SUMMA FAERYOLOGICA, part one

I suppose that the honest way to begin these last few posts is to simply admit that I'm prejudiced. I'd REALLY like this forbidden topic to have some "external reality" about it. That is: it is not we humans just making it all up, by whatever conscious or unconscious means our own anomalous minds are capable of. But I can't fool myself into thinking this or that without giving the quest a genuine try. The difference between reading Diarmuid MacManus and Charles de Lint is starkly clear to me. So, several years ago, stimulated by wonder and also the peculiar thought that some were pushing that my own favorite anomaly (UFOs) was "just" Faery in modern dress, I started that quest. 

The first thing that I noticed on this quest was that it wasn't going to be anywhere as orderly nor robust-in-credible encounters as searching out UFOs. For every investigated fairy incident there were probably a thousand such UFO incidents. Even if I admitted (as I did) that the proper way to compare the relative richness of credible information between the two would be to compare the fairy cases to UFO Close Encounters, the overabundance on the UFO side is still hundreds to one. But the path was through this forest, so why not just go and see what, if anything, was there? 

Was there a hypothesis to use as an intellectual clarifying guide? In UFOlogy, the proper hypothesis is this:
   
"Is there supporting evidence for the existence of advanced aerial technology in our atmosphere which exhibits characteristics beyond those of which we humans (Military, Scientists, et al) were capable of at the time of the incidents' occurrence?"

When one phrases the "UFO question" like that (note that there is no mention of aliens, extraterrestrials, nor any causal agency --- you have to add that into your own head if you want to), the serious UFO researcher can almost SHOUT out a robust "YES!!!" Is there any such Faery hypothesis like this? 

To create such a statement one would have to know at least something about that word "Faery" wouldn't one? And then one would have to take the tempting causal agencies out of the hypothetical research question. As, at least originally, a stone-ignorant rookie, I couldn't yet do that. 

           

The above pictures are a small part of what had to happen in order to attempt any slight comprehension of an anomalous field as complicated as UFOs. I had to really immerse for a long time to even hope for any clarity. As I said, the great quality of the cases helped me make little progress, but it was the immersion in the literature that --- well, this isn't "scientific", but when you do that, you begin to get an intuitive feeling for the whatever-it-is. So, particularly here in the pursuit of Faery, my only real hope for an approach was to just dive into all of the literature and hope for the intuitions to come. So, this I did. 

By the way, as soon as I got really into the readings, the most powerful impression that anyone should get (in my opinion) is that it is flat clear to the reader when one is reading a "fairy tale" like an elaborate around-the-peat-fire story vs a straightforward encounter incident. Both of these types of "tales" appear within the same covers of most of these books. Thankfully the separation of these stories is easy --- maybe the only easy thing about this research project. 

As those of you know who have been reading the previous (how many were there?) postings in the blog , the result of all of that immersion was The Leprecat. Leprecat (The Little People Case Catalog) had ten three-ring notebooks of encounter claims. Within those pages were about 500 case references. Added to that, The Fairy Census of Simon Young chipped in with 600 case claims. Janet Bord's book contributed more, etc etc. Though some of this overlapped, this journey encompassed over a thousand claims. Even then, it paled in comparison with my own UFO files (about 4000 SELECTED reports and good ones generally) plus CUFOS' files and the USAF Project Blue Book cases et al. But reading "just"a thousand claims is not "just" nothing. I'm not embarrassed about only reading a thousand claims. But before I start throwing out soft "conclusions", I just want every reader to know from where such comments are coming. The resource base is not ideal, but maybe just enough. (Of course reading the earlier blog posts would also help anyone to better understand. :=} )

DO CREDIBLE CASES EXIST IN ENOUGH NUMBERS TO INDICATE THAT THERE IS A REAL ANOMALY HERE? 

I assessed all of these claims with my UFO researcher cap on, and came up with 50-52 cases (not including things like Black Fairy Dog claims) which I felt deserved my confidence that they were reported honestly, accurately, trustworthily. They had at least some levels of investigation/ interview, and knowledge of witness that bespoke Credibility. That is not a huge number out of all of those thousand or so claims. But, and here comes the first of the feeling-immersion statements: that amount of credible cases is enough for me. Those "fifty" cases are not only impressive to me, but they also match a very much larger pile of cases which, though they lack the strict bona fides which a researcher desires, in their accumulation they add to my confidence that we have a legitimate anomaly here and one which has persisted for many centuries. That's a big claim by me, but it's how reading all of those leprecat reports feels. I wouldn't stand in front of a typical academic meeting and defend too much of this to-the-death, but in front of a sympathetic audience I think I'd have the courage to do it. 

The "50" more acceptable case reports turn out to serve as a foundational core for perhaps a couple hundred more which have no real red flags from the claimants, and which fit well in detail and behavior with the original 50. It takes faith, but there may well be a big enough pile of these claims to support some type of reality. 

WHAT REALITY? DO THE CASES INDICATE THAT THE EXPERIENCES TAKE PLACE OUTSIDE THE "IMAGINATION?" 

The answer here is the same sort of cautious "Yes." Once one accepts the assertion that witnesses are generally honest in attempting to describe their experiences, then answering this next question is pretty straightforward. This is because many of these incidents are witnessed by multiple witnesses AND at very close range. It requires a VERY flexible and hard-to-buy counter hypothesis to assert that multiple persons have the same up-close "hallucinations" or other weird mental quirks simultaneously. I realize that debunkers love to put out speculative B.S. like this, but if the human race was THIS prone to serious detachment from reality, I do not think we would have made it this far. 

When the University of Colorado's "Scientific Study of UFOs" was funded by the US Air Force in 1966-69, it was faced with the similar problem of assessing "reality" for that subject. The de facto project administrator, Robert Low (picture to our left), thought hard about how to proceed. 

He made the remarkable statement that the UFO problem was really a nested set of three questions: 1. Do credible cases exist to indicate that there is a true anomaly here? and 2. Do cases exist that indicate that the aforementioned anomaly is "externally real", i.e. the subject matters exist outside the mere images in the human reporters' minds? Low said that he already had seen enough evidence to answer both of these questions "YES." 

The third question was: Are these UFOs "extraterrestrial?" On that he felt that such an answer was too far removed from science's methods to allow any honest response. 

If I stand beside Bob Low (which I would consider an honor), and substitute "Faery Folk" for UFO in the three nested questions, I will answer the questions in the same way that he did. "Faery Folk" claims, whatever their deeper reality base, are a justified anomaly, and whatever-this-is is "externally based." BUT what the deeper agency is which lies underneath these encounters, must remain a question. 

If the audience will allow me to stop my assertions at that point, then I'll acknowledge my further ignorance BUT MAKE SOME SOFTER SUGGESTIONS about the deeper realities which could underlie this stuff. This is where the "Immersion Intuitions" take over from the more cautious approach. 

THE REMAINING QUESTIONS IN THIS AREA.

These are some of the ideas that I'd like to foist upon you in the rest of this post and the next:

1. What do the witnesses see as far as the entities and their behaviors are concerned?
2. Is there any substantial change in entities and behaviors across the decades?
3. Are the entities winged?
4. What did the Olde People of the old cultures think that these things were? 
5. If really pushed, what would I say that my own preferred hypothesis was? 
6. Do I think that Faery and UFOs are the same thing, or even closely resemble each other? 

I'm going to leave off this post with the entity galleries from the cases that I felt had stronger investigation/credibility. Staring at them for a bit sort of answers some of the questions above. I'll have more to say about each of the questions next time, but for now --- the fun of the pictures will do.

 Till next time ....

Odd Encounters in the new century's first decade

Unique and near unique incidents --- the researcher's nightmare but still fun.

An array like that just makes me want to run a finger up and down across my lips and go "BUBBUBBBUUBBUBBUBB" for a while. The Zebra-Centaur doesn't even allow me to claim that everybody is a quadrapedal humanoid. But just because we like to meddle in the Twilight Zone, and gobble up novelty whether it's good for us or not, ready or not, here they are:

The Fairy Census cases first:

OXFORDSHIRE (Fairy Census Case #110)

Several people were camping in a place called Bluebell Woods.  Looking towards a veritable sea of bluebells, first one person (the census reporter) then two other campers saw a large numbers of small blue orbs rising from that field. This was just before dawn and the darkness allowed the little lights to stand out.

The witness felt an unusual silence (like the OZ effect) and a sudden chill. The lights, maybe up to a hundred count, danced around making beautiful patterns in the air. This display took place 75 feet away. Several minutes into this event, the group of lights came together and coalesced into a roughly humanoid form. The form seemed to turn its head towards them, and flew away over the flower field. Are Lightballs part of faery? Obviously some census reporters think that they are. Are Lightballs "intelligent?" Some researchers of lightfields (like Hessdalen, Marfa, or Yakima) think so. Once in a rare while I've come across a case reporting a set of BOLs which seem to gel into something beyond just their individual selves. Key to the Mystery?

 DERBYSHIRE (Fairy Census Case #32)

Four adults in their 40s or so were walking in the woods. It was nighttime but some light remained. There, only ten feet away, was a shadowy bent figure, apparently cloaked in black with a hood. The figure stood only two foot tall. (This is unusual for such "awesome" black cloaked figure cases, as they are typically normal to tall in height.) 

They, even with four persons, didn't want to confront this thing, and walked past. The entity however did not go on, but followed them, just as a stalker might. This began completely  freaking the witnesses out. For five minutes this stalking continued, but nothing further. Upon reaching their hostel in the camping area, the thing was now gone. This case badly needs something a bit more unusual to eliminate the hypothesis of a child in a costume cloak. Just the feeling of menace isn't enough. 

 CORNWALL (Fairy Census Case #22)

The witnesses here were a husband and wife who were doing the very pleasant thing of hiking in Cornwall seeing the famous megalithic sites. They had parked their car and visited the Men-an Tol and were passing the Men Scryfa heading towards Nine Maidens Circle (in good weather this is a wonderful thing to do, and I recommend it to all you younger healthier folks out there.) 

Down a slight hill came a running "man." He was normal sized but hardly running at normal pace: the land was flying beneath his feet. He had shoulder length hair of metallic fools-gold color, a long sleeved loose shirt and olive colored trousers. At about twenty meters, he stopped waved and smiled, then took off again in accelerated pace. 

The witnesses were a bit spooked about this and went on to the Circle. The weather changed to foggy mist with a purplish tint, and they joked about "going through a portal, and hoping the car was still there when they got back." After a few minutes in the Circle they stepped out and the fog broke and the Sun shown again. (MAYBE this is odd, maybe not. Folks familiar with Cornwall will know that singular little clouds can just suddenly show up, dump their contents on you out of a clear sky, and go on their way. This exact thing happened to me at Boscawen-un Circle.) 

The good fun of the experience was capped off when they came back to the Men-an Tol to find a pagan ritual in process which they respectfully watched for a while. Their car, by the way, was just as they left it, and they laughed. The witnesses say the following:

"We think that this fellow was an elf. One of the Fair Folk that live in the parallel worlds  to our own. He was too solid to be a ghost, and there were no signs that it might have been aliens." {I agree on both counts, but for different reasons} The witnesses said that they felt they were very lucky to have seen such a thing.Yep. Wish I had when I was there. Charles de Lint also thinks that this is a good place to meet the Little People :=} 

LANCASHIRE. (Fairy Census Case #70)


The witness was a woman in her twenties who was hiking with a friend (who however did not see the entity involved.) The area was a favored one with a hill and an old oak with a spring popping up nearby. Just as they got to the oak, the environment got very quiet. There away down that hill a bit, the witness saw a woman. 


She got the feeling that she should go to her, and ran down the path to her vicinity. The woman was tall and thin not looking exactly human. She had an aura which shown around her. She had long brunette hair and a dull white long tunic. When the witness approached (distance not stated), the lady spoke. (the content of this exchange also was not mentioned other than the witness saying that whenever she visited this spot she would leave an offering of bread and cider.) The aura-surrounded lady spoke as well but her voice seemed "sliding in and out of reality" as if the entity was not fully present. The lady suddenly vanished. The witness realized that she was standing in an unfamiliar clearing consisting of birch trees, three of which formed a conspicuous triangle. The lady had stood precisely in the middle of the triangle, and the witness felt that she was particularly connected to the trees. Though some of this can be readily waved off as witness search-for-significance, the incident CAN without much stretch be viewed as an entity standing in a window portal. 

N.E. ENGLAND (Durham). (Fairy Census Case #97) 

The witness was a male in his 40s, carrying his camera in the hopes of taking pictures of beautiful things in the woods. He had gotten up pre-dawn and was "crashing around" in the slightly lightening environment hoping to stumble into a clearing and settle in. This was a bit of an adventure in itself, as the sudden flight of a pheasant almost underfoot sent him onto his backside. While down, and getting his act back together, he saw a light back among the trees. At this point there was a silence and a chill. (OZ again)

He decided to remain down and attempt to quietly crawl over to see what this could possibly be. What he discovered he considered to be a creature of some kind, even though it had its back to him and never turned. "It was like a person but stretched upwards, overly thin and tall, and with its head coming to a slightly corkscrewed point with some smaller branching points coming from it." It was colored mottled brown and wreathed in a greenish mist. It slowly began to move and then "disappeared a little too quickly amongst the trees." 

I had a hard time visualizing this form. The more I considered it, the more it seemed like another of these tallish tree-man/Ent reports seen from the rear and surrounded by the dim pre-morning light. 

SOMERSET (Fairy Census #116) 

<---- a="" b="" critter="" like="" looks="" me="" nbsp="" normal="" that="" to="" woods="" yep="">

The witness was a woman in her 50s. Near her neighborhood was a dense wood area composed of old trees from what once was an orchard with trees of many types. She liked to go there and spend some nature time. This particular day she noticed that one of the very old Oak trees had lost a huge branch, almost as big as the trunk itself. 

Clinging to this trunk was the creature. It was human-sized with a vague face. It had webbed hands and feet, and a blue skin which looked damp with shine. It seemed more startled than she was. She and her husband believed in nature spirits and he had felt that he had recently seen a traditional Old Green Man entity. She felt that the blue thing was most similar to the Gollum character in the movie version of The Lord of the Rings. She also felt that they were communicating in a way. She asked the thing: "Shouldn't you be green?" The thing said "No. Blue." She felt that the entity was very uncomfortable, and decided to move away. Later she read a story about a boy who had seen a similar creature and who thought that it was a Nature Spirit associated with living trees. She wondered if she had seen the same sort of thing, but emotionally depressed because of the loss of the Oak tree's huge limb. 

 A "NO LOCATION" Case from About paranormal.com

It boggles my mind that a person can write 3+ paragraphs about a personal experience and not even hint at basic parameters like location. But .... this case sounds like a UK case (2001) where the witness is a male probably of high school age. The experience took place inside his home. 

The fellow had been awakened by his father and was sitting on his bed ready to get moving. There standing in the doorway (his dad had just left the house) was a creature 3 foot tall and colored shadow-black. It was three-dimensional and had clawed hands and feet. It seemed muscular and had ears or horns. It stared at him and slowly turned and walked away into the house. The witness grabbed his cricket bat and went searching the house for it. In the direction that it went, there was no way to exit, but he could never find a trace. 

I consider the case weak, but include it because it is "different" and had a witness drawing for a change. 

HARTFORD,MD (About paranormal.com case, year 2000) 

The witness is an apparently young man who saw this thing from an automobile early in the morning (5am) so that the road was empty. The entity came up out of the median area of the highway as if it was ascending from somewhere below. It passed a roadsign there and its head was higher than the sign. Thw witness suggested that the creature must have been seven to eight foot tall. 

It stepped into the driver's path and caused him to ram on the brakes and barely stop in time, skidding off the road. The boggart (my term) had a flat face with dark curly hair, beady eyes "like a hamster", no nose, and a large mouth full of pointed smiling teeth. It was dressed all in brown (pants and shirt, like work clothes.) It had black boots. The thing stared briefly, turned its head and vanished. (Thankfully, as far as I would have been concerned.) 

What was experienced? I haven't a clue.

MARU, NIGERIA (2003) and earlier (I am at a loss for good provenance here as the source only says "UFO Round-up." The narrative sounds like a newspaper report.)

The narrative here says that in 2003 there were sightings of a centaur-like creature with a zebra body and a human torso and head. The human part had close-cut hair, horse-like ears, and a goatee. Several persons were said to have seen this thing (or things). 

The behavior of the creature is said to involve harassing people by chasing them around, which due to what the thing looks like causes the public to stay inside out of fear. The local government became concerned that the thing was ruining the economy. 

I included this one mainly "just because." It's "funner" than most as kids would say. I'd wish for some kind of substantial report though. 

PROSPECT, CT (2003) (a report from a UFO reporting site.) 

The witness was an adult male driving home after work at 10:30 in the evening. There was no other traffic as he approached a small lake. Up ahead something was walking on the roadside. He upped his lights to see, and there was a creature about six foot tall, and of gray color. 

The creature turned and stood in the middle of the road. It had long (one foot) pointed ears, dark black eyes, and despite the cold, no "breath" exiting its small mouth (which was bordered above by a "red silver strip." No nose. It walked on two legs, with a waddling gait "like a monkey." It had two arms which it waved about continuously. 

The witness was naturally alarmed and went past the entity quickly turning his head only briefly as he hurried off. 

No news as to how it disappeared from view other than distance. 


That's our strange Ten for today. All of these can be considered unique. Almost all of them could be tossed into the convenient all-inclusive "Boggart Basket." Most of these can be considered "walks in the woods", which is perhaps the only familiar feeling thing about them. The OZ Effect shows up now and then. The last two cases are like cases that one comes across a fair bit in the casual literature --- odd creatures stepping out in front of cars or running at people in cars, sometimes even being run-over by them. But ... what does any of it mean?
 

Twenty-first century Light on the Path?

I'm sure that there IS light on this path but it may be down to you readers to figure it out. I'm still a bit flummoxed. But one thing that I think we can say: fairy folk encounters still occur in this new century, and some of these are our "usual suspects." 

 

The first thing that I noticed about this array of seven incidents was that only two of them were from the British Isles. Also, all of them are knee-high to chest-high (1 to 4 feet.) Their clothes vary in color choice but all are relatively sharply dressed except one. Only one leans strongly to "elfin" pointed features. Do the encounters contain any details of greater interest? Interest is in the soul of the beholder (and all of this is interesting to me) but maybe a few things should be mentioned specifically. Let's just briefly run through this crowd. 

A. The Cornwall case: A witness in her 50s (with a couple of others apparently) saw several two-foot tall gnome-like little men dressed with flat hats and a variety of colors working beneath a line of trees. They appeared to be chatting among themselves while clearing up foliage. They had blondish hair streaked with gray, beards, and ancient faces. As they worked, "Small bright balls of light" moved over their heads among the leaves. No comment on how this experience ended. (Fairy Census Case #25.) 

B. The Cornelius Pass, OR case: Two male witnesses driving on an isolated road in mountains. Ahead a creature was crossing the road. It was humanoid with very long arms, such that when it was slumped over its hands dragged on the roadway. (I picture a slow moving chimp in my mind.) It was four foot tall with "an incredibly ugly" face. The passenger panicked as they approached and screamed "A Troll!! A Gnome!!!" and demanded rapid removal from the vicinity. The creature wore clothes and a small brimless pointed hat. It also seemed to have a pack on its back. (About paranormal.com) 

C. The Puerto Rico case: This case has had a little publicity because the gnome named himself "Sebastian Polizar" and stuff like that draws attention. The gnome in question appeared to the witness three times, the third of which was seen also by the witness' mother. Sebastian was always dressed in all white with a pointed hat and shoes. He would always suddenly be seen, stare awhile, and then vanish. One time the witness asked his name and got the reply. It seems that the original witness still thinks that she sees him (meaninglessly) occasionally. (About paranormal.com) 

D. The Cork case: The witness was a woman in her 50s sitting in her garden. It was a portentous  night, being Samwain Eve and full Moon. There had been a "solid" fog that day, and a farmer had said to her "Pooka come down in mist." So, we're fully "programmed" for the arcane. As she watched, scurries of little men about two foot tall scrambled about her garden. They had dark complexions, big noses, and raggedy clothes. They were all in and around the bushes giggling and tumbling away. The odd negative in this was the accompanying music. She said that this music was "hypnotic" but made her feel sick. Overall she said that she doesn't know what she experienced, but was thankful that she had it. (That last remark is sort of an investigator's dream, by the way.) (Fairy Census Case #144)

"D2". A second Cork case, without an entity seen. I want to mention this incident because it happened at the megalithic site of Drombeg Stone Circle. I irrationally like Drombeg Circle (that is a picture of an earlier version of myself standing between the entry stones --- no, sadly, the fairies continue to view my presence as eminently ignorable. I'm six foot tall, by the way, so these stones have significant size. The recumbent stone, in the back, see-able just under my arms, is dedicated astronomically to key positions of Moonrise, for what that may be worth.) This incident, by a female in her 40s, consists of her being involved with some kind of Pagan Ritual within the circle. It was her task to serve the other folks something and she had brought a knife to do so. Upon producing the knife, it was forcefully knocked from her hand. Unthinking as yet, she picked it back up and it was thrown out of her hand again. Stopping to think, she recognized that her knife was Iron, and as such shouldn't be employed in any such ritual. She apologized to whatever spirits were involved and things went on normally from there. I give this for what speculations you may want to imagine, but it at least fits the anti-Iron, pro-Copper fairy traditions. (Fairy census Case #143.) 

E. The Greensburg, PA case: The witness here was a wife and mother out for a walk in the nearby woods alone. A couple of months earlier, she had been called to attention to a shimmering patch above a stone wall, where her son said a little man was sitting. She couldn't see it. Now she was walking enjoying a beautiful snowfall. The environment that day was also "shimmery." She rounded the edge of the path and there, peeking out from behind a tree, was what look like a classic Elf. This was a very close encounter: about only three feet away. The Elf had all the pointy elfin features: nose, ears, fingers, and a pointy cap to go with them. Both clothes and cap were red. Its skin tone was a light lavender shaded color. The lady stared, then started, then said "OH!", and the little fellow vanished.  (Case from About paranormal.com but taken I believe from The Fairy Gardens site.) 

F. Rough River State Park, KY case (this one is a lulu): The witness was a male on a canoeing trip. At one stage in the paddling, he felt that something was "off", and tied the canoe to the bank. About ten feet further along the riverbank, he saw a "pot" of some sort sticking out of the water. It was an apparently very old earthenware jar, and he was excited about perhaps finding an artifact. It was mud-covered and seemed to have very small handprints on it. He tried to tug it out. He stopped when he heard a noise. This sounded like small children laughing. He heaved the jar out, and simultaneously heard a scream. He scrambled up the muddy bank and stopped to look his find over. A couple of minutes of silence later, he set the crock down, and slowly explored in the direction of the earlier noise. 

Then he saw two little men. They stood one foot tall. 

"They had pale skin, little brown leather pants held up by suspenders, no shirts and little pointy hats made of what looked like leather. They had leather foot coverings that went up past the ankle. Their hair was reddish color and their eyes blue. Their hands were only about an inch wide." 

They knew that the witness was watching but continued their task of pulling some kind of old stump down the stream, using leather ropes. His fascination was broken by a "Thump" to his rear. There were three more of these little men just like the others. These three were hi-jacking his crock jar back down the bank to the stream, laughing all the way. Then there was a loud "SNAP!" and all of them were gone. Only their footprints still showed in the mud. ... leading nowhere. 

This case, despite its almost Disney atmosphere, might be a true keeper as (though it was gathered by me off About paranormal.com,) its real source seems to be a report about actual interviewing among the Ojibwa culture and this witness just a day after the encounter.

G. Rural Interior Alaska (heavily forested area doomed for clear-cuts.) Several of these cases are easy to like. This one closely beats out the previous as my favorite. (Romantically, not due to solid credibility points.) 

I'm an old Environmental Studies prof as a few of you know, and I've studied a lot of these clear-cutting projects on the Pacific coast. When I read that these are just for fire protection, I have my doubts, but maybe this one was. Or maybe that's what some of the employees are told, and then cut more than necessary. Regardless of proper environmentalism, our primary witness in this instance thought that he was doing something honorable, even though "what" he encountered did not seem to agree.

In this case there WAS a fire and the witness was sawing trees to stop the spread. He was part of a large team who did a lot of this sort of work. Our fellow was working with a partner spending half of the time sawing, then would switch with his partner and douse down the sawn timber so it wouldn't burn if the fire came that way. This, he said, was boring hard work, and you just slogged through the day. Some of the trees to be cut are about three inches in diameter and maybe 15 feet high. The job is to saw them all in a swath of certain width, whether green or already burnt. He moved to cut into a green tree. As he positioned the saw, the tree "shrunk down" and standing in its place was a classic wizened gnome of about one foot tall and beard and heavily wrinkled face. The gnome was screaming "NOOOOOO!!!!" at him. This so shocked the sawyer that he stood as if paralyzed with the saw running in his hands. 

His buddy came running over to ask what was wrong. The gnome was gone, and the worker was just standing there in shock. His partner forcefully sat the man down and tried unsuccessfully for 15 minutes to get the witness relaxed and back into normal head space. Finally he had to bring the supervisor over. Under the scrutiny, the witness said: "I saw an elf! (with an impolite adjective thrown in there somewhere.)" The supervisor did not berate him. The witness was suspicious about the silence and asked: have you seen it? The supervisor said "no." The witness said: "Have others seen it?" The supervisor nodded his head "yes."  (Fairy Census Case #215)

=========================================================================

It may seem strange to say, but at this point in our exploration we are in familiar territory with the materials of this post.  We're surrounded by members of the 1-to-4 foot tall Little People tribe. They're messing about in Nature, wearing their weird hats, and occasionally messing about with us. Mainly not a bad crowd to have an encounter with. 

Next time: stranger formed characters .....  

Tolkien ENTS in the 21st Century?

Leprecat has rolled over into the 21st century and it contains another load of encounters. I'm looking at the first decade of the 21st century in this, and the next couple of posts. What was oddly present in those incidents at first glance were THREE claims of large tree like entities. That was almost too much, even given the weirdness of this field of study. Now, there are a lot of "normal" gnomes/ elves/ dwarves etc,  and another large pile of varying oddballs and a dollop of wings, but the "Trees" are just too far out to delay commentary --- so, today the trees, and the wings to fill this out. Later the more normal fairy folk and the unique characters.  

==========================================================================

 THREE FAIRY CENSUS cases: #s 57, 54, and 39. I'm not promising you a lost Tolkien story here, just a few glimpses, then you have to write the rest of the novel. 

A. HAMPSHIRE, UK. 2007. The reporter is a male in his 50s. There was one other witness and they were walking a dog. The witnesses were walking in the woods in mid-afternoon, and had just entered a clearing. There came a profound silence over the atmosphere and the dog glanced up. There, rushing across the field in their general direction was a tree. It was about ten foot tall. As it passed in its closest point, both witnesses could see that it had the smiling face of an entity formed in the bark. It then raced away. Both witnesses agreed as to what they had seen, and felt that some "nature spirit" of some sort must have just crossed their path. 

=========================================================================

B. HAMPSHIRE, UK. 2000s. The witness here is a woman in her 40s. The setting was from a field surrounded by woods. Though others were in the vicinity they were busy elsewhere and did not see this. She was relaxing on the bed of a flatbed trailer and looking towards the woods. About 90-100 feet away, a creature jumped out of one of the trees. It was twelve feet tall and apparently made of "sticks" or some such appearing material. "It was like a skeleton made of sticks." The thing landed and stared at the witness for several seconds, then jumped straight back up into the tree and strode through the branches and away. The witness called over a friend and they went to the spot of the landing, finding nothing there but a smell of nature decay. The witness was flummoxed as to how to categorize what she'd experienced, saying that it didn't seem like ghost nor alien, and didn't have wings. Despite the latter, she felt that it was most like Faery. 

=========================================================================

C. DEVON, UK. 2000s. The witness is a female in her 40s. The environment is a house on a road in a seaside town at 10:30pm. The road was well lit but empty and nothing was stirring. The witness was looking out her window towards this road while talking on the phone to her husband. Along this road came, walking very slowly ("in a measured way"), a "tree-man." His walk was slow enough so that he took about two minutes to pass from the original point of visibility to being blocked by a neighbor's hedge. Her words of description are best here:

"Seven foot tall, slim. I could clearly see a trunk like body from the waist up, branch like arms and a quite haggard face with short branches coming from the top of the head and sides, but not like a true tree, they didn't seem to taper to twigs.
" Haggard/wizened face, seemed old. Bark-like heavy grooved texture of body and face, long branch like arms bent at the elbow area, unnaturally straight and thin arms, long hands. A few leaves scattered on the body and arms. 'Stumpy' branches from head." 

If that isn't the telling of a smallish version of a Tolkien Ent I don't know what is. I read this last one and said "This is too good to be true." But what is my criterion for that knee-jerk? This tale is wonderfully and precisely told, without hubris or romance. It lacks just the face-to-face investigation and credibility check to be a foundation stone. But it doesn't have that, so .... SAY anyone in Devon!!! would you please go interview this lady?! Do the search for truth a favor. Find out if she is as true as she seems. 

=========================================================================

Having gone through those three encounters, it was impossible not to be reminded that the UK's most famous recent fairy case (The Moyra Doorly incidents in Arran Isle in 2000) have embedded in them a case of "sticks" fairies. 

These are my cartoons for Ms. Doorly's menagerie.  Note that the critter on the right is like a tree-man made of branches or naked sticks. The description of these beings was not quite exact enough for me to imagine what their structure amounted to, so it's a big guess. The two juxtaposed possibilities below indicate two competing possibilities out of many.

Whatever these things were they were reportedly UNpleasant. By the way, for reasons unknown to me, there is some extra interest "out there" in internet land about "The Arran Enigma" as my blog gets more hits on an old posting of that title than these recent ones (about 100+ last week.) If you're interested in that old post (I think that I still stand by what I wrote), it's searchable on this blog, or just plow backwards in time to November 8, 2011. 

.... and, as an add-on to that: on the mail-in site "Fairy Encounters" came one of those no-name, no-location, vague-time period (2000s) stories of a witness seeing a "stick-man" in a grove of walnut trees (believed by the witness to be "associated" with that grove). The Stick Man was a humanoid formed entity made entirely out of sticks, and perhaps six feet tall. 

=========================================================================

OK. Fun. Maybe even True. Now just to fill out this post: were there any winged entities in this time period for Leprecat?  Well .... Three.

  ======================================================================

A. Staffordshire, UK. 2000s. Fairy Census Case #121. 

Single witness in her teens. She felt that this was a display given just for her. She was on a bridge waiting for a friend. She caught movement out of the corner of her eye. (She says that she then looked up squarely at them, so OK on this point.) They were small (size not stated but the impression is: very small, tinkerbell small.) There were a small number of them (again not stated.) They all had wings. The wings were like butterfly wings. They sat on branches and hovered in the air. They were "small beautiful people" and smiled at her. "They looked mostly like how I would imagine them." She looked away after a few minutes and they were gone. 

You can imagine that I have some troubles with this. But there is one "sticker" for me in the narrative (which probably makes no sense for anyone else.) Just as an afterthought, she says about their color that they matched the desert patina that her dad found on a skeleton when he was a younger man. ... odd thing to say. Odd if she was just spewing out a hypnogogic Tinkerbell encounter. I can't make anything of that, but it just haunts a bit.

=========================================================================

B. Rhondda, Wales. 2000s. Fairy Census Case #190. 

The witness is a female in her 40s. The scene was her garden about mid-day. The narrative is somewhat disjointed but it seems that she felt that there was an unusual feeling in the air and she didn't hear any sounds (OZ again?) She saw the outline of something "at the bottom of the garden." This outline was golden and transparent. It shimmered and had long wings. Then there was a second being, smaller with a flash of blue green color. The witness admits that this could have been a dragonfly, but doesn't think so. 

Following this, she felt an invisible person pressing against her on the seat. She felt that she was receiving a sign, a deliberate display. Despite the vague "outline" type of description, she then compared the fairies to paintings of a particular artist who painted definite detailed winged beings (actually the picture for the Staffordshire case is a fairy painting by this man, and I probably should have reversed those two images.) The witness then claimed to continue to see fairies many times thereafter. 

She then completed her narrative with the eye-opening comment that her family has had a house brounie ever since 2000, but does not give any further commentary. So ... incredibly blessed or just incredible? 

=========================================================================

C. "No Location" nor even vague date. About.com posting. 

The witness is an adult male who says he owns a large country house connected with a farm. The witness habitually took long walks. He is a birdwatcher and collects bird nests as a hobby. He spotted a couple of abandoned nests and hauled a ladder back out later. In one of the nests were a large number of very small winged people dancing in a circle. They were only an inch tall with clothes made out of leaves. 

He says that he watched this activity for an hour then went back to his house to fetch his wife. He says that his wife also saw this. These mini-fairies stayed dancing in that nest for the entire winter and could always be seen. (I trust that the readers are getting quite antsy about this by now --- one example being the absence of even trying to get evidence.) At the beginning of Spring, they were gone. 

... I apologize to all of you for my attitude on this, but the multimonths worth of almost casual going to see long term resident visible fairies with no attempts to photograph them or bring other people to see them, puts me into a deep funk about this claim. 

=========================================================================

So, under the "shade" of a magnificent ancient gnarled oak (photo by a fine photographer named Brian Robert Marshall, who did the striking thing above, with some color adjustment by me), what can we say that we heard today? 

I heard some extremely interesting narratives about entities resembling smallish Tolkien Ents, but not so impressed by the winged fairy cases. All five of the tree-man cases seem "attractive." None of the three winged cases strike me that way. (for different reasons.) 

When I began researching Leprecat, if anyone would have told me that at some point in the walk in the woods I'd start seriously considering Tree-men as denizens of Faery, I might have even laughed out loud. 

Next time? Probably not so strange. But Faery always intrigues me regardless.

Strangers in Strange Lands: 90s faery from About.com

Relax. I'm an expert. 

Today, strange stuff at least "One Step Beyond" in most of these encounters. Are any "real?" 

========================================================================= 

Most "comfortable" one first (as mentioned above, most of these are from  anonymous entries to the About paranormal. com site, so we're in Ripley country.) 

Starting with an old friend, the classic gnome. The witness' language sounds a bit more like a male than a female, but ...? The witness sounds like an adult living in a neighborhood in San Diego, CA. With that vagueness to begin with, here is the tale. 

The person was out walking the dog and in a large back yard area owned by a friend. As they reached the friend's garage, the witness saw three little men. They seemed to be standing and talking together unaware of the presence of the witness or dog. Their height is not stated, only that they were "little men." They were dressed all in green from clothes to pointed hats. They wore large buckles on wide belts. All were bearded. As the witness then came round the corner of the garage, they spotted the witness and the dog. The dog ran towards them barking, but they turned and hastened through a break in the nearby hedge. 

The witness had a good attitude about anomalies, simply stating that we should all be open-minded and take them simply as they came without overly interpreting them beyond what was seen. 
=========================================================================

 Tinkerbell strikes again. The narrative here is written in a very feminine mode, but again I cannot tell the witness' gender. The environment of the incident sounds like a young person camping at night in their own backyard. (no other location)

The witness was looking out of the tent when a sparkling light and the "sound of butterfly wings" (it must be a very perceptive ear to hear those I'd think) approached. Hovering about a foot from the ground, there was a tiny winged girl, very pretty and giving off a blue sparkle. Her wings were red. The fairy "sat down" on a nearby rock and began to converse in a voice so low that the witness could decipher almost none of it. 

"She made me so happy. But her dress was the best. She had a Tinkerbell-style dress which was royal blue, and her hair went down to her shoulders, which was wavy and golden with blue sparkles. I believe it was the best moment of my life so far." 

Well, I wouldn't ruin that feeling for "her." I wouldn't put this in my A-category report pile either. (sadly.) I do put it here because it is a wings case. We need to look them in the eye, and judge if they make sense. 

=========================================================================

This narrative has the sound of a camping trip in some mountainous region, so let's imagine a Rocky Mountain forest type of setting. The witness was 16 at the time. There is no legitimate way of guessing gender. The incident was reported in 2005, and seems still relatively young so I'm calling this a late 20th century encounter. Despite the vagueness of the labeling details, this is a wonderful story.

So ... the witness gets separated from the others camping/hiking and gets lost. The surroundings are no longer familiar. Feeling that sooner or later there will be a recognizable landmark, wandering continues until there is a lagoon visible at the bottom of a modest sized cliff face. The ground gave way, and the witness fell over. 

During the possibly fatal fall, a shadow appeared which resolved into a black-haired woman dressed Native American style in animal hides. She had differently colored eyes (silvery blue and glowing green) which were fascinating even given the frightening situation. The woman grabbed the witness as they "fell." 

The word "fell" is in quotes because now the fall slowed unnaturally to the point that the two landed softly near the lagoon shore. The befuddled witness asked her if she was an angel. She relied "no"but that (in some unspoken sense) this place, this natural area and lagoon, "belonged to her." She then turned and walked away out of sight into the forest shadows. 

The witness ultimately re-found the way out, and told the others, who laughed and assured that there was no such lagoon plus cliff face feature anywhere around there. The witness was adamant and returned the next week-end to check. There was no cliff nor lagoon found. 

Well .... would that all of that were true. A misplaced stray sod geography that is now here and now not, plus a gentle Nature Spirit of The Place who is helpful. I am all in for that sort of reality. Manitou (God Creator) is said to place Guiding and Guarding Spiritual Beings (The Manitoug) in charge of everything from species to forests to mini-biogeographies etc. Did our witness get blessed with a modern interaction? 

=========================================================================

The site of the encounter in this one is Rural Quebec, and as usual a forested area. The witness was a kid of around ten years old. The narrative once again does not allow a determination of gender. 

The witness was at Summer Camp with a whole lot of other kids staying in cabins. Two of them were out on their own at night but still quite close to the cabin circle. They could see the central fire and hear the music. This camp was near the ocean, and when they got a "strange feeling of being watched" they turned towards the shore where a line of trees intervened. Among those trees was a very tall (seven feet) figure walking. It was glowing a bright blue. The light shimmered like an aura around it, and it made no noise as it walked. A lot of thoughts, none "happy", about what this could be flowed through their heads. Nevertheless they shouted out at it asking who or what it was. There was no reply and the figure continued walking until it was gone.

The witnesses retreated, very scared, to the camp but only one person believed them. He said that he had watched a tall blue figure moving in the trees from a greater distance. Needless to say, a good UFO-style investigation on this one (given the multiple witnesses) would have been great. It is virtually unique as far as I am concerned. 

=========================================================================

This witness gave his name (applause) and it seems that the location was in London. The date too was given: April 1994. The witness seems to have been a young man in his twenties, as he was in the workforce by that time. The downside of the report is that it is an "I just woke up" report. The narrative goes pretty far to negate the problem that adheres to that however, so, tentatively, OK.        The case, brief though it is, is quite Whack. 

The witness had just switched off his alarm clock, got up, went to the toilet, came back and grabbed a cigarette (this is why I'm not as worried about the waking dream hypnogogia in this one --- there is physical activity involving other objects.)  "Something" then stumbled into the room as if it was not quite in control. It looked in the opposite direction, then slowly turned its head in the witness' direction. This was exceptionally unnerving. The being, or whatever it was, was a seven foot tall "dog-man." The body was more or less human, while the head was the head of a dog. The predominant color was dark gray.

The most bizarre aspect of this completely bizarre experience was that the witness could tell as it turned that this had height and width, but no perceivable depth. That is, it was as if it was only two-dimensional. Plus, its body seemed composed of "angles." When the thing seemed to focus on the witness and began to walk towards him, he let out a loud shout. The thing did not vanish. It instead stepped backwards and out the room door. 

... OK, MAYBE that wasn't THE most bizarre aspect of this, as a few years later this witness was rooming with a successful London artist. He saw one of her pictures where a normal scene had an inclusion in it: a dark-gray dog-man. The picture was dated April 1994 (Uhhh. YOW!) When she saw his reaction to that, she said: "Oh, I see that you've seen it too." 

I'm way out of my league on this one. Once in a while in UFO cases we get an encounter which has the feel of what I call a "blundered interface." Cases where it seems something from somewhere else has either deliberately or accidentally intersected with our space, but hasn't gotten that good at it, or at least lacks some control. One vision would be: Zack from Zork is a talented but erratic garage inventor on Epsilon Indi Four, and is somewhat incompetently messing about with dimensional warping. Another would be that a parallel world is occasionally brought into intersection by universal hiccups, unpredictably catching both sides by surprise. Let your imagination roll. 

Whatever is true, this story seems part Faery (strange being) and part not (two-dimensionality), with an undisclosed wildly separate second witnessing tossed in. As I said earlier: Whack. 

=========================================================================

The witnesses here are husband and wife. No location nor date is given. Guesses as to the date would place this at around late 90s or early 2000s. The incident occurs upon waking up. The character of the report is such that I would have simply disregarded it as a version of The Old Hag dream syndrome, but there are TWO witnesses, so that seems very unlikely. 

The husband woke to see a black-hooded figure bending over him. Its only features were red fiery eyes. He screamed and flailed his arms and legs (in the Old Hag you don't immediately have the brain hormones active to do either of those.) This caused two things: his wife woke up, saw the thing, and started screaming, and the thing stood up straight as if itself startled. Several seconds of this standing and screaming went on.

Then it was as if someone had pin-pricked a stretched balloon, the thing zipped erratically around the bedroom trailing black soot like coal dust. (Yep. This happens all the time ... Yep. That's normal, REAL normal. ) The "soot trail" ending, the witnesses jumped up and turned on lights. Nothing. Little sleep occurred for the rest of that night. 

Well, I mean ... I just ... well ..... 

=========================================================================

 One female witness, apparently as a child, in an area north of Houston, TX where the urban sprawl was carving away the natural landscape. The source here was not About paranormal.com, but a sighting report site called Fairy Oracle. 

The witness was in her garden when approaching her came a faun/satyr. It/he was about a foot tall ("Knee-High"). Its appearance was exactly like the way fauns are pictured in the fairy and folklore books. Some form of communication was tried by the faun, but she could not understand him. She had a clear impression that he was very angry, and thought that it was about the destruction of the trees in the area. 

This is all that the interaction amounted to. No means of disappearance nor leaving was mentioned. The witness was affected by the incident, however, and planted new trees in her yard. Her belief in fairies now also led her to begin to leave out "fairy gifts", but she never saw another. I've included this because it is a different folk form than we typically have, plus the narrative is not over-inflated. 

=========================================================================

1999, unknown location. A lady named Marlene. I'm including this one because I knew a lovely lady named Marlene once (on a rather romantic tour to the old megaliths and Arthurian sites of the UK,) who would have reacted exactly like this witness did.  

The witness was honoring the Moon with arms outstretched in thanks for the Creation and all its "beautiful people." Overtop her home, there were two hovering lights. She wondered: are those just cobwebs or something reflecting the light? The lady that I knew would have asked the "scientific question" first just as she did. But as would have been also true, the witness did not want to ignore the opportunity for something more interesting, and held her left hand out to say: I mean you no harm. 

The glowing lights then came slowly down, one nesting in her hand. She saw now that these were fairy forms: a female in her hand, and a male hovering near. Before anything else could take place, however, her daughter came running out of the house to ask for help with her homework and the fairies just vanished. (There is no description in the narrative about details of appearance by the way --- something that "my" Marlene surely would have given.) This witness went on to be somewhat fascinated with fairies (understandably) with no known other impact. She has never seen them since that night. 

Tempting to believe; frustrating in its empty detail. What can we say?

=========================================================================

8 claims today. What might I say without totally embarrassing myself? I have a classic gnome in San Diego that I like, and a superb Nature Spirit in Native American garb which I think quite wonderful. These two encounters I could easily see as part of Faery, but softly, given their poor reporting mechanism. I have "Marlene's" glowing BOL fairies and the little Houston faun, which fit the genre, albeit not the majority types. 

And then there are the other four: A mini-classic Tinkerbell which I'm uncomfortable with NOT because of that so much, but because the age and environment here are conducive to imagination in the extreme --- this witness claims that "she?" could hear butterfly wings. Another is, of course the blundering two-dimensional dog-man. Nothing about that relates to Faery as it comes to me. The huge blue-glowing man in the trees doesn't either, and the evil red-eyed shooting about soot bag being is another hard fit for anything. 

Some of these seem softly real; others way off course. 

I am going to try to cherry-pick some 21st century reports for the next few posts, and then sit back and think all this over again. At a minimum I hope to produce mildly INFORMED B.S. after all this sloughing through the swamps chasing Will and Jack and Joan and those pixy ne'er-do-wells.
 

MORE CASES IN THE 90s

Today I'll cover a Baker's Half-Dozen incidents, coming mainly from sources like "Letters." If the details of cases like these tend to match others we've read, then I think we're getting somewhere non-trivial, and possibly ultimately important. So .... 

=========================================================================

 This case comes from FATE Magazine by way of Janet Bord. The witness was a 15 year old male and the location was the Aran Islands of Ireland. He was on a morning walk by the seaside. He saw two fishermen sitting on a bank ahead casting into the sea. On his approach, he saw that they were only three and a half foot tall, and dressed leprechaun/gnome style in all green with brown boots. One of the two had a flat hat and a gray beard. 

They began laughing and talking in Irish (content not described) and then just jumped over the bank, apparently into the sea. The witness hurried over to look for them, but they were nowhere to be seen. On the ground lay a pipe, which he assumed they must have left. He took it home and secured it in a locked box. When he attempted to retrieve it, it was not there. The witness was naturally somewhat fixated by all of this and took a camera and tape recorder out with him on his walks from then on. One day he did indeed see them again. Neither the camera nor the recorder recorded anything despite the try. 

I can't help but to like this one since it "fits" the better documented cases.

=========================================================================

Another case from FATE by way of Janet Bord. This one took place in that credibility nerve-wracking location of Mt. Shasta, CA. This one has a firm date of 1993. 

The witness was a young (I think) woman on a camping trip walk on her own. She enjoyed these closeness-to-Nature situations and felt that they induced a natural meditative state (I'm completely with her on this, by the way, so such commentary is not driving me away from this narrative but sympathetic to it.) 

Near dusk, she heard what she felt to be children singing, and walked into a clearing. There on the ground were eleven tiny (one foot tall) electric blue glowing beings. They seemed to flicker and pulse and were nearly transparent. They had large wings, delicate and lacy, which were larger than the bodies of the fairies themselves. She was holding her breath, but had to breathe out. When she did, the fairies looked at her, leaped up, and vanished. 

Going over to the site, she found blue powder on the ground. Believing this to be "fairy dust", she collected it, took it home, felt that it had magical properties to bring people good if she sprinkled it on them.  ... ummmm. 

Let me try to "save the data" on this incident (hard to do, I know) by discarding her belief that she collected magical dust which grants good fortune to others. The case, even with that, runs hard against the explorer's soul due to Mt. Shasta being called a Sacred Site right off the bat, she seeing winged fairies against our collective grain, and then the Pixy Dust regardless of what its properties might be. I'm forced to go deep gray basket here. 

=========================================================================

Ah. Just seeing that little Pukwudgee drawing makes me relax a bit. (Yes, I'm demonstrating a prejudice that I didn't know that I would have when I began this whole catalog long ago.) This case is from a Native American site which often has very authentic sounding stuff, and which gets critiqued by others. The witnesses were two males apparently in their twenties or thirties, at the Redlake Native American Reservation in Minnesota. These two cousins enjoyed taking long walks along the trails, one of which had an old stone cabin on it. 

One cousin decided to go out and camp at this building and the other was too frightened of the idea and stayed behind at what was on that night an empty home. As the night wore on, the scared cousin got agitated, and left in search of the other cousin. This was about 3am. Forest noises added to his fear and these woods had, for instance, bear in them. 

In the distance there was music, sounding like flutes. This terrified him even more and though driven to go forward, he actually fainted. When he came to, he saw a stubby little man with his back to him, playing on a flute. The music calmed him, and he tried to get to his feet without making noise. But he did. The being leaped up and turned. It had very long hair down to its knees, big black lips and beady eyes. It was three and a half foot tall. It spoke something not understandable and stepped closer. The witness ran wildly away, but luckily for him straight into the campfire area of his cousin. He told his story but wasn't believed. 

They went inside the building to sleep. Later in that night, his cousin woke him with a warning to keep quiet. Together they went to a window. Out in the clearing only six feet away, five of these little people were making music and dancing. At a noise caused by the second male tossing a rock, the five pukwudgee ran into a cavity in the tree and disappeared. 

This is a bit of a lollapaloosa of a story. The Minnesota little people do fit a pattern, but not flute music for Native American hairy dwarves so much. The main witness seems a bit hysterical, but I should admit that people differ in the amount of nervous fortitude they have. Maybe, as detailed and long as this case is, I should give it credit. 

=========================================================================

Wow. Of all places. Roswell, New Mexico. The witness report comes through a source unfamiliar to me, despite that it claims to be generally a UFO gathering site (something called Nonhuman Research Agency by Robert Goerman.) This witness (an adult woman who saw this in 1997) wrote to Goerman but it is not known whether an actual interview followed. 

One early morning, the witness and her dog were out in her backyard at a picnic table. It was morning coffee time. She and her dog saw something just at the neighbor's fence. The dog sprinted over. The owner followed. 

The being was a foot tall,  and very stocky. It had big bushy eyebrows and a beard, both gray. He wore a gray woolen shirt without buttons and gray pants. He also had soft brown boots. The dog turned and ran into the house and cowered. The witness stayed. She saw the little man turn and walk with a waddle towards a chinaberry tree. When it got to the tree, it appeared to just walk into it and vanish. Naturally there was no door or entrance in that tree. 

Wish that I had a good investigation on this one (but of course I always wish this, but the details claimed here are nicely in concert with the pattern of our best cases.) 

=========================================================================

No location on this late 20th century incident, and a mediocre provenance: Jeff Wells' Rigorous Intuition blogspot --- nothing against him, but that means another anonymous claim. Despite all that, the case has a simple story. 

A person is trying to get to sleep in his parents' home. He hears something about the size of a large cat running on his roof. This bothers him and he cannot doze off. Instead he is confronted (while still in bed) by an old man, quite small (about four foot tall) and having a very serious old-looking face. The being had dark clothes, and carried a lantern and a sack across his shoulder. Several tings (cap, sack, and lantern light) were red. 

The being walked away to the room entry and stared into his parents' room. The witness yelled "NO!"and the room went pitch black and empty. His parents awoke, he apologized, and went back to bed. The witness festered on this for years. He claimed to read something in Whitley Strieber's book, Communion, that resembled this being (I can't find it) but still has not settled on what this was all about.

I don't like the bedroom part of this (the witness admits that he occasionally has lucid dreams) but the imagery was "fun" enough.

=========================================================================

This is another in a set of 8 incidents which happened to the primary reporter and his family and friends from the area around his home in New Brunswick. The fact that this fellow tells so many incidents, briefly yet clearly, and nearly each for a different but well-known (to him) witness, has given me an irrational confidence in the whole set. (He could have been a New Brunswick MacManus with some effort.)

In this one the witness was the reporter's high school art teacher. The teacher told the encounter to just a few favored students. The year was 1997. The teacher had come home from teaching and, upon entering his living room, there were five or six little men. A couple were sitting on the couch watching the TV and a couple were sitting ON the TV. The teacher dropped his jaw and his bag of groceries. They were classic gnomes dressed in red, blue, and green, all with red gnomic hats. The gnomes laughed at him, jumped around, and then ran off. (Since they could sit atop a TV set, they must have been quite small. I'll estimate this at about a foot tall.) 

Except for the "inside" aspect of this (and even this has historical "brounie" precedence) the encounter fits the Little People mischief-maker pattern.

=========================================================================

This report came from one of those fairy encounter type sites. It is unusually lengthy, detailed, and in its way reasonable. It has an actual location (Platteville, WI) and a rough date of the very late 20th century. The case allegedly had two witnesses and would have been a great UFO-investigator opportunity. But there is almost no "fairy." What MIGHT be there is a "Stray Sod" element. If it wasn't for that possibility, I'd probably skip this.

Two young men in their twenties I believe, decided to drive to the outskirts of town to an old cemetery. They had it in their minds that it would be fun to go in there, get into the right "atmosphere" and maybe see a fairy (they had just been reading Katherine Briggs.) As it was illegal to go into this cemetery after hours, they parked the car surreptitiously and slid into the place at a spot bounded by a large ditch (the cemetery sat below the roadway and the ditch bank hid them.) They sat there quietly for quite a time when they both saw a small dark figure spinning rapidly. It was a human-shaped figure of only five inches tall. It moved "gracefully." Five minutes later the thing disappeared. 

They decided to leave. But upon climbing the bank of the ditch, they weren't where they thought they should be. In fact they were a good ten minute walk from the side they should have been near. Thoroughly rattled they raced back into town to spend the rest of the evening asking themselves what happened. They admitted that they could have imagined the small twirling figure, but not the seeming dislocation of space. 

The tiny dark undefined figure bothered me from first reading. The incident is of interest only if the witnesses really have their act together about exactly where they entered the cemetery and how far they walked until they sat down. Without a field trip, who knows? Could it have been a spatial shift? 

=========================================================================

All of this is soft, but I kind of like the New Brunswick, Roswell, Minnesota, and Aran Islands encounters, all of which meet the general pattern of "known" Little People incidents. They are either one foot tall or three and a half foot tall creatures. The bedroom lantern gnome and the pixy dust leaving transparent winged beings have their peculiar awkward aspects. The dark spinning mini-figure might not have had a reasonable sighting at all. 

There are quite a few possibly entertaining cases from About paranormal. com internet site. I'll try to sift out a few of those next time and then we can get into the 21st century.