ummmm...."activity". There are many people "out there" on the internet, who are sure that Eleven is creeping up on them. They whisper that they are seeing Eleven everywhere, and it is somehow coming to get them and us... for good or evil, I haven't been able to decipher. Seems almost like a Rapture concept. There are people who say that Eleven is everywhere, if you just try to look for it. I am, apparently, supposed to see Eleven in the painting above. .... I just can't quite....

And to all that I just.................................. oh well.

But none of that can break me apart from Eleven. Because you see, The Creator allowed The Universe to welcome me into its wonders 71 years ago on Eleven/Eleven. [Pssst... It's my Birthday]. For that astonishing gift, I absolutely Love the Great Maker. What a privilege to lead this life and explore this Universe.

Some people will, of course, try to diminish anything. Before any Xtian Hypernuts try to demean my Elevenish "numerology", just remember that it was we Eleven guys that hung in there. Hah!! I'm even Biblically approved!!

... and I'll take the role of the Eleven Pipers Piping their joyous Christmas song as well.

We Elevens have to do our things. We have to get into our colorful world traveling, exploring balloons and see what we can see. No comments about Hot Air please!! And no shooting us down. We're the Good guys. Someday we might fly so high that we'll reach that heavenly land where all the colored party balloons go, carrying their birthday love and magic. As Bob Dylan said: "You can be in my dream, if I can be in yours".

So, on Eleven/Eleven/Eleven this old professor begins his post-seventy walk into the sunset. I don't know how many circuits of the Sun that I have left, but the ones I've had have been filled with wonders. Don't let your Sun Circuits go by without the same.

I hope that we can walk a little further together along the Deep Forest paths, wherein as the druids believed "Truth becomes perceivable". It has been a good life.

What's on the other side of the Portal?? .... and, you know, I keep seeing these Elevens ... :-).

So, as the old Irish panhandler that I am, who'd sit down and beat out a rhythmic tune for whatever the public might give him, I leave you with:

------------"This Old Man, he played Eleven; he played Knick Knack up in Heaven........"