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.