FAIRIES IN THE 70s, too?

We're battling with a difficult subject. The Gold from the rough ore is rare. But we find some now and then. The consequences of uncovering that such a non-textbook reality exists and has done so all along should be important to our view of our existence. So ... on that not really overstated opening remark ... let's go down to the mountainside creek bed and pan for nuggets awhile. There is at least one "gem" today, and (I intuit) at least a half dozen others. ... and sure, Mr. Scientist out there, we're not "proving" anything. Instead let's just enjoy letting some fresh air into those old gray dismally un-alive spaces.

 The crude version of the color code is this: I like the orange; I like the yellow and the green almost as much with some variations within the group; I'm bolixed by the purple, and wonder if the pink is reported correctly. The white is weak. And then there's the Dover Demon --- was it even a thing? (I was disappointed initially with the information quality on the general net about this (given it's publicity). But I have my own file somewhere which I haven't seen for a while, so ... Right now I've decided to just start writing about the others, and when finished, go back to the reports and make up some kind of opinion on this later --- so, at this moment, consider it a blank slate.) Let's start with The King:

WOLLATON PARK, Nottingham. 1979. Kids --- but a lot of them, and quick reporting to and questioning (even separated) by adults, and then continued questioning in later days --- plus what looks to be an independent support for the claims. Credibility: pretty good. 

THE ACTION: this takes place in a large park grounds, and you can look at some of it below.

Four kids were playing near a swampy area in the park near dusk. (there might have been a fifth child (these kids were ages 8 to 10) as a later report came in about this event.) While there, the kids were excited by the appearance of upwards of 60 little men, described like classic gnomes. These little men were whizzing about the woods in miniature cars; the cars apparently not touching the ground, but following the park paths. 

The little gnomes were apparently having a blast, joyfully blitzing about two to a car, seemingly chasing and racing. The kids tried chasing also, but could never get close enough to touch them. The little men looked quite a bit like my original drawing above, which is based on a drawing by one of the students. The kids watched (joyfully for them, too) for 15 minutes. The beings were about two feet tall. The kids told their parents and then their teacher, who "interviewed" them separately and received coherent stories. 

These are two of the Leprecat pages for this case. Alongside the drawing is a report that came into Simon Young for his Fairy Census (he actually received several.) This addendum to the regular Wollaton seems to come from a fifth person (age 13 or 14) who was also enjoying the park that day,  sitting in a tree at the time. His descriptions correlate with the other children's (whom he did not know.) Another letter to the census reported a second late 70s case of a Little Man (one and a half foot tall) which appeared as a very bright white light formed like a human. 

You and I are not of the same explorative "minds" almost certainly. So you probably disagree. But for me this is a really good case in support of the existence of gnomic creatures which might still manifest in our modern world. The only thing that I've ever experienced which gives me the feel of the "action" here is watching landscape guys on fast lawn mowing mini-tractors, having a blast zipping over slopes of low hills. But the rest of this is nothing like any of that. 

On the more "fun" side, I wonder about the little cars --- instead of horse-and-carriage which were the standard format in older times. 
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The other probable Good One: DULUTH, MN. 1979. This case was not formally reported for many years, but when it was, it was reported to a UFO organization in Minnesota, and by the original witness. So it got a UFO investigation interview. That report, unlike most fairy materials available, was several pages long --- this sort of thing is VERY welcome, even if the other material doesn't seem greatly germane. This witness by the way was a lady who regularly kept a journal. She had kept a record of this incident and still had it. 

The evening was around dusk, and she and her friend were driving back from a bridal shower. They had the lights on for added security as they drove. Up ahead of them they saw three persons (or so they thought) who seemed to be on bikes of some kind because they were rapidly zig-zagging from side to side on the road. The reporting witness told her friend that she hoped that these "kids" were paying attention, because their car was catching up. As their car closed the gap, two of the beings (who now were seen as not having bikes at all, but flying down the highway a few feet off the ground) took a sharp left over the roadside ditch and "parked" in the field. The third stayed in the road "dead center to our right headlight." The driver came to a stop, and they stared at the being. 

This thing was four foot tall. Whereas arms and legs were sort of proportional to the torso, the head was huge, maybe 18 inches in diameter. wrinkles all over the face, small slit for a mouth, no hair on head. It was the feeling of the witness that the creatures did not have clothes, but were rather like a featureless clay with little color. The witnesses noted that the one in the road showed no sign of moving aside, so the driver slowly inched by it (nearly causing the passenger seat witness to faint) and drove off as fast as possible. The witnesses told their encounter to their family members and friends, but fear of a bad reception made them not report to the police. 
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The "Yellow" Cases:

East Hull, UK. 1977. This is an incident reported in Fortean Times. 

An Army pc was watching an unusual fog lying across some recreational fields sometime after midnight. He was worried that perhaps it was caused by a fire. As he moved into the field, he saw within the fog cloud, three figures. They were one male and two females dressed in mediaeval clothing. The figures were dancing in a circle, one arm raised as if they were doing an old revel around a maypole, although no such pole was visible. He had a very good look at these three as he grew close, but at a distance of 50 feet, the entirety of the action vanished. This so startled the witness that he was rattled and ran back to where his car was parked and drove off. Once calming down, he reported the incident to his sergeant. The story was passed on to the press with the statement that the witness planned to return to that field the next day and further investigate, but the press heard nothing more. 

Well, the witness seems earnest at least. The event likely happened at least somewhat as he said. The experience falls between the apparitional and Faery --- faery is in play because we have these normal to near normal sized persons in stories of fairy fairs and revels which then vanish. It is also of course reminiscent of "time slip" type mediaeval replays of the past. Fairy is also in play here because the competitor (apparitions) often have histories of being known as places of hauntings, and there is no mention of such here. So, as usual, who knows? We DO know that the old people distinguished "philosophically" quite strongly between Faery and Apparition, asserting that the two were NOT related things. 
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Corozal, Puerto Rico. 1977. This is a report from Flying Saucer Review.

An elderly farmer was just sitting and relaxing during a quiet mid-afternoon period, when he heard what sounded like a flash of lightening. A long blue upright "candle" of light appeared. The thing slowly approached making a growing sound. Once beside him, it settled and turned into a little dwarf. (Yep. THAT sure happens a lot.) Three foot tall. Long pointy ears. Round ugly face. Nose with big nostrils, but a small mouth despite big lips. His skin-tone was "muddy" and he wore a jacket with a little tie. 

He had something hanging around his neck, which wasn't a stethoscope, but he came over to the witness and began using it like a doctor would one. He "checked" feet, knees, chest, back, ears, temples, and then looked inside the witness' mouth. Apparently satisfied with his "work", he then jumped back, announced that he was an extraterrestrial, and that he thought that Puerto Rico was a very nice place. Then, making the same noise that the blue candle had made, he zoomed off through the branches of an avocado tree and was gone. 

Weird as all that was, it was reported quickly and frankly and even got to the FSR fast. And again, even as weird as that was, it's in the neighborhood of Faery Trickster goofing around behavior. One COULD choose to believe the Little Gnome that he was extraterrestrial, but he sure doesn't look like it, is far more lively and interactive, and physical beyond apparitions. So the two best guesses here are: liar vs Faery Gnome Trickster. 
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There are four "greens" which interest me. Three of these are reports coming into Simon Young's Fairy Census, which I have to judge on their narrative quality, details, "humility", etc alone (since as said before, there are no investigations.) These three cases pass muster as to what we can so judge. The fourth case is a Ron Quinn case, which is only slightly better off in that he talked to the witness though not face-to-face. But I do like them. They "fit" both as to rough pattern and as to intuitive "feel." So, flawed as that is, here in brief they are: 

A. Cornwall, UK. 1970s. A young teenage girl was vacationing in Cornwall (near Polperro) and she and her family were out on a rural path with unkempt hedges to either side. She was gamboling on just ahead of the rest. There, by the side of the path sat a gnome. The being had all the classic features. It was just over a foot tall, and had a "nut-brown, wizened face", with a smirking grin on it. She got a very good look at him. 

" He had a mossy brown beard and dark brown shining eyes. He was wearing a peaked hat (brown) and a shiny jacket and trousers in shades of brown and ochre. I'd say he was about twelve to fourteen inches tall. .... Looked like a gnome, I suppose .... natural wood/leaf colors. Wearing a soft pointed hat that wasn't sticking up - the 'point' rested on his shoulder; a brown jacket and brown trousers. The material looked shiny - not wet, just like shiny old leather, I think. I can't remember shoes." 

It's impossible for me to transmit this, but this sort of a description (in my history of reading UFO witness reports) is about as good as it gets --- detailed; not overly elaborated; with a witness "humility" about what she could or could not remember about the encounter. Bells of GOOD CASE are ringing loudly. But still there was no face-to-face, so I must be conservative.

The end of the encounter was equally wonderful. As the witness stood stunned, the gnome cocked his head ("cheekily") then turned his back on her and "melted/transmogrified?" into an old tree stump. (Uhhhhh !!!!!! Yow). Your present editor here (while also being stunned) wonders if our cheeky gnome was merely (merely, hah!) sitting in front of that stump and faded back into the Faery "realm/dimension" rather than transmogrifying. 

The witness' reflective response to this whole affair is also valuable to hear: "It was a breathtaking experience. ... I really believed I had witnessed a spirit of nature, or a gnome, or something  but I also felt stupid. Like a trick had been played on me, and I had fallen for it. I felt like the joke was on me and the gnome was having a laugh about it." 

Given my growing views on the core area of this phenomenon, these remarks are so coherent with them that they dangerously accentuate my prejudices. So I say to myself: OK. You LOVE this case. But DANGER my friend. Don't get too cocky. 

... but it's hard not to.
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B. County Wicklow, Ireland. 1970s. As lengthy as the previous case was, this one is brief. Fortunately the correspondent didn't waste words uselessly, so there is just enough here to include it. 

Three teenage girls were walking  in rural Wicklow in fields which contained areas of thick gorse. On top of that gorse (literally skipping across the tops of the plants in denial of gravity) was a "pixie" dancing. This was no tinkerbell --- no wings and about three foot tall (the size of a five to six year old child.) Dress is not described except to say that it was "traditional pixie dress including a tall pointed hat." 

Oh for an investigator to draw the details of THIS out!
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C. Yorkshire, UK. 1970s. Two young girls were walking near the woods which were bordered by a very large stream (almost a "small river" in size.)  Out in that mini-river was a small island (if we threw in a misty fog, we could say that we've been here before.) Walking by, they saw on the island a group of ponies. "Shetland Ponies" they seemed. But the difference was that they weren't the correct colors for proper ponies. They were Red ... Green ... Lilac ... etc. (Almost as if The Horse of a Different Color in the OZ books had settled down here and created a herd of
colored baby horses.) The ponies were peacefully eating some plants that looked like cabbages. The witnesses stared for a while, but nothing changed. So they walked on to the next farm. On their way back, the ponies were gone.  

Well, that's different ... and cute ... and simply, humbly told (the witness asks that anyone reading her story who had anything similar please let her know.) 
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 D. Catskill Mts, NY. 1977.  A correspondent to Ron Quinn tells him about another "slippage" between worlds in this incident. This encounter occurred to a frequent hiker, who was extremely familiar with the mountainous country within which he was hiking that day in June 1977. Our witness was in the far end of the western Catskills with his truck parked along an overgrown dirt road that was just a path. He got out and began hiking into the woods. 


About a hundred yards in, he passed a large rock formation and coincidentally felt some kind of tingling in his body. He ignored it as it quickly passed. As he kept on, he noted that the weather was different (sunny not overcast). Oh well, weather changes. But other things were subtly different: the forest seemed greener than he remembered. And the plants seemed a bit different too, even to the point that some of them were species that he hadn't noticed in this forest before. Now the area seemed more "open" than it should have been from memory, and he saw a large canyon, strange to him. He decided that he was lost. 


He walked on up the narrow bed of that canyon, and several yards in began to hear music ahead. (Uh Oh.) Sneaking up now, as he peered around the corner of some rocks, he saw "four little men playing haunting music on flutes." They were sitting on boulders near a little waterfall while a fifth person was filling a water jug at the stream. Our witness was shocked but kept his head. He dragged his camera out of his backpack and shot several pictures. (Now here's where we needed an investigator: the witness does not describe the Little People except in those words. BOO!!) After the jug is filled and the flutes go silent, the five "little guys" walk off away from the witness and are gone.


Attempting now to get un-lost, he began trying to retrace steps. It took him about an hour to regain sight of the truck. Coincidentally, he felt another tingling, a subtle change in the vegetation, and the sky was now overcast "again". He noted that his watch, though seeming to be working fine, had apparently malfunctioned as it had clocked his three hour trip at only thirty minutes. Worse than that, back home (where even his wife wouldn't believe him) the photos in the camera all turned out perfectly EXCEPT for the little guys photos. Those pictures were nothing but foggy shadows. 


Intriguing stuff to say the least. Badly need a UFO investigator-type interview and follow-up here. Who is the witness personally? (He is named in the book), and what kind of guy is he? Did he report it to anyone other than his wife (and later Ron Quinn?) Have a responsible job? Background? Sounds like detective prying, yes, but how else can we get any real confidence for a rampantly anomalous tale such as this? 
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The remaining "green" case from the Fairy Census: Devon, UK. 1970s. A teenage witness who had just awakened in her bedroom. (there are big problems here already.) The case is very charming, but just-woke-up cases are dangerous. 

This is a teenage girl who woke up at midnight (if indeed she fully woke up or woke up at all --- that's the big question number one.) She felt that there was a profound silence (what is being called The OZ Effect, though we don't at all understand it.) She heard a "PING" as if an orchestral triangle had been struck, and with that a Ball of Light appeared from the bathroom. This BOL is not described (even surprisingly as to size.) I have been left with no way whatever to guess this. The BOL, and the fairy inside it, could have been anywhere from three feet (roughly the width of the doorway) to a half a foot (the dimension necessary to see any real detail of anything inside --- since the BOL did not come up close.) 

Inside the BOL was a form made up of very tiny stars of light. It was a female with long hair and beautiful wings --- not quite a tinkerbell this, as the form is made of points of light. She had a pretty face and pointed ears. Her eyes were silver-gray, and the wings were like butterflies down to the markings. They were effervescent white. The witness took this as an opportunity to make a wish would hopefully come true (she wished not to be bullied at school.) She then said "I don't believe in Fairies!" and the BOL popped like a soap bubble, and the experience was over. The witness admitted that she had seen fairies before "in meditations" with trees, but that they were not as pretty. 

As I said: LOTS of troubles with this case (particularly with the possibility of a hypnopompic state illusion by a young person who despite her comment DID believe in fairies and was having school girl stress.) BUT, it is a rare if unconventional claim of wings on a fairy, so I include it. 
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Remnants: 
X1 The case at Gateshead, UK. "1979." A possibly interesting tale, or pair of tales, but to my knowledge very poorly reported and likely off in dates by at least a decade. Little green-clad men digging on top of a haystack would be fun, but .... no "beef" in the case.

X2 The case of the large winged weirdos of Rowley Regis, UK. 1979. I can't even get a foothold on this thing. It doesn't fit anything. It's like some random recipe of ingredients picked out of a crazy hat and made into a story. Single witness, plus far outlier = ???? 

X3 The case from Dunn, NC. 1976. Little coke-bottle-sized man, but not described the same by two different witnesses at different times. Small footprints. No UFO. Two instances two weeks apart might not be same phenomenon. Young boy could be print-making culprit? Befuddled.

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LAST: The DOVER DEMON. Dover, MA. 1977. 

Above: The primary witness' drawing and my own redraw to add the peach coloration. 


The encounters are claimed to be three: all by teenagers. These occurred within a few days and to the different people. all encounters are brief, and the third was fuzzy as to details. But the first two cases seem to be vivid enough that if the tellers are telling true, we are dealing with a very anomalous set of experiences. There is little "action" in the encounters. The incident pictured above was of an immobile standing creature. It is the first encounter. The second encounter is confusing at first then there is a second look at the thing which looks similar to the above. These two witnesses described what appears to be the same extremely weird thing, and it is on appearance alone that these reports enter the realm of the inexplicable. The third report is a lot less sharply defined, but could well be of the creature as well. 


The being was about three and a half to four foot tall. Huge head with glowing eyes and no noticeable facial features. Spindly arms and legs with odd fingers and toes which could shape themselves around the surfaces of objects such as stones or tree trunks. Nothing well-known looks like this naturally. 

Some speculator thought that this might be a young moose seen in tough lighting conditions and reflecting headlights. We could imagine why someone might try to imagine this (due to the big sort of oval head and spindly legs) but the overall appearance would take a LOT of alteration to meet this explanation. The "odds" here seem to favor a true anomaly and NOT a UFO one nor an apparition. 

For me the biggest impact of the case came as soon as I looked at my file on it. Whereas most cases have single pages (or a couple if I'm lucky) this case file is twenty-some pages long. WHY? When I opened this file, I was suddenly back in true research land --- true investigations by a great investigator. The opening salvo in my file was an almost twenty page "monograph" by one of UFO's finest researchers, Walter Webb. (Walt had lots of help from to-be-famous cryptozoologist, Loren Coleman, who did the original interviews, Joe Nyman, and Ed Fogg.) The monograph is pure Walt. EVERYTHING is covered: interviews, character checks, weather conditions, police checks, alternate explanations, site visits, size measurements, time measurements etc etc ... thrown back into ufology's finest after the scrapping around with tiny bits that we get in Fairy incidents almost shook me. Without publishing Walt's monograph so you can read it, I can't convey how different this is to you. Just trust me; we are dealing with horribly inadequate reports generally. 

Walt ends up by discovering the Native American little people traditions of the area. He found that the local of-old Cree traditions  contained a being called Mannegishi: "Little people with round heads and no noses who live with only one purpose: to play jokes on travelers." 

Do we have a Mannegishi here? If the witness reports were of greater time extent and finer detail, I'd (with humble bow towards a UFOlogy legend) rate this encounter as a good (if not normal) entity of our presumed fairy world. 
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We didn't do badly this session. Nine of our sixteen are not bad at all. And we have The Great Wollaton to marvel at. I feel a bit more than Glass-half-full this time. As we go to the modern years, we might get thinner gruel, but let's plough ahead and then we shall see. 

Till next time stay safe and filled with wonder. We have good reason to feel that way.