SUMMA FAERYOLOGICA part ten.

OK, folks, I need a little more "tolerance" than usual this day. Throughout the past 50 entries, the contents of this topic have seemed to push towards the concept of a "World Alongside" or some sort of parallel reality which our reality has brushes with. It would of course be "nice" if there was any evidence that any such thing could make any sense. Theoretical physics has BS'd quite a lot about that sort of thing, and frankly for me their ideas have been utterly unhelpful .. and as far as I can tell unhelpful to them as well. The only thing we can take from the theorists is that considering such thoughts shouldn't be considered a form of insanity. 

Since the "professionals" don't give us much help, what's left? Hmmm... how about empirical facts? THAT might even be considered "scientific"? 

What facts do we have? (The last 50 posts include quite a few; I have however positive proof that something like this is true.) "Once upon a Time" ..... 

There was a fellow who had a simple habit, which actually wasn't a terrible thing, and though he did it every day, he probably wasn't really Obsessive-Compulsive. He had this open place on his sink top which was a really good spot to empty his pockets at the end of a day. He always had the same stuff (wallet, watch, keys, Cursillo cross, coins) which he could leave there until re-stuffing pockets the next morning. 

One morning he woke up, got his act together, and began to stuff pockets. Whoops! No watch! Where the heck was it? Well here we go --- search the whole sink top. Search the drawers. Search all yesterday's clothes. Multiple times. Search the floor. etc etc. There had been a Doctor's appointment, a lie-down-in-the-grass, a car ride from a friend. It was "obvious", it had just fallen out and gotten lost. 

The next morning --- no watch again. What a pain! Let's search it all again. This time the whole wardrobe --- maybe it was a different pair of pants a different shirt. Search the whole sink top again. Nothing nothing nothing. Ugh. Go about the day. 

Next morning ... well, hell. Search again. Heart not in it as much this time. No watch. What a pain in the butt.

Fourth day. Going without a watch was getting inconvenient. 

Fifth day. Well, there needs to be a decision. Without a watch for five work days.

Made the commitment. Bought the new watch. A simple pocket watch. It'll work.

Next morning.  Two watches --- the new and the old.   COME ON!!!!!   Somewhere in reality someone was laughing really loud (even though I couldn't hear it. --- and yeh, the guy was me if you didn't already know.) 

This Trickster event went exactly as I have related it (though not with the "drama" caused by shrinking a week into a few sentences.) I'm uncomfortable placing this experience in front of you. Why? It's really TOO good isn't it? No paranormal event should be this clearly strange. I'm no magnet for weird experiences (other than my UFO sighting, there haven't been many), but this Trickster event occurred exactly as I've described. I don't try to ask "Why me?' but I have to say that this little experience proved to me that there is in fact some "other place." 

Another Place? 
So, I "know" that things do vanish and reappear. And I have extra reasons to be certain of that, as one of my best friends had a story similar to mine, and one of my sisters is victimized by this phenomenon of the disappearing and returning object often. If you haven't been so blessed, then you can gain confidence by going to one of the internet sites where people tell their tales. Normally I wouldn't put a lot of stock in that, but the numbers of such tales are just about uncountable. Even though I reject 95% of these (I've read several hundred now), there are plenty which seem responsibly reported and not at all told by foolish wannabees. 

This phenomenon tells me a few things. Physical objects from this reality can move somewhere else. They don't just become invisible. They aren't "there" at all. I ran my hand through that disappear/appear spot a dozen times --- there was no mass there. This thing (the watch) was gone. Gone where? The mass, the essential quality of matter, left that location and, since it later came back, had persisted in its existence until it returned from "there" back home. 

So there is a "There." What is it? That question is still too big. Let's look a little longer at smaller matters. 

Small things can go somewhere. Is that a mere cubbyhole in the Universe, or is it something more substantive? Creeping up on that question, we could ask if anything of substantial size ever seems to disappear or mysteriously appear and preferentially both. And ... I'll bet that you have an opinion about that already. But to try to substantiate that bigger claim, I went looking for those larger scale displacements in space. And we can find them. I'm going to toss out a bunch of listings next. Just have the fun of running down through the claims. The list is one I put together from the Paranormal Database (of the UK and Ireland) site.

 
All of those things are potential candidates for things coming or going to "another place." They are also indicators that such an other place would be of significant size. They indicate in fact that this other space is voluminous enough to swallow cars, buildings, roads, maybe even forests and valleys and mountains. ... maybe even what the Old Irish folks called The Stray Sod. 

I tried to do due diligence and comb my own files and the Leprecat for other such anomalies. I wasn't surprised to find a fair number of them. Carl Jung had his own incident. So did Ivan Sanderson. Fellow ufologist Peter Rojcewicz had his case. Diarmuid MacManus investigated three good ones. Ron Quinn told two cases. FATE magazine had four pretty good ones. I stopped logging these at about 80. ... I think that there is enough here to entertain the thought that such a large place might well exist "somewhere." Is it a World Alongside?

 
Can I add anything to this without the speculations getting embarrassingly far from any data at all?   SUMMA FAERYOLOGICA, indeed. Like a minor St. Thomas (very minor) I'm coming down to the gritty core of this, and am faced with the inevitability that I can't get much further. 

Is there ANYTHING that the case narratives can add? 

I don't want to cut this off today, but I can't think what else to write. It has a feel that there is a little more in these reports though. I'm going off into a Cave for a bit and see if there is anything else to share with you without wasting your time. Till then .... 

 
 

SUMMA FAERYOLOGICA, part six

Are There Any More Paths To Search For Faery? 
  
We have made a respectable effort looking at the basic encounter phenomenon. I think that it was worth it, and that it seems to indicate a true mystery, and one which involves a form of intelligence not our own. But with anything which would have this character, the research at some fundamental level is not controllable, and, unless the "other side" cooperates, will probably remain an anomaly forever. 

.... and that's alright with me. 

But it doesn't mean that I'd just give up the fun of looking, just because I felt that I'd never get all the way to a "scientific" de-mythologized answer. My guess is that I'll keep reading about this stuff until the day of "Passing over to the Other Side" and seeing the answers then (I hope.) And ... I have some intuitions that there are three more areas of research which are closely related to Faery anyway. 

1. The mystery of The Balls of Light;
2. Poltergeists: "Bumps" in the night and "Knocks" in the mines;
3. Jottles: Disappearing Objects and Straying Sod. 

One of these seems to allow some actual science-like research (BOLs). One of these has sort-of been research but (to my mind) largely botched. And one of these we are just now slightly taking seriously. I'm going to make some VERY modest attempts at addressing these three mysteries before letting this Faery blog glut go. Today, BOLs. As an old UFO researcher, at least I can claim to know something about that.

As you see, the category is a complexity, and therefore in bad need of unraveling. I'm not going to do it --- here anyway. I've made about ten runs at this area of mystery in blog posts of the olden past, so you can search back into these if you wish. I WILL steal freely from those posts though. 

There are THOUSANDS of Lights-in-the-Sky reports in UFO files. There are over three hundred in my file drawers alone. A bunch of these are just because whatever-it-was was a long way away. UFO, Faery, or X?: we won't worry about those very distant lights. Some of these are just because the light was so bright that you couldn't see anything else. Let's skip those too. A few actually ARE ball lightning, and a few even are marsh gas. But there is a lollapaloosa of a pile which are none of those, and some of these get very close indeed. For me, it has been the biggest conundrum in UFO research as to whether to include close encounters with BOLs part of the core UFO research field. My intuition has been "No." 

Here's a taste of what an UFO researcher gets dumped on his desk: a few years back (only a couple maybe), a colleague was interested in finding out every UFO report which featured a physical effect (particularly an electromagnetic one) and whether those kinds of cases continued to occur in large numbers after the year 1957. 1957 was a data anchor because it was the year that the US had its huge flap of UFO cases involving car engine stops and other E-M effects. As he collected, he would send copies of the cases to me. I was swamped as usual with too much case logging et al, but I tried to do a little. The following panels are three such tries. 

 So, cases of all types of shapes, and all with allegedly some kind of physical effect on the environment. A lot of them had clear technological shape, and another lot seemed to just be really blindingly bright. But a bunch were just BOLs. I can't read the reports and the craft descriptions and conclude that all the agents behind these effects were of the same nature. Maybe they were/are, but it is not obvious to me. (Other than the Betty and Barney Hill case, by the way, my favorite encounter from a "romantic point of view is the "window" which seems to open up in the sky and shine a bright lightshaft downwards.) 

If I'm honest (I am), I'll look at these things and say: I can't see the technology in some of these descriptions, so, maybe for them, I should entertain the hypothesis that those particular BOLs are not part of the UFO core. But if they are not, then what are they? Not something which matches nothing in the reports (like lightning) and not just "ghosts" which don't have a track record of physical effects. But what in the anomalies pantheon does have these possibilities? The Old People might say: Jack O'Lantern and Joan O'Wad the King and Queen of the Pixies. "They" supposedly looked like BOLs some of the time, and could play physical tricks on you. 

Alright, somewhat crazy thinking. But while researching the UFO case files, I was also amazed to see the numbers of reports wherein the witnesses felt that they were being "accompanied," or "paced," or "curiously observed," or even "stalked" by the UFO. Sometimes the UFO looked like a machine, but a big number of these cases were BOLs. Here, for what it's worth, are my crude table notes for these cases. I include them just to show you that the cases exist in quantity. 

Hmmm... BOLs as stalkers or curious? Sounds like I'm theorizing that a ball of light might be intelligent, and willful. ... one might almost say that they are like pixie tricksters. 

Alright. So far I haven't added much other than BS to the discussion. So, there are BOLs which MIGHT exhibit intelligent behavior, but what else? You and I might have gotten lucky here (for a change.) Our luck has to do with an unrelated research agenda by a physicist who became interested in cracking the mysteries of lightball field areas where such unexplained phenomena appear sort of regularly. You've heard of all these: places like Hessdalen, Yakima, Marfa, the North Carolina "gold hills", etc. Hessdalen, the most famous in UFO research circles, is the home away from home of Erling Strand (a very long time researcher of these matters.) 

Well, here we are at that famous (infamous?) thing, The Rockefeller-Sturrock workshop. (Dick is smiling broadly as he's just played a trick on me --- rocking backwards to block me partly in the photo. It was OK; I'd been kidding him.) I've circled some of the "players." Erling is on our far right. The amount of scientific brainpower rattled him at first, and he even seemed to lose his fluency in English. (Erling is a really nice guy and I felt terrible for him.) But a day later, he got it together and made a fine presentation on the Hessdalen lights. Noting his earnest use of instrumentation, the outsider science invitees stopped smirking for a moment and showed some interest (They still, three of them anyway, behaved largely like jerks). After listening to Erling, the more jerk-like of them suggested that this was a scientific issue, yes, and they probably could solve it "over the weekend" if they had the instrumentation. 


Of course they couldn't and they didn't try. Erling continued his decades long questing and along came the right scientist to truly help out. 

The scientist that was needed and courageous enough to take things seriously was/is Massimo Teodorani, astrophysicist and remarkably open-minded explorer of mysteries. (That's him seated at the right with Erling standing behind him; they are at the Hessdalen "school" research site.) Teodorani attacked the problem with technology and effort. 

These are examples of the equipment used and at the left some of the target BOLs. Teodorani captured data from many BOLs at Hessdalen and was certain that he had demonstrated their real world presence, but what caused them? Ball lightning and anything similar to that was a laughable non-starter hypothesis as became clear. He wondered (in print) whether esoteric ideas like mini-black holes or tiny wormhole exits could have anything to do with this, but knew that such commentary was just that: talk. There was neither math nor science to connect these things. 

Other BOL sites existed. The above are photos from my/CUFOS' collection of such things (Yakima top and Hessdalen bottom.) Having had success at Hessdalen, Teodorani decided to go to other well known fields and see if results duplicated there. He went to several places where he sometimes did the work alone (with his team) and sometimes did it in concert with local people. The results generally showed the same phenomenon. 

Still, what were "they?" In some incidents there were hints that something other than the light might be inside the BOL. Other times, no hint of that. More peculiar, and unexpected, was the "behavior" of some of these BOLs. There seemed to be in some cases behavior which felt like it was intentional or responsive. 

 

Many lightfields later, and masses of observations (both instrumental and human) he came to what seems to have been a reluctant (soft) conclusion. These BOLs, at least some of them, appear to be conscious. 

 

Now whose opinions does that remind us of? 

 I'm leaving this probe into this unknown here. Read Teodorani's work. It is in a report on a symposium talk that I read the "reluctant conclusion." I don't blame him for any reluctance he may or may not have had --- anything such as that requires great courage. And I applaud him. 

I'll belabor just one last story: he became much in demand to give opinions on all sorts of alleged anomalies, and one of these was crop circles. He tried to be open-minded, but every one of these that he was taken to was an obvious hoax. (I agree with him on this topic.) He'd go into the circles with some equipment and immediately see the central holes used by the hoaxers to ensure symmetries. He couldn't help laughing to himself about those inevitable "revelations." But there was something strange which happened that boggled him. 

After going through one hoaxed circle, he was walking back through a little tunnel to a train stop. There he met an old woman that he didn't know. She wanted to talk with him for some reason. She said that in the morning she had passed through this same tunnel, and all sorts of little colored light balls had been floating in the air just there. This was a head shaker, as he did not know the woman, nor did he think she should have known him. So why that information?

This odd interaction stuck in his mind when he was later researching another crop circle elsewhere (another hoax.) No instruments recorded anything. As a sudden lark, on his way out of the circle, he thought that he would just snap off an infrared photo "for the road." 

When he produced the photo later via the computer screen, he got a shock. There across the fence in the crop circle field was a dark shadow image. The image to his eyes looked just like The Mowing Devil of the famous old chapbook drawing that you see below.

 He said that while he thought that this was a simulacrum fortuitously created by a plant, it still made him wonder. Were his two experiences after the crop circle hoax expeditions the Universe (or something within it) playing little trickster games with him? 

But we --- we would never entertain such nonsense. Would we?

Next time? Who knows? There's not much left for me to say ....

SUMMA FAERYOLOGICA, part three

Looking a little more deeply into this mystery? 

The things to say are so multiple and difficult to organize, hopefully you will forgive me if I just take on the sub-topics one by one as they arise. So the following will be a little disorganized, but you can put it together as you will. 

A. Sub-topic one: Does the phenomenon change over the years? I think that people would like me to say "yes" to this, but I don't find that. For me, the encounters seem pretty traditional, despite what certain speculators seem pushing. Across these 400 or so years, I DON'T see the fairy experience taking on more modern or time-coincident trappings. Wollaton gnomes may have jumped into little colorful play cars and levitated and zoomed about like reveling kids, but even there those cars are caricatures of modern autos and way less "technological" seeming than the "more-so" UFO spacecraft for instance. Plus, those gnomes are essentially unique in my reading concerning anything that is relatively "mechanical" or self-motivating. The fairy cases continue to be very "nature-based" and very "engine-abhorrent." The technology shows almost no evolution of any significance for centuries.

B. Sub-topic two: traditional creature types other than dwarfish folk. Are there any?

There were a few satyrs/fauns. These things are spread out from the 19th century case to the modern period. The 1863 case could be good if we are to trust the narration given by "Royalty." The strongest case is probably the Moyra Doorly incident from 2000. The cloaked faun/"Pan" case from Portugal had a decent investigation. One case is Findhorn, and all of that seems dependent upon trance, so ...? Maybe Royalty plus Moyra Doorly is good enough to give hope. 

Others?

What about Wings? 

I have 15 cases pictured, but I'd probably trust the fauns more than the wings. Let me note a few worries. The great majority of these things show up in modern times, usually VERY modern times. The earliest case in the "preferred incidents list" is from the 1950s, and only three encounters are claimed before the late 1980s. Sure the winged creatures appear in older literature, but none of those claims have felt good enough in the credibility area to include in Leprecat. I'll be happy to be wrong about this. But I'm still waiting for the credible good winged fairy case.

The question that really presses on you as you read the wings cases is: How much of this is excited romantic wannabee-ism? I can't defend that statement to you; it comes, I believe automatically, if you sit down and read the internet fairy encounter sites and drench yourself with all the anonymous (sometimes with first names) "Wow! I saw a Fairy!" claimants. The words "childish gushing" can't be blocked from my mind. Maybe it's all true, but claim after claim sounds like "I saw this light moving in my room; and I know it wasn't an insect." Or, "it went by real fast and my Dad didn't see it, but I know it was a fairy." Or, "I didn't get to see it well enough, but it had wings like a dragonfly." etc etc etc followed by " It made me feel so good to have finally seen one!" 

Maybe a read-out of the sizes of the above 15 pictures will help a little. 

A. The top row left to right: 1 foot; 6 inches; 1 or 2 inches; "8"? inches; 7 FEET!!!
B. The middle row: less than a foot; 1 foot; 1 inch; 6 inches; 3 foot.
C. The bottom row: 1 foot; 6-8 inches; 1 to 2 foot; 1 inch; 1 foot. 

There's no sense trying to make sense of those numbers. Almost everything is small, maybe even ridiculously small. There are two sizable winged fairy claimants: a three footer and a seven footer. 

None of these cases made the 50+ credible investigation/interview category. So on to the weaker question: could I read any of these narratives (and remember that these were all narratives that had "something" to recommend them enough so that I bothered to make an illustration) without shaking my head or not getting excessively uncomfortable? (I am, in my foolishness, just now going to hit "save" and go back to the original narratives and ask myself this specific question.) [Just like nodding off, you won't notice the delay, but my own CNS will pay for it, I'm sure. :=} ] 

.... well, that was another wasted hour that I'll never get back. Most of these winged fairy cases were from the Fairy Census but just about two-thirds.  Re-reading them reminded me that I had sluffed off a bit when it came to cases with winged entities. I did that because I knew that I'd come into this business being somewhat prejudiced against them, so I eased up so that some of this sort would be included. 

A majority of these cases happened in association with just waking or just drowsing or lounging quietly somewhere (i.e. in danger of the hypnogogic and the hypnopompic states.) Many cases are claimed by very young kids. So ... tough to get comfortable. I am therefore reduced to just "feeling" something from the narrative. Admitting that: the best feeling that I get while reading a narrative was the one from Eliot, ME in the 1950s. This was a report from Alternative Perceptions (on-line) Magazine of September 2007. 

The report was from two witnesses (a parent and a young child.) The child was one who had "Invisible Playmates" as a very young kid. In this case, the child called the parent to a window to look at several entities mounted on the snow-covered limbs of a spruce tree in the front yard. 

"Imagine an angel with gossamer wings and wearing velvet dresses. There were six or seven of them, as I remember. Dresses were deep red, rich blue, and a deep purple and one pink. Several of them wore red dresses. About twelve inches tall." 

The adult told of several family members who had an anomalous experience here and there (a mother, an aunt, a granddaughter.) It is slightly more comfortable to the researcher if narratives don't involve a lot of other claims, but that is a prejudice and there were not other claims made by the primary witness. ... not the greatest "strongest case" but it is what we have. 

OK. What about the Giant blonde-haired, pink-skinned, seven foot tall winged fairy? What can I say? Huge personage floating across the floor, scattering pink glitter fairy dust around. The witness was very sad before the vision, felt that the atmosphere of the place changed just before the appearance, and that this interaction made her very happy and even changed her life. 

... And the other Giants? 

A real bunch of Oddballs. Maybe five tree-like entities, the Big Blonde, three Black Cloaked menacers, and six other unique characters. The heights of the alleged entities are:

All seven footers.
All seven footers.
7', 11-12', 10', 19', 9'. (the non-pictured Grey Man was a 9-footer.)

We humans have a love/hate feeling about giants. Fascinating, awesome, dangerous.  Some of these cases have stronger credibility than some of those just previously discussed. Two of those seven footers are parts of Moyra Doorly's Arran experiences. The "Ents" surprisingly have better narratives than you would expect. I wasn't expecting to come out of this with much confidence that interactions with truly large beings happen. But Ms. Doorly and the "Ent" cases are getting to me --- still, this is not like the classic Little People in the 2-4 foot range, which have several dozen decent claims. 

This is the moment, I believe, to make a point: There is almost no organized approach to collecting Faery folklore encounter reports, but what there is --- The Fairy Census plus the anonymous fairy report sites --- might be asking for the wrong responses. They tend to (very simplistically) ask people to report "fairy" encounters. How do potential reporters take that? How do they interpret "fairy?' I know that many persons do NOT interpret this in a way that I would like them to. I have read the occasional apologetic report saying "You probably don't want this sort of thing" or "this is not a fairy, but ... " and then mention a faun or a boggart or even a dwarf. I believe that LOTS of people think that the collectors want "fairies" (little winged Tinkerbell creatures) so that particularly things like Giants aren't being asked for. In the future it would be nicer to collect a wider class of entities by making the original asking more descriptive of the variety of entities of interest. 

... I can feel the years a bit just now, so I'll retire until next time. My brilliant plan (Ha!) will be to say something about the following:

1. What did the Olde Culture think that these things were, and were not? and relatedly,
2. How do Faery cases and Apparitions relate?
3. Finally: Are Fairies and UFO occupants the same thing? 

Beyond these, there feels to be a need to say something about Balls of Light, Certain other cryptids, Tricksters and Poltergeists, Stray Sod and parallel realities, and, doubtlessly, incredibly stupid speculations by me. 

Later.....

 

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) 

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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?