LEPRECAT SIX: the 1970s. For no known reasons (to me anyway) the 1970s were richer in total numbers of Little People reports than the sixties. Some of this MIGHT have been from UFO research, in which field "everybody" was seeing humanoid entities whether there was a good UFO around or not. Anyway, I'll start with a first dozen, and we can go from there.
The above shows a large variety of entity types, not all of which seem obviously Faery in nature. BUT --- since it's all utterly mysterious, who knows if we are dealing with Faery, UFOs, apparitions or some unthought of weirdness.
Color code: pink/salmon --- good researched case. genuine possibility for Faery.
yellow/gold --- pretty strong credibility. odd entities. But not "normals."
green --- lacking desired credibility, but very possibly Faery.
violet --- two really strange things, but I think not Faery.
light violet --- things probably leaning to the apparitional.
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CASE 1: Springfield, IL. 1973. This is a John Timmerman case, which means that you have a personal interview and a permanent record on tape to listen to. The "personal-ness" of this sort of evidence gets you as close as you can to being with the witness yourself. (It also helps me that I knew John so well in person.) The encounter is not "classic fairy" but it isn't much like anything else.
The witness lived in a rural setting and had a dog which she cared for. She had a pattern to her life, and it was that time in the evening to go outside and retrieve the dog's water pan. She was a tough country person and this was the time for bringing in the water pan, and, by gum, that's what she was going to do. Things went normally for the first several feet of the trip (although a light moved by high in the sky), {typical effort to try to cram a UFO in here somewhere}, but then, beside her, hanging/floating in the air, was a little man. He was about a foot away and a foot off the ground.
This odd person was about four foot tall and dressed all in close-fitting black. Only his face showed. The outfit seemed one-piece, and his toes seemed pointed. His face had a pallor to it, and he generally scared the hell out of the witness. But she refused to show it.
"He looked over at me and I was scared. And I thought, well, I've got to get that water pan; I've got to get it. Because I needed it. Well, he had a smirk smile on his face and he had a different color on his face than we have, and he kept giving me that look, but anyway I kept on going. When I reached for that water pan, he just disappeared just like that ... in thin air; I don't know where he went."
The floating-pacing-staring lasted a minute or slightly less, but quite a bit of time in the witness' eyes. She was being stared at all the way and felt uncomfortable if not menaced.
I can't help it; I love this case. The witness is as down-home simple as you can get, and John did the perfect-gentleman interview. What WAS this? This is "interactive" and doesn't feel apparitional. There is no good UFO connection, nor does the being fit well with other such claims in that field. The action here is very like the meddling tricksters that we run into in our stories, so that is "who" I'm going with. The size is in our common range even if the clothing is idiosyncratic (though we get dark cloaked weirdos now and then.)
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CASE 2: Albany, OH. 1973. This is another incident that I'm 99% sure happened, because the investigator is another good friend, former CUFOS treasurer, George Eberhart, who is probably the most knowledgeable encyclopedic cryptozoologist in the world. Translation: George is really smart about this stuff. There is a line drawing of the entity for this case, which I've re-done. I like the way it turned out (more so than my typical cartoons) so I'm featuring it here. (the entity is unique and therefore the illustration helps.)
The encounter has a prequel: The witness was returning home after a night class. She saw a ghostly lightform about four foot in size floating about some three football fields away. Then a BOL sailed into the area. It was a big one, about 20 feet in diameter. It bounced about, seeming to possibly be interested in her. That scared her, but the thing retreated into a field and faded out. She continued on to her house trailer, saw her husband, and began to make supper. Her husband went outside leaving the door ajar. That's when she had her encounter.
One time she turned and saw a small two and a half foot tall being or thing peering around the edge of their door. It was as if a bunch of aqua-colored electricity had formed into (roughly) a human shape. "It was like the Electric man" (then popular on electrical co-op signs.) It had a sort-of face, with spiky discharge like things emerging. There were eyes and a mouth and maybe a nose. It had stumpy arms. It didn't try to communicate, just stared for maybe ten seconds. Its solidity was such that the witness felt that she could almost see through it. "It didn't look like a monster ... it looked like a friendly little thing." Then it just disappeared back behind the door.
George is a careful person, so his report will be pretty good. But what the heck is it about? Once again, this has no real UFO connections historically or even at that moment. It doesn't therefore feel UFO to me. It isn't like apparitional figures either, nor does it resemble other past Earthly objects/lifeforms which one might imagine trapped in some visionary playback filmstrip from old times. It seems wedged between some electrostatic weirdness and some Will O' the Wisp Faeryworld manifestation. Having a "personality" feature, I'm not happily going for some misinterpreted Ball Lightning (these sorts of things don't act at all like physics textbook ball lightning anyway, so I wish that red herring would stop being floated. If skeptics want to speculate on a distant cousin of ball lightning [currently totally unexplained] which is low energy density and yet long time persistent [like Allen Hynek's hoped for "nocturnal meandering lights"], then OK --- humbly toss that out there.)
So, where am I? Boggled of course. I'm sort of "in" for a "living" creature of some paranormal kind, but, if Faery in nature, it's almost never encountered. It's nothing like water or ground folklore entities. What do "salamanders" look like? What do "sylphs"? It doesn't seem to have a category at all. ... but it seems to have been real. Did the witness just make it up? (this is the classic way to get rid of an outlier.) If she had, I think that George would have suspected so.
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CASE 3: Wauwatosa, WI. 1975. I haven't a close friend in this game. But, the newspaper reporter who covered the incident seems to have done a much better than usual job, and the article report is substantial and full of quotes. The couple reporting the encounter are an older husband and wife (c. ages 60) who called in the police promptly after the incident. The comfort zone on this is pretty good, except that the policeman didn't take them seriously and refused to write up the "complaint." The couple remained in touch with the police investigation for several days after. The entities involved here are not as weird as the little electric man, but are definitely not classic gnomes either (even though one of the witnesses used the word "gnome" in trying to describe them.) So, do I write the report off because the police didn't want to put in writing something that they did not understand at all, or give the witnesses a break because they seemed quite earnest in their interest? I'm cutting them some slack. (to start)
A husband and wife are in their home when the doorbell rings. The date is November the 10th (a fact which might or might not be of significance.) the wife went to answer but peeked through the window first. She saw a "man" (who had apparently stepped back from the door to the sidewalk) who looked strange. She opened the door, but locked the intervening screen. She asked "Yes?" twice with no response. Her husband then showed up, looked at the weird appearance, and said: "What the hell is this? Something left over from trick or treat?" He unlocked and opened the screen door, ready to do something "masculine", but his wife grabbed his suspenders and pulled him back.
The being was roughly normal sized, but with shocking facial features. It was like an ugly "gnome"with a very tiny mouth hole, and a face liked smoked meat with deep grooves. Its hair was scraggly, and peeked out beneath a narrow brimmed hat. The chin was pointed. The thing carried a five foot long white cane held in its left hand, which it tapped in three time intervals. Each tapping seemed to coincide with the thing floating (three inches off the ground) away from the house door. The couple during this time noticed four other essentially identical beings further out in the street. The motions away were in little looping jumps a la astronauts on the Moon. The witnesses went back inside as the original being raised a hand with fingers slightly like claws. Intention could not be read into this, but they were not unhappy to see the group go.
OK. What is this? When I look closely at the descriptions here, and given that it wasn't that far past Halloween, I'd spend little interest on this if it wasn't for one bit of high strangeness --- the floating above the ground and looping motion. I'm not sure that the ugly looks on a normal sized being can't be explained by make-up and masks. The certainty of the witnesses that the faces were inhuman "could" be explained by shock and excitement. But the floating above the surface --- that's the kicker. Such a phenomenon is not fake-able for a Halloween prank. So, for me, the incident turns on this one claim.
If the phenomenology is as described, then we have a case which could be apparitional or perhaps some other paranormality. The being seemed very interaction-oriented. Most apparitions that are of unknown personalities are not particularly interaction-oriented. So I lean towards something else. This seems to me to be either a two-person error or something Boggart-like from the fairy world. There ARE menacing uglys (and even friendly ones) from that alleged area of reality. I'd LIKE to side with two normal seemingly earnest witnesses who reported to police immediately. But I don't know WHAT I'm siding with.
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CASE 4: I'm going to take these four "greenies" together (that is in briefer description.) They are all intriguing and three of the four are classic gnomish encounters. They lack an investigation (mostly) but could well be good. the fourth "green" case is a bit different but has for me similar intrigue.
4A: Unnamed forest area, USA. 1971 (from About.com website). Witness looks out window to view nature as was his habit. Saw a little gnome. Brown tightly curled hair with hat. Two foot tall. Walked about as if floating (like anti-gravity.) When talking about this later with an older brother, the brother admitted that he too had seen the same or similar entity when he was a child, but this time inside the house.
4B: Lexington, MA. 1974. (from an article in FATE Magazine.) Two girlfriends were walking to their high school. Off to their left is a patch of weeds within which is sitting a little man who looked to them like a leprechaun. The creature was only ten inches tall. He was dressed only in green with a floppy hat. He carried a traditional large curved golden pipe. Both girls described him the same way. One of the two girls thought that she (with another friend) saw a group of fairies dancing among flowers in a field in 1975. These creatures were very small, only five inches tall.
4C: near Liberty, NY. 1976. (a Ron Quinn radio call in case.) A sixty seven year old bird watcher was walking on a forest path, when he heard voices, shouting at one another as if in anger. He cautiously approached within about 100 feet and saw two little men, about two feet tall. The details were few: All green dress and floppy wrinkled hats. Each had a beard and were quite like gnomes. The two were wildly gesticulating when a third joined them, and all three began shouting and bumping into one another "like the Three Stooges." Shortly all three turned away and walked off.
4D: Middleburg, South Africa. 1972. (A "UFO report" from the Flying Saucer Review.) A husband and wife (he the senior local post office official) were at home watching a light hanging above a nearby mountain. They decided to go to the police station. While going there, they saw another light flash. Then there was nearby an "object" not described --- it sounds like it was a bright light, out of which stepped two small red men. These three foot tall entities were glowing bright red and had knapsacks on their backs. Each red man carried a bright light of some kind in his hand. As they seemed to be ready to approach, the entire lighted complex shut off like a light switch.
========================================================================= I don't find the remaining cases particularly interesting for this topic, but I'll mention one of them since it's a Bill Chalker case --- and that means a good investigator was involved. This is The MT. BUTLER, NSW 1972 incident. I don't believe that it has anything to do with Faery but it is indeed HIGH strangeness. In this event, a witness in the presence of others was confronted by a normal sized "monkish" entity. This monk came up to the primary witness and ENTERED the witness' body (!!!) After a time period of "possession" during which the witness was very ill at ease, a group of horses came near, and the entity jumped from the witness into one of the horses. Well, Wow. Pure Bible. Not much like Faery, though.
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What if any was our harvest in this lot? Honestly not much. The Timmerman case is a good encounter, but not classic fairy. There are three cases which look like classic fairy, but not strong enough credibility (though not negative either.) There are the good Eberhart and FSR South Africa cases, but they are not classic either.
When faced with such results, I'm a half-full sort of person. I look back at all the encounters we've perused from Leprecats 1-6 and say: sure, a lot of weak cases, but one by one we're putting together some higher grade ones. This isn't ufology. I can't hope for the abundance of powerhouse incidents with corresponding investigations. This is a much rawer albeit at least as fascinating subject. It's worth the work, hard as it is. I have the hope that somewhere in the British Isles there are people bringing the UFO investigating attitude to these occurrences. If there is, we'll see many more foundationstones laid.
There are several 70s cases to go, and then four more whole notebooks worth of Leprecat. It will be more low grade ore generally, but there will surely be gems.
Till next time.
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