BACK TO THE EARLY 1900s

        

         
       Back to the Early 1900s --- all the abnormal suspects

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Putney, UK. Early 20th century. A family had a house with a garden in Putney.  The boy of the house came running one day saying that he thought that there was a small man like a grunting pig in the house. This was a fat gnome looking very cross. When the mother went in the gnome wasn't there. A few days later she heard the same sound, but did not see the creature. A week or so later, she was putting out the light when the sound occurred again, and she saw the gnome awkwardly trying to climb up the window blind, slip and fall in a plump. The gnome then glared at the mother who began to laugh. The gnome then just disappeared. Sometime later still the daughter of the house thought that she saw the gnome sitting on the bedpost in a circle of light. It was described as having a long cloak and a white beard. 

This might be a good case. The mother was also the secretary of the early British Fairy Investigation society. She had loyalty to that group. It's been my experience that that means something to most people. 

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Cookham Dean, Berkshire, UK. 1916. Inspired by a newspaper letter wherein the writer told of his encounter with a fairy, a second reader wrote in to tell what was said to be a similar story. In this case the witness had taken a basket to gather blackberries. The witness (gender unnamed) wasn't having much luck until a particularly robust bush was spotted with large berries. This bush was doubly odd in that it stood alone away from the others. Going over there the picking was plentiful until finally all the easy ones were in the basket and the witness was struggling with the branches trying to get at the remainder. During this tugging, the bush seemed to shimmer. The branches then parted and from the center of it emerged a lean brown small man, all dressed in brown and wearing a pointed hat and having a scraggly beard. 

The gnome was extra odd in that he was solid only to the waist but below he was only half visible --- semi-transparent and shadowy. He dodged the witness "like lightning" and then, before the eyes "popped" out of existence or at least sight. The story is told with a proper amount of detail but with no glamorous addition. Good case? Who knows?

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Wandsworth (what a name for a fairy story!!) London area, UK. Early 1900s. This is a story from Diarmuid MacManus. As I rate him as perhaps THE best investigator reporter of such cases, I include this incident despite its brevity. No MacManus would have meant that I'd have just filed it away. My reason for this "bias" is that all of the cases in MacManus' book (THE MIDDLE KINGDOM) are cases involving people that he personally knew or knew others very close to them. This is worth you knowing, as it's a check for you for or against my own opinions.

This was the case of a young girl who was training to be able to dance.  She was practicing on her own in her home's drawing room, when she saw a little man looking at her. He was about two feet tall or less, and was sitting in the fireplace. He was dressed all in green with a red sugarlump hat. The little girl was delighted and went over to him to pick him up, like she would a doll. He smiled at her and nodded. Then just disappeared. 

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Wigan, UK early 1900s. The witness wrote the newspaper John O'London Weekly to give this brief report: "When I reached my teens, on many occasions I kept tryst with a lovely fairy in a bower of wild roses near my home. Looking back at it now it seems I was always aware of that fairy in that leafy nook. She was usually a few feet from the ground, in shining pink raiment, with long golden tresses, and always in a pink aura. The fairy never stayed long in my presence, but it seemed quite natural to me that she should be there." 

This report is extremely brief as you see, but detailed enough to pay a little attention to, even if one cannot give it that much credit. I note a few things that are somewhat different from the stories that we've been reading: The fairy is a "she." She is floating in the air by a flowering bush. She is apparently quite small (let's give her a foot maximum --- she's prominently obvious and associated with a sizable plant and floating "three" feet up near it). She STILL doesn't have wings, but merely an "aura." If she was a bit smaller and winged she'd be Tinkerbell, but she's not there yet. 

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Wigan again. early 1900s. This was the same witness as above. It's a similarly brief tale. Here she tells of (as a young girl) playing in a daisy field and seeing a group of fairies dancing. Again they were floating three feet in the air above the flowers. Seven or eight in a group, they circle-danced. They must have had some significant size, as she could see their facial features well, remarking upon their "puckish grins." They were dressed in brown with long pointed caps. Unlike our previous cases they were described as thin with pointed feet. 

Again, who knows what can be credited here. But these fairies float without wings and they still circle dance even in the air. Any UFO investigation of such a report would have tried to assess the impressionability of the witness, but as usual with fairy cases there is none of that.

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Modest reflections: these five cases have the feeling of entities in the foot to foot and a half height range. This is short for our previous set of examples. 23 of those cases previously "cartooned" were in the small child range (let's say three feet.) Three were in the four foot range, and three "norms." There were just two of the foot and a half cases --- some troopers and a fairy queen. There was one Louisiana giant and one Northern Ireland giant and a bunch of micro-six-inch ape/boggarts terrifying a pony. I don't believe that early 20th century will be a dramatic turning point just yet, but let's soldier on next time to see what we can see. ... and, at least in my set up to now, there are still no wings.