Monday, April 27, 2020

Black Fairy Dog: preliminary note


Preliminary Note on The Black Fairy Dog:
This analysis is a Bear, or rather a wrestling match with a Kraken. 

 When I decided to take (another) swing at this topic, I saw what seemed to be a nice orderly (if wide) topical file on the shelf which promised a reasonable research project.

 WRONG. And the above isn't the half of it. The Good News is that this topic is loaded with masses of reading material so all of you have free rein at it, entirely disregarding my feeble attempt (to be presented in maybe another two days.) 

I am three days into this and have selected about 60 cases which seem to me to be worth trying to make some sense of. These are out of literally hundreds.  The big cut-down is due to the (for my purposes/philosophy) horrible state in which most of these cases exist. Generally speaking, it is very hard to rationalize much "credibility" from the way these things are reported. "My" 60 cases come after tossing out everything which smacks of hypnogogia ("I just woke up to see ..."; I was daydreaming in my room when ... "; "I SWEAR that I was awake.... ") There is a LOT of that. 

Also, cases where the report is a child's reflection from some very young age MANY years ago. Or, almost anything where there seems to have been inserted into the tale some kind of "agenda" or the growth into a fairy tale rather than a simple encounter. And there are other (for me) nerve-jangling giveaways  which my intuition can't tolerate. "There was a time, many years ago now, when ..." and like phrases which almost equate to "Once Upon A Time." 

Out of these reasonable and unreasonable prejudices come a small number of cases with which I am at least a little comfortable. They don't speak of Hounds-of-Hell, or many-headed Cerberus, or the dangers of The Wild Hunt --- though the vast majority of the ancient tales do. It almost seems as though we humans gravitate towards the violent and the macabre, even when it doesn't seem to be there. What that says about us I leave to you to explain. 

I REALLY wish that cases of Black Dogs would be better reported. The internet seems to have made this even worse. These unnamed uninterviewed witnesses (with their low detail hit-and-run shallow claims) doom, I believe, us into never getting close to any of this. What we need are true field investigators at least in several locations in Britain and Ireland who will go right to the witnesses. Drives me crazy --- but I'll try to complete my little study and commentary in a couple more days. 

My study (meagre as it is) indicates to me that this is a real (external to the carnival of the mind) anomalous phenomenon, and is still occasionally manifesting. It's a bit criminal that we don't seriously try to investigate it with more rigor. Listening to random stories from people that we don't know or haven't even met isn't good enough.  


What's Out There???

Thursday, April 23, 2020

LEPRECAT Three, Part 2


                              LEPRECAT Three, Part 2



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 A: Connacht, Ireland. This is one of a pair of cases separated by several years and two different groups of witnesses that I reported upon in a previous post. They are Diarmuid MacManus cases and he knew all the witnesses. I'll just mention the 1940s incident here, the case of The Thornhill Fairy. This is the one where the visiting young woman and a younger daughter see a little man c. 4-foot tall with green cap, green waistcoat, yellow shirt, buff trousers, blue eyes. Both observations in this later case involved sudden disappearance. 
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B: Monguap Valley, NY. I like this case despite taking a chance on the witness that others might not. The situation is that the witness is a somewhat well-known writer/investigator of claims of the anomalous world. He is Ron Quinn. Quinn was (now deceased) an Arizona author interested in buried treasure legends, paranormal stories, and one book on "Little People." I became aware of Ron Quinn from a couple of borderline UFO incidents which came to him. I thought that he was interesting and intelligent. I didn't know how to take him however, having not met him. Then his book "Little People" fell into my lap. This was a topic that I hadn't seen from him, and reading it told me why. Ron Quin had a Little People experience when he was ten years old and living in the New York hills. It seems that this was that early "special" experience that motivated his lifelong interests in the unknown. It had a "purity" to it that I suppose is easy for me to relate to, but maybe not others. Anyway, the way he speaks about this experience is so simply natural that I can't help believe it.  

He was on a family vacation and he and three other kids often left the cabin to go off doing what kids do romping around the woods. He was misbehaving this day and his parents stepped in and grounded him. He was sent back to the cabin where he moped about feeling sorry for himself. Then came a tapping on the window. Just outside that window stood a one-foot tall man. He was tapping with his walking cane. He had a crumpled hat, gray beard, silky hair, gray shirt with baggy sleeves, belt around the waist, gray soft boots. He was smiling and waving. Quinn doubted his vision if not his sanity. He did those little things trying to shake himself out of whatever this was, but the smiling Little Man still stood there. Encouraged by being waved on, Quinn went right to the window and opened it. They stared and Ron reached out. The Little Man just smiled again and turned away, moving with loping long strides into the woods. 

No one, of course, believed him. But Ron Quinn cherished this experience his whole life. And one day, being interviewed by a radio program in the Hudson Valley area, he mentioned it on air. The audience became alive with listeners wanting to tell how they had seen the Little People in that area too. Quinn collected those tales and published them in a very compelling thin volume that he called Little People. I like almost all the cases in there.
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C: Oxeford Hill, Dorset. Post-Cottingley Fairy publications, as was said in previous posts, both Edward Gardner and A Conan Doyle were deluged with reports from others scattered about the UK. Gardner got this brief description from a well-known dowser named J. Foot White. It's brief enough to quote:

"I was walking with my companion, who lives in the locality, some little distance from the main party, when to my astonishment I saw a number of what I thought to be very small children, about a score in number, and all dressed in gaily colored short skirts, their legs being bare. Their hands were joined, and all held up, as they merrily danced round in a perfect circle. We stood watching them, when in an instant they all vanished from our sight.  My companion told me they were the fairies, and they often came to that particular part to hold their revels. It may be our presence disturbed them." 

I have no doubt that the information to Gardner was transmitted accurately by him, and I must assume that White was well known to him. Beyond that who knows as far as credibility is concerned. The tale itself matches other tales widely told in the UK. 
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D: unnamed Fairy Fort, county Limerick, Ireland. This report comes out of Simon Young's Fairy Census. It is therefore anonymous sadly and not interviewed, so we take it for what it is --- an undocumented claim. As these Census entries go, however, it is a pretty good one. Again despite being told by the child of the prime witness it is reported earnestly and in fine context.

A young girl was sent by her mother to fetch a bucket of water. The well was some distance away and after drawing the bucketful, she walked a little while and then sat to rest on a little knoll to enjoy the surroundings. Down in the field there was a "fairy fort" (a name for an ancient structure more or less circular in shape and demarcated by a ditch or depression.) All round this fort were small people dancing in a circle. They were dressed in reds and greens and blues, and had caps on their heads. She knew well enough that these were no ordinary people but the Little Folk and that she should probably not be sitting there watching them. Growing afraid, she grabbed her water bucket and lugged it away home as fast as she could. 

She kept the experience to herself, not wanting to endure any mockery. But years later, now grown and a mother herself, an odd coincidence occurred. Sitting with her child (gender not stated), they were listening to a radio program discussing Irish Folklore. A caller phoned in and told a similar story. It was even possible that the incident had happened in the same location and around the same calendar era. Very small people in gaily colored clothes dancing round the fairy fort --- the coincidence moved the mother to tell her child of her own nearly identical experience. 

Tough to rate this story TOO highly because of the anonymity issues, but the narrative rings particularly in harmony with the intuition. A keeper, I think, though not a foundationstone. 
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E: Noorvik, Alaska. This comes from a book titled Moonlight at Midday by Sally Carrighar. Ms. Carrighar did a lot of "fieldwork interviewing" to substantiate the material of the book, and much of that were "stories" of happenings and folklore of the Eskimo people. In the chapter "The Missing Spirit" she explores the legends of The Little People --- briefly, though she says that this part of Eskimo culture fascinated her more than any other. 

The encounter reported here was, as she says, the last authentic encounter (1946) that she was told. It was winter in Noorvik and time for a hunting expedition --- something which occupied most of the village. On these affairs, the men would pack what food they had and strike out hunting caribou. This time their luck was bad and the food ran out. There was no choice but to turn back for home. However, in the night by the light of a bright Moon, one hunter looked out of his tent to see hundreds of The Little People running past on the nearby slope and beckoning to him to follow them. The number was so great that "they looked like tall grass when the wind bends it down." Arousing everyone, the hunters rapidly followed the beckoners, and came upon a herd of caribou. The hunt was wholly successful, and the men returned home with the slaughtered meat and skins packed away. Once in camp, they began the unpacking and storing. One woman, unpacking the skins, uncovered one of the Little People hiding in the pile. He jumped out and ran away. 

Interesting to say the least. The main part is pure congruent folklore as the Little People of the North definitely have their helpful moments. The last action is pure Inukin i.e. trickster, playful in nature. What to believe? Ms. Carrighar gives no hint of whether she finds such things credible or just lore. 
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F: Adiopodoume, Ivory Coast. Well here we go again with a story that came to the great cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans. Heuvelmans was reporting these claims in aid of making a case that some sort of unknown homonid may be existing today somewhere across the central face of Africa. The previously reported incident (in this blog) was Eastern Africa; this one is many miles away in West Africa. According to Heuvelmans, the alleged creatures are very similar if not identical, differing only in the shade of their hair/fur.  

I have nothing but respect for Heuvelmans, but this is a weak case, especially for my survey. The secondary reporter is impressive --- Professor Ledoux head of the Zoological Institute in Adiopodoume. The primary witness is an unnamed young man who worked in the Professor's lab. I can translate some credibility here since Ledoux must have known his lab assistant well. But it sure isn't ideal as Heuvelmans knew no one else but the professor. 

The actual observation is mediocre in that it is a chimpanzee-like creature in chimpanzee country. One would assume that this particular trained scientist would have easily been able to recognize the difference between a chimpanzee or a big monkey from an unknown. There isn't much to the encounter but it was at least a CLOSE encounter (which should have allowed an identification.) All the witness could say was that he suddenly was confronted by a small reddish fur-covered "man"? "ape"? "man-ape"? looking very like a humanoid (rather than like an ape.) It was naked and totally furry, and with long red hair depending from its head. Both participants in the confrontation immediately started and ran in opposite directions. 

This story meshed with folkloric claims from the area as to the reality and the danger of interacting with them. Thus the scared running retreat. Whether this sort of evidence can be used to forward the cause for Hairy Little People in Africa, is tough. We have some evidence for hairy little people in America and some boggarts in the UK, so maybe it's not a conceptual stretch, but as to evidence .... ?
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 G: Catskill Mountains, NY. This is the Ron Quinn case from his book Little People which is the most charming incident in the entire literature of encounters --- that's my opinion and I'm firm on it. This is also Ron Quinn's favorite and if it's not yours, well, meet with your personal physician to check if you still have a heart. 

A group of family members (of all ages) were having a vacation get-together in the Catskills and during one party/playtime the kids all went off for a romp near the woods. One of them was a little girl named Jill (5 years old.) While the kids played together, Jill was fascinated by a bunch of butterflies and began following them. It was a joyful thing for the little girl and she wasn't paying attention to where she was going. As the minutes went on, she suddenly realized that she had lost sight of the cleared fields and was lost with no idea where to go. 

She felt that she heard someone calling her name but faraway. She did as best she could to follow but only came to a clearing and sat on a fallen tree. She was sad and lonely. She remembered that she had a candy bar in her pocket, and ate some of it as she sat there. Looking toward a rock, she saw two "dolls" dressed in shiny green clothes with small hats and silvery hair. She smiled at them and offered them some of her candy bar. They didn't respond. 

She began to break down, and with tears in her eyes asked: " Do you know where my aunt's house is." The "dolls" nodded to her. They waved to her to follow. The Sun was setting and the forest was becoming dark and scarier, but Jill walked as quickly as she could to trot after. As the darkness began to settle in, little balls of colored lights sparkled and moved around her new friends. They seemed to speed up and Jill did too, but she didn't feel that she was doing this. She seemed swept along. 

After what seemed a few hundred yards of this, everything slowed down and the "dolls" pointed to the Aunt's home. Around the house dozens of family and neighbors, who had been looking for her for hours, were milling around. Jill turned to thank her new friends, but they had vanished. She then ran to her mother. 

.... a sad little girl lost alone in the woods offers some of her only candy bar to two small strangers .... I almost cried about this one myself (even having been trained as a high-testosterone male that I'm not supposed to.)
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 H: Isle of Hoy, Scotland. This was a case where it was hard to track down where in the world it came from. There are internet mentions, and a somewhat off-tune "description" in a book which tries to put a negative connotation to practically everything associated with trolls or fairies or gnomes or whatever. That led to a reference in a more neutral book by Ernest Marwick (Folklore of Orkney and Shetland) which stood in some minds as the prime reference, but still doesn't get at the witness issue much. Finally came a notice of an article in The Scot's Magazine of 1964. So why do I care? Because if one knows nothing about the prime witness any claim is pretty lame as to credibility.  

So, fortunately, the earliest reference does have a little about the witness. The fellow was a military officer stationed on Hoy during WWII. That seems better than nothing. He wrote a letter to The Scot's Magazine describing his encounter. (at least that's how I read this.) He was walking alone near the top of the cliff called Tor Ness. Up there in the wintry mist, he was surprised to notice that nearby he was accompanied by a crowd of little men. These beings were "wild" in appearance with long bedraggled hair --- clothing not described. They had round faces and sallow complexions. The dance was so wild that the whole troop seemed to dance itself right over the cliff. 

An odd story but incomplete enough so as to be in coherence with the uglier more boggart-like trolls of the north. This area uses "trous" to label both brounie types of Little People as well as trickster types of fairy an all of the strange crowd. In an early post we saw a hairy wildman type not unlike what's described here. 
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I: Putney, UK. This case comes from a news article from the Sunday Express of London. The article was from 2005 but recalled the story of a boy during WWII. The then-young man was interviewed and quoted in the article, so that's good for provenance/credibility. ... not great but at least something personal. The case, however, is/was ripe for a UFO investigation due to the recent willingness of the witness to talk and the character of the details as below. Perhaps someone in the UFO community (who had an open mind) has done so. I don't know that.

As a young boy (8) he was coming home from what in America would be called a Cub Scouts meeting (I thought that in the UK this had a different name) when before him he saw lights shining in the treetops. (with no intermediate "time" comments in his narrative) The witness then said that he "was in a very dark place" surrounded by beings that he could best compare with the Seven Dwarfs of Disney fame --- that is, classic somewhat old and ugly looking gnomes (he did use the word "ugly.") No further details. Now he was back on his path but it was darker and by the time he got home he was a few HOURS late, and his parents and the police wildly concerned. 

Well, we all know what a too-modern UFO researcher would tend to do with that even if the scanty facts didn't warrant it. I have no real right to critique this claim from my "distance", but to my knowledge this witness has become a crop circle and CE4 "enthusiast" editing his own newsletter. That shouldn't discount a claim (as a true experience could set off such a lifelong fixation) but it should also give us pause as to any details long buried in memory. So, the claim is brief and tainted a bit.
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J: Garganta la Olla, Spain. A brief case description from the catalog of humanoid cases by Ballester-Olmos. The just-mentioned author has evolved from being an excellent UFO case investigator-reporter to a full-out debunker these days (an astonishing transformation but not a unique one in this field) but this catalog is from his former personality's days (and is a collection of several different investigators' cases) so I trust that it is being presented neutrally. 

Quote:

 It's only mildly amusing to me how some of my colleagues will stretch to try to cram cases of other anomalies into the UFO files. COULD it be? Well, "anything's possible" would be the universally comprehensive (and mindless) comment, but on this case? Really? On the other hand, do I just do the same thing? I suppose I'd question my humanity if I didn't, but I'm at least trying NOT to do that much cramming, especially without acknowledging it. As the UFO Bible says"Neither a Lumper nor a Splitter be." All that said: this REALLY looks like a potential Pan or Faun incident rather than UFOlogy. 

Showing my humanity, I have some degree of faith in the cases which made the cut to get into the Ballester-Olmos catalog. So, I like this case albeit wishing for more detail. 
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K: New Stuyahok, Alaska. (and environs). I can't get my eyes on a good original source here, but if I could, I believe it would be valuable. The sources that I have (a magazine article and a travelers tales book) are identical in their words, and since I merely have a clipping (the older of the two) I can't really get a handle even on the writer. But the witnesses are quoted as if interviewed "in the bush" so to speak, like anthropologists might. These witnesses are Eskimo elders who are speaking of encounters with the area's "hairy man" beings. Most of their tales of the Hairy Man picture what you and I would expect: Bigfoot-like beings. Two of them do not: one from Perryville and one from New Stuyahok. 

The Perryville incident is interesting but as is true of both these not well enough detailed. In this encounter the witness is hunting and thinks that some of the others in his band are messing with him by stalking and making noises. He challenged "them" and shown a light. No eskimo there but instead a small hairy man with a face composed of all wrinkles. He looked like a bearded old man with facial hair but otherwise "human". From that I'm left to guess that this fellow was not naked but clad in eskimo garb just as other such beings that we have encountered earlier have been. 

The New Stuyahok incident is even more interesting and frustrating. In this case a Yupik tribal elder described a somewhat different type of iircingarak. These beings live up in the hills and seldom allow themselves to be seen. But this elder did see one. It was a small man, but not particularly hairy. In fact it resembled regular people, but had a walking stick and, amazingly, A TALL POINTED HAT!! Shades of Celtic Gnomes!! The being did the fairy trick of the instant disappearance before the witness' eyes. Please! More description! John Roth's encyclopedia AMERICAN ELVES indicates that creatures with names similar to iircingarak exist elsewhere in the Alaska/Aleut region and that the word means something like Little People, Dwarves, Elves, and that the creatures are about two foot tall, look just like the local people and are very strong. 

Maybe that's a keeper despite the slim description.
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Northern New York. This is a Ron Quinn case that he got after doing the radio program and taking all the surprising citizen calls about their own encounters. 

The tale: A young boy and his parents were sitting on their porch after dinner. The family dog had gone into the nearby woods, and yapped loudly and came running back to the house whimpering. Everyone thought that the dog had encountered an animal. This thought was supported by the noise of something moving in the bushes. The father tossed a few stones at the bushes to drive the animal (perhaps a raccoon?) away. The boy caught a glimpse of something. He excitedly told his parents that he'd seen a "little man." Both parents doubted that with a bit of humor in their voices.

Then the mother stood up to go inside. She shouted that she now too had seen the little man. She called her husband over and he laughed at both of them. But they decided to go make a bit of a search. Two eyes then appeared near their fence. Then they vanished. The boy went one way along the fence and his parents the other. The boy then saw the little man again. He was small (about one foot tall) with long hair, a beard in a large face quite "puffy", and gray clothing. He seemed like a short gnomish denizen who should have been seen in Great Britain. Whether he was more like a British gnome or a Native American memehwesug (a la the Hudson River story) is not clear. But a boy and his mom seem to have seen one of "them" in just the right location. 
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There are about 65-70 cases in each volume of Leprecat. The two early ones were relatively dense with encounters that I particularly am interested in (and we selected about 50 of those 140 in our small statistical look at height.) But here, in Leprecat 3 the pickings were a little slimmer --- we looked at what? A couple of dozen? That's about the same "rate" but my feelings about the quality were that it dropped off a little. Still there were a few good ones, and Diarmuid MacManus gives me hope to go on. 

And that brings me to my point: part of Leprecat 3 contained five cases by MacManus which I consider quite good but did not report upon. Why? Because maybe they're not Faery, even though VERY anomalous. They are so-called Black Fairy Dog cases. I want to cover them in the next post, but many other Black Dog cases as well. 

But ... this will be much more complicated a post, so just maybe I'll be buried under the research for a few days.

See you then.................. but just one last weird thing. There was a case in the UFO files where a person wrote to a minor UFO columnist (Otto Binder) who put cartoons of cases in a regular column. This witness said that he had seen the following in the area around Syracuse NY (uh, upper NY) and there were two Little People with colored lights around them. as below .... 



 
 ... just what we need to clearly separate UFOs from Fairylore eh? 

 







Monday, April 20, 2020

LEPRECAT THREE


Encounters in LEPRECAT 3:

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A: The Noatak Alaska case is actually a set of three experiences had by a husband and wife between the years 1938 and 1947. In all three incidents the Little People are described the same way: bundled up like small eskimos in caribou skins and hairy faces with head hair worn in bangs. These beings are widely known in the region as the "Inukins." The encounters were 1.) a violent wrestling match over water drawn from the river, 2.) an attempt at theft of drying salmon on an outside rack; and 3.) a forest stalking trickster act on a group of hunters by a group of the Inukin making noises and using birdcall communications. The weakness in this case is that all I have is a newsclipping. IF the reporter is trustworthy, then the reports are much better, as he claims to have personally interviewed witnesses and gives quotes.
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B: The Eslov, Sweden case is extremely interesting to me in that it is a Little People case where the investigator was one of the best UFO investigators we have (Anders Liljegren of Sweden.) The witness is a 24 year old (at the time) man returning to his farm late at night (c.10pm). He was approaching his farmland he became aware of a troop of small men (c. a little over a foot tall each). They were trooping in military order and about 10-12 of them. Their clothes were  one-piece dark green with caps to match. They had large bearded heads. They came by him only a few meters away so he had a good long look. Their facial expressions were "hard and cruel." He could easily hear the sound of their footsteps on the frozen ground and smell a strange odor. They continued out into a field. The witness saw a blue-violet light in a foggy patch, heard a whining sound,  and "the whole sight was gone." 

 Because this is Liljegren, and is such a classic trooping gnome incident (AND from rural Sweden!) I rate this incident highly. 
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C. Juminda, Estonia: this case comes from another excellent UFO investigator Sven Schalin of Sweden. It is extracted from a letter sent by Schalin to superman UFO researcher Ted Bloecher when he was at CSI-NY. Ted put this extract in his HUMCAT (humanoid catalog) but I was not able to find the original letter at CUFOS. Because of that, I don't have the sketch of the creature that was in that letter, and have just inserted a Frog/Lizard man drawing above (which doesn't have any precision to the case but is roughly in the ball park.) 

The action goes this way: Two men encountered a strange creature along some path. They chased it and the chase lasted a hundred feet or more. The thing's height was 3 and 1/2 feet tall about two feet of which were legs. The head sat without noticeable neck directly on the body which was brown-green with lighter colored hands. The mouth was an enormous slit covering almost the entire face. As the being walked, it did so in an odd mincing prance as if being careful. Then with an amazing flurrying of its feet, it took off at great speed, disappearing somewhere ahead along the path. 

Well, what can you do with that one?  Good researcher, direct interview with living witness, but a total outlier (to my knowledge) on form. A one-off Boggart? 
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D.  Ballynanty, Ireland: I'm apparently swamped in the individual pixillated bits. This case feels like I've already presented it, but all a quick read-back showed me is that this blog seems to drop things (pictures mainly) out of already published things. Leaving that to the "Leprechauns-at-work" theory, I'll just go forward with this anyway. I got this case off an internet site which I find has apparently misrepresented it. It placed the action in the 20th century, but now I find (via Janet Bord) that it's really pre-1900. Well, let's forget the date problem and go ahead and describe the case.

Here a writer about Ghosts states that he has a relative to whom this happened: two men were in a horse-drawn cart when the horse shied. It stood there shivering while the road seemed teeming with small fairy people. They attacked the cart, pulling at the driver as if to force him off the carriage. He put up a mighty fight and so the fairy hoard did not succeed. Meanwhile the servant man just shrunk away cowering. The attacked man grabbed the reins and forced the horse to move forward. After successfully doing so for some distance, the fairy folk relented and let them alone to continue away. The most striking thing he remembered about the incident was that the touch of the fairies grabbing at him was numbing cold. He immediately began praying, to which he attributed his ability to escape. 

A Wow of a claim. It needs a better provenance by a long shot however.
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E. Doxey Pool, Devonshire: Rock and Roll Time.



Two pictures of Doxey Pool (Romantic and Natural versions.) Not a particularly large body of water, but one with a legend. 



Doxey Pool is one of many watery places in the UK which allegedly houses a Water Spirit/Sprite nicknamed "Jenny Greenteeth." Jenny is not your nicest of folklore characters, sporting a reputation for grabbing the unwary and hauling them under to a watery end. "So children, if you go near the pool, don't get too near or Jenny Greenteeth will grab you!!" Wonderful use of folklore as fairy tale to warn children against doing stupid things. ... and quite unbelievable as such. BUT ... 

In 1949, a woman (named in the references) was out at the pool deciding to go for a swim. As she stood on the banks, the materials of the edges of the Pool seemed to be coming together in formation of something huge. Weeds and Mud and pond debris formed itself into a giant (19 foot tall) pond entity which rose Brown and Dark Green from the surface towering. It pointed a finger at the woman, then slowly dissolved into disarray back into the pool. 

Well, what do we do with THAT? The authorities to whom this was reported seemed to think that the witness was reporting what she believed, but naturally they could NOT believe it. Having no explanation, the story has been written off as "imagination." Talk about a claim needing a good investigator!!
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F. Kerry, Ireland: This is a case from the "recent" Fairy Census conducted by Simon Young. For me it is one of the better incidents in the Census. The case is very earnestly told by the son of the person who was the primary witness. The father was a young man of 15 when he was deeply engrossed in reading a book. Looking up, towards the local abbey, he saw three little men, appearing like classic leprechauns. Two of them were having a "boisterous" but friendly wrestling match over the possession of a bag. The third was older, and stood watching the laughing twosome. this person turned ultimately and glanced at the witness. As their eyes locked, everything just disappeared. The Little People were dressed in green and brown monkish habits tied around the waist. They were about four foot tall. Fifteen years later, the witness returned to the site with his mother and saw the older "leprechaun" again. This time the glimpsing was quite brief. 

The case would be pretty good if it had more than a long distance e-letter to substantiate it. The "action" involved is right on point as far as expectations are concerned, and the words of the writer are modest and sincere.  So, I like the case, but need faith about the provenance.
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 G1/G2. County Limerick, Ireland. This is an encounter that I stumbled upon two different times and forgot the first time I did. (More proof that this job is too big.) I drew a cartoon the first time, and apparently in too much of a hurry. When I came across the case again, it dawned on me that the actual words did NOT say that the Little People had caps on their heads (almost all the ones I'd just logged had headgear.) Also the gnomish characters were described as having "hard, hairy faces." So I tried again. I'm talking about this here to warn everyone about how my enthusiasm didn't always help with the patience needed to get the details right.

The case is of a young man who met a fairy along a rural road, and no one believed him. He went back to the spot and saw the fairy again. Still no one believed. The next day he went out again, and saw two more. Emboldened by then, he walked up to the little men and offered his hand to one, which was taken. He began to walk off, but the Little People saw his friends spying from the bushes and immediately disappeared. 

This could have been a socko case, because hidden in it is the rare multiple witness factor --- but no one interviewed anyone but the primary claimant. When added to that is the fact that this is only a news story without nearly enough grounding in the event.
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H and I. Both of these cases are from MacManus and are therefore Golden. Unfortunately, though golden they probably don't involve the Fairy Folk. One case is from Edenderry, Ireland in 1901, and the other from Killeaden, Ireland in 1939. Both cases have within them strange forbidding figures in black robes.  In the Edenderry incident, four young people walking along low Irish hills and fields saw a group of black robed figures standing in a facing circle absolutely immobile in a field. Within that circle there was some sort of black box. As the young people stood silently staring, the owner of the field and a farm hand walked into the field nearly on a collision course with the circle. The witnesses began to back away, but the farmer and worker passed right by the black robed circle as if they couldn't see them directly in their line of sight. 
The young people retreated but when looking back, the farmer and hand still showed no sign of awareness but the circle had translocated to a different spot without changing form. The youngsters ran further, and then saw the same immobile circle in a field further on. At no time was there any movement of these figures. 

In the Killeaden case, a personal friend of MacManus and a second adult had finished work and began a four mile walk to their homes in the late evening. As they approached a crossing point between an old pathway and the road they were walking, they saw three tall figures clad all in long black robes. these three figures stood in a close triangle almost touching one another. They were completely immobile, arms rigidly at their sides and heads similarly bowed. The two witnesses were afraid due to the uncanny sight, but moved past them as far away as possible. They then split up going to their separate homes. As the friend hurried safely home, the prime witness neared his own house. To his terror, there, just at the gate to his home path, stood the three black cloaked figures in their triangle. Knowing that they could not possibly have beaten him there by normal means just made this worse. Reaching for all the courage he possessed, he ran wildly by them to his door. They again never moved.

These two things very likely happened, but WHAT happened? there is no feeling here of a Little People experience. I think that the reports are real but more "ghost" than "fairy." The Olde Culture believed that ghosts and fairies were two entirely separate things. What form of the Ghost World these things belong to, and what-the-heck they might portend are facts beyond my ken, but I place these cases into a different category. 
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So, today I'll build my house using "B" as a foundationstone, and keep a few of the others as possible decoration later. As to the blog: the next will complete Leprecat three. I'm trying to speed up case numbers-wise. Why? I think that I must put this information out there for "duty" reasons, but at the same time, I know that there are probably only twenty people in the internet world who actually want to read this stuff.

So as not to bore too many people to death, I'll try to get this done as quickly as I can --- maybe in a month or so. 

Till next one. 

Saturday, April 18, 2020

Goodbye to leprecat one and two


                    Goodbye to LEPRECAT One and Two

The first two volumes have many more cases within them, but the ones included in past posts are sort of filtered for quality plus enough detail to make a cartoon. But it is time to go on to the third volume and push towards modern times.

  Four new ones to begin .... 

1. Foxford, Ireland. 1920s. This is a good one. It is a Diarmuid MacManus case, And it is one of those wherein MacManus knew the reporting witness personally. This witness was a medical doctor and a military officer during WWI. MacManus described him as a "man of intelligence and integrity." (Oh what I would do to have had people like Diarmuid MacManus doing all of these better detail cases. If we had been that lucky, we'd be VERY sure of the amount of reality in this field of mystery.) 

The Case: two boys had finished an afternoon of swimming in an isolated smallish pond near the Ox Mountains. They were crossing a field when they approached a large boulder. One of the witnesses saw movement near the boulder. The other thought he must have imagined it. They, however, decided to investigate anyway. Rounding the boulder, they were confronted by a little (4 foot tall) man. He had a black cap, black shiny material clothes (like satin or silk), a flat face overgrown with curly brown whiskers. He looked fairly old. He stood facing them with a friendly-seeming grin. Thinking that this was a "leprechaun", the boys got very scared and ran away as fast as possible. 
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2. Cranagh, Ireland. 1924. This is another MacManus case so it's another good one. the credibility here is, as usual, that MacManus knew the witness personally. The witness is a nurse, who was living on her family's farm when the incident took place. 


Her brothers weren't available on this day, so as was standard in those good old days, the daughter of the house went out to the fields to round up the family's cows. The cows were far afield near a nearby mountain. The cows were well behaved and as she opened the gate, they began to wander out. The more distantly dispersed group contained her favorite cow, a grey color animal. When she approached a fairy appeared. He was four and a half foot tall (about her own size), and looked young. He wore a black cap and a close-fitting red coat over buff trousers. He carried a switch of "sally" and touched her cow with it as he passed. He glanced at the girl, then walked to a ditch and simply disappeared into its bank. She told her story at home, but her family refused to believe her.
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3. Chicago, IL. 1925. I believe that this is also a good case, since the informant here was a close personal friend (since deceased.) However, it was not my friend who was the witness, but his Mother --- he insisted that she told him this story multiple times and it never varied. If you knew my friend, you'd buy this case as well --- he was a tough sell on these mysteries, exasperatingly resistant in his willingness to affirm nearly anything in these fields. But he affirmed this.

When his mother was a young girl, she used to be ill quite a lot, much to her own mother's disappointment. This day she was wanting her mother to allow her to retire to her mother's bed, so she could rest. Her mother reluctantly agreed (she was a neat freak and didn't like the bedroom messed.) Once sitting on the bed, she was looking at the upper shelving area which was mounted all around the upper part of the room. There were boxes all over these shelves, but too high so that, as a young girl, she couldn't reach up to them. She noticed some movement up there, and worried that some animal had gotten in. Then she heard laughter and little men, about a foot and a half high appeared on the shelves. 

They were dressed all in green, and frolicked. Scampering and messing about and jabbering away in words she could not understand. they were so comical that she began to laugh, and her mother heard her, and stormed in. Accusing the girl of faking illness, she ran her out, despite protests. Her tale of the little men was of course disbelieved. 

The next day she was still sick, and was reluctantly allowed back in the bedroom to rest. Out the little men came again with all their antics. this time even more raucous. The girl begged them to be quiet, but their leader said to her:" If we leave now, we will never come back." The little men were so active this time that the shelved boxes were getting into serious disarray, knocked and jumbled all about. Finally the mother returned (of course just missing the disappearing little people.) She was incensed at her daughter, but couldn't explain how her daughter could have reached the high shelves were all the disarray now existed. (One wonders if the little people were making some kind of statement as the box in which the mother's favorite hat was kept was particularly battered and the hat bashed in. Despite the impossibility of reaching those shelves, the girl was punished anyway by her puzzled mother. 
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4. Portuguese East Africa, 1927. This one I can't say much about. The reason for that is not so much the witnesses (as these stories came to me via the publications of the major figure in the field of Cryptozoology, Bernard Heuvelmans, and thereby would have been carefully selected by him), but because of the type of sightings that we have here are in a type of biological setting that makes for too easy alternatives. We are looking at monkey-like creatures seen in the continent which is full of monkeys and apes. But --- let us see.


One of our main sightings comes from "tourists" on a boat cruising along the "Portuguese East Africa" (Mozambique) coast. I am not sure exactly where along this extensive stretch that they were. 

The witness' tale:
 "In 1927 I was with my wife coasting Portuguese East Africa in a Japanese cargo boat. We were sufficiently near to land to see objects clearly with a glass of twelve magnifications. There was a sloping beach with light bush above upon which several dozen baboons where hunting for and picking up shell fish of crabs, to judge by their movements. Two pure white baboons were amongst them. These are very rare but I had heard of them previously. As we watched, two little brown men walked together out of the bush and down amongst the baboons. They were certainly not any known monkey and yet they must have been akin or they would have disturbed the baboons. They were too far away to be seen in great detail, but these small human-like animals were probably between four and five feet tall, quite upright and graceful in figure. At the time I was thrilled as they were quite evidently no beast of which I had heard or read. Later a friend and big game hunter told me he was in Portuguese East Africa with his wife and three other hunters, and saw mother, father and child, of apparently similar animal species, walk across the further side of a bush clearing. The natives loudly forbade him to shoot."


Very interesting of course. But what about simple primates? There are not supposed to be any chimps nor gorillas there, but one supposes that some kind of escapees are possible.

To the right is a picture of the major baboon species in the neighborhood. Could a color anomaly explain browner baboons among the others? Do baboons ever stand upright? They ARE pretty BIG though. 

The witness says that they were too far away to be seen in any detail. Well, that's a bit of a problem for me --- at least for this specific report. 

I'm going to put it in the gray basket --- not enough "strangeness" for me.

Here is another report from elsewhere in Africa:
    "Some years ago I was sent on an official lion-hunt in this area (the Ussure and Simibit forests on the western side of the Wembare plains) and, while waiting in a forest glade for a man-eater, I saw two small, brown, furry creatures come from dense forest on one side of the glade and disappear into the thickets on the other. They were like little men, about 4 feet high, walking upright, but clad in russet hair. The native hunter with me gazed in mingled fear and amazement. They were, he said, agogwe, the little furry men whom one does not see once in a lifetime." 

Well, sort of the same problem for me. Chimps? Bonopos? Maybe little strange homonid beings or what? 

This last report is one I like a bit better. 



The location (biological environment) is still rife with anthropoid alternatives, but it is properly legendary being so close to Mt Kenya. But mainly THIS tale includes a long tradition of sightings at a specific site with a bunch of diminutive rock-throwers. 

{shrugs} OK. Today's bunch: three real good ones and a maybe. 

Not bad. I'll take that every time.