SUMMA FAERYOLOGICA, part seven

And so ... what's next?

The things that go "BUMP" in the night.

 
What to say? As this project has gone on (and on), some further intuitions have arisen. I make no claims for originality, only that they have grown stronger in me --- from no cognizance at all to a nervous feeling that maybe they are true. Finally, the other evening, I drew the following crude diagram. No big deal, but if you read it maybe it says something specific to you that you may either want to accept, reject, or, best, research. 

In this diagram we know that our world of physics exists with its strengths and limitations (that is we know that unless we are some over-heated philosophical lunatic), and I think that we know a few other things. We know that we have a lot of anomalous reports, some of which seem pretty good. I think that it is without much debate that we have anomalous BOLs, and that some dozens of them can be interpreted as "acting" in intentional ways. And I KNOW that poltergeist phenomena exist. 

  
Veteran readers of this blog know why I know this. Above is the poltergeist house owned by my family members (brother and sister-in-law.) I've written about it in earlier posts. There's no arguing with me anymore on this topic. I know my relatives, I know their absolute intelligence and honesty, and I know that the manifestations there were many. Poltergeists, whatever they are, are real and NOT explained by the kneejerk flapdoodle analyses by professional skeptics.

The fact that I have been privileged to know such (for me) perfect witnesses, allows me to list some of the things that I know poltergeists do: (from roughly simple to more spectacular) creaks and odd sounds; footsteps on stairs or upper floors; "jumpings" on the beds on upper floors; doors opened when shut, and shut when formerly open; locks unlocked, and unlocked locks locked; lights turned on; lights turned off; radios and TVs turned on; radios and TVs turned off; objects moved, and in rare cases, objects "thrown." Plus, apparent communication with one very young child when she would visit. 

And that's it for my relatives' home. No violence, no fires, no breakages. These things might happen elsewhere, but not there. The "phenomenon" was more amusing than frightful, in fact it was not frightful at all. It WAS irritating now and then when my brother would wake up and have to turn off a blaring TV. Other than that my relatives considered the whole business to be somewhat of a hoot. 

Bumps in the night ... knockings on the wood ... knockers in the mines ... pixies in the woods. 

A very good friend (Jerry Clark) told me of the experience of one of his very good friends. She heard "bumps" in the basement, screwed up her courage, and went down the stairs to investigate. There under the stairs were three dwarfish men sitting facing one another. Not looking as friendly as Snow White's friends above,  she beat it out of there back upstairs. 

Agricola told us that he would not put anything into his writing that he had not seen himself or had not been seen by someone that he knew and respected. He, as we've seen, was THE Renaissance expert on all things metallurgical and mining. He wrote that it was common for miners to hear the knockings in the deep mines, and not uncommon to even see the Coballos beings who were making them. John Lewis wrote John Aubrey that he knew of the Knockers of the Cornish mines and of persons who had seen the pixie knockers. 

Bump Knock Tommyknock ... who goes there? 

My favorite female author of all time, Catherine Crowe, told us in the NIGHT SIDE OF NATURE that there were "hauntings" taking place in her time (the first half of the 19th century) that she had personal knowledge of, and had investigated/interviewed the main witnesses. 

Catherine relates things like this (I'll make a composite story which characterizes these cases): a property which consisted of an old carpentry business (or something similar) on the bottom and the basement, and living quarters on the top. Residents (usually when alone sleeping there at night) would hear knockings-about downstairs in the old shop area. Creeping down to investigate, the doors would be firmly locked, but knockings might continue. Peering into the lowest area, some evidence of activities would be found as if the occupants of the old shop had been at work. Occasionally there might even be a fleeting glimpse of those night worker entities. ... hmmm .... what were the Brounies supposed to do again?  

And my favorite Catholic priest-investigator-of-things-paranormal: Fr. Herbert Thurston, advisor to popes on all things off the beaten track, and hands on investigator of many. 

Thurston reported  many instances showing that there was no question of the reality of these experiences, and that they were the resultant of something intentional other than the witnesses themselves. Whether we had to enlist "devils" to deal with these cases was a question that he seems NOT to have preferred. Some other spirits? Should exorcism be employed? 

Hmmmm again. Should exorcism be employed? There are quite a lot of claims that denizens of Faery do NOT like the Cross or people who pray at them. 

 It's been good clean fun, has it not, to journey the woodland paths looking for Faery? But just now ... things seem to be getting a bit darker. 
 

 

How violent and disruptive are things allowed to get?

 

How much grief are these things allowed to dish out?

 WHO is behind this curtain? 

 

The Old People talked of Daemons and these daemons did not equal "devils." They were powerful paranormal non-human entities who pursued their own paths. Some of them were large; some of them were small; some of them were winged, most of them were not. Some of them roamed the woods, some the waters, some the air, some the caves. Some were rooted to locations (called the genii of the places they watched over.) Some were nice; some not; most generally indifferent. 

They were from all over. Perhaps no location lacked them. Some mimicked; some did not. Some were beautiful; some were not. Some seemed to believe in a Duty; some seemed to believe in nothing. If you left them alone, and the things to which they were attached, you usually had no problems. They seemed willful, but rarely purposeful. What is their game? Is there a Goal? 

The Old People did not think that these things were "devils" and it took a strong promulgation of warning dogma by the Protestant Churches in the 1500-1600s to cram them together with Satan's minions. The Middle Angel theory does not see them as devils but as Earth-bound and restricted cousins... and our long consorting with them on the fairy woods paths doesn't see them as devils either.  Their nature remains obscure. Their actual "moral state" more so. And, unless we could get some insight there (across the whole class of these beings) I don't see how much more progress understanding them can be made. 

Maybe we are stuck confronting the dreaded Bell-Shaped curve: Some paranormals better than others morally, some worse. Some consciously trying to show by their actions that they are ready to finally answer that big First Question that they passed by. Some still saying Screw It and slumping further down into an immoral black hole. If any of that could make any sense at all, the reports of the Little People would place most of them still happily childishly in the middle of our Bell Curve. They kind of just don't care.

The diagram again. Little People reports. BOLs-of-intention reports. Poltergeist reports. The obvious next addition is The Trickster. After that??? What other Cryptids belong within this tribe? The one thing that I know Does NOT belong there is the "Advanced Technology operating in our Atmosphere." UFOs are not Faery. (Light balls? OK.)

And what evidence do we have that there even is a World Alongside?  Spoiler alert: I can't answer that any more than I've answered anything yet.

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.....

 

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 ....

FAIRIES IN THE 70s, too?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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





 

BACK TO LEPRECAT

LEPRECAT FOUR: This is the catalog for the era of the 1950s. The catalog contains around 50+ cases. I'll try to describe around half of them.

 -------A--------//---------B---------//-------C-------//----------D----------//--------E--------//--------F---------

A. WICKLOW, Ireland. 1951. This is a MacManus case, so I at least am in for a treat. This happened in June of 1951 when MacManus' friend and her sister were walking along a rural lane at dusk. They were approaching an old thorn tree (a species legendary with connections to Faery.) There just a few feet away appeared a small man "out of nowhere." He was between two and three feet tall and dressed all in black, both clothes and cap. He seemed youngish rather than a typical leprechaun or gnome. As the two girls stared, one said "Mercy! It's a fairy!" The other then answered "The Lord save us, so it is!" Now growing terrified, they stepped to the nearby gate, and ran into the nearby field. The little man turned and stared at them the entire time. They continued to run. Then they looked back the second time. The little man was gone. But there, perched on that gate, was an odd device which had not been there. It was shaped like an old-style kitchen standing clock. 
 


The mind reels a bit about an encounter with a young leprechaun which vanished and, maybe, was replaced by a timekeeping device .... I refuse to speculate, but it's hard not to just go all Out Proctor with something like that. As an aside, this same young lady had seen another little person, dressed in all red, in the nearby woods one previous date, and had heard mysterious "fairy music" in the woods as well. 
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B. Ballananty Beg, Limerick, Ireland. 1951. This is a bit different. The "case" is a collection of specific 1951 claims embedded in a strong local encounter tradition associated with a so-called "fairy fort." The story/stories arise from newspaper coverage and community documents  concerning the building of a housing development over a fairy site. What is true, even as to the 1951 occurrence, is a bit tougher to unravel given the information, but here's an interpretation:

Alright. A development company wanted to build houses all over an area called Ballananty Beg wherein existed an ancient circular area surrounded by a ditch, which from literally time immemorial was associated with Faery --- in this case a central focus area for the region's leprechauns. Many people could recount stories about this old structure. So objections railed. The local laborers refused to dig up and demolish the site. (my prejudice would have been to preserve the place in a special honored area and build all around it --- whether I believed in leprechauns or not.) A construction crew brought in from Clare had mysterious problems and picked up and left. Local bulldozer laborers also quit the job. So what really is our point? 

Well, there were both local people who claimed that they themselves had seen the leprechauns congregating at the mound --- doing their leprechaunish things like shoe-making --- AND some members of the bulldozing team said that THEY had seen this too the very night that they decided that they shouldn't do the demo job. 

Was that, and were the other stories, true? Hard to say given no researcher isn't it? A few years later (1956?) it is said that a nearby demolition man DID come in and he ruined the site for big bucks. There is no information if the leprechauns took revenge. 
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C. Haytor, Dartmoor, UK. 1952. This is another MacManus case, so I'm upbeat. This case doesn't have quite as good a description as the former, but it's MacManus. Two people were walking on the moor. MacManus knew one of them well, and she was the witness in the case. The two, mother and adult son, had climbed to the top of Haytor. He wanted to rest, but she said that she had a desire to climb back down alone and re-climb the low tor just for the natural communion of it (she very much liked the life of the land of the moors.) 

Once down, she began her climb again. She tired and took a break to sit on a recumbent boulder called a "coffin stone." Looking upward, she saw a little man standing beside a larger upright boulder further up. He seemed to be watching her. He was about 3 to 4 foot tall and dressed in all brown, a long smock tied at the waist and brown trows. He may have had a low brown cap or just matted brown hair. He seemed old (gnomish?) in the face. She re-started her climb, despite being a little concerned due to the cultural belief that some recumbent and standing stones were meaningful to the Little People. She got to within 40 yards of him before he turned and ducked behind the upright stone. 

Once regaining the top, she told her son, who professed not to believe, but they retreated to the area to inspect it. No remaining signs, but they could ascertain that the lay of the area allowed no place to disappear to other than merely behind that stone (and she had gone directly to it finding nothing.) For her, the little man was not only real but had vanished once he got behind that stone. 
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D. Edinburgh, Findhorn Gardens and vicinity, Scotland. Four experiences in one year of the middle 1900 years (so I've chosen to put this in with the 50s.) Preliminary note about the previous cases in this blog entry: I like the "A" and "C" cases, and the "B" case has certain charms and allegedly several witnesses, but this one (D) is pretty much purely Believe It Or Not. Single Witness with some sort of privileged relationship claimed with the entity. I will re-state my hang-ups vs this sort of testimony, and you can take it as you will. 

Findhorn Gardens are an amazing location whether one believes in their claims of superior plant growing assisted by beliefs and relationships with plant fairies and devas or not. Again my biases cause some teeth grinding here. But there is a spirituality about the place that is not easy to deny and even a wonderful fellow like Paul Hawken experienced it. So ... just maybe.

The current claims are tied to a fellow named R. Ogilvie Crombie, a major figure at Findhorn. Crombie claims to have had many experiences, which apparently only he can see. The first occurred not at Findhorn but in Edinburgh at the botanical gardens. He was sitting under a tree when a figure approached to twenty yards and began dancing around. It had two small horns on its head, pointed ears and face, and shaggy body hair down to cloven hooves --- or, a classic faun. It seemed not to realize that Crombie could see it, until the human spoke. Then it made a startled jump, but hung about for some conversation. It told Crombie that it had a job, helping the life cycles of the trees. It also expressed negative thoughts about humans, as we no longer believed in them (fairy folk) so they moved away or became invisible. He gave Crombie his name and even went back with him to his apartment for more conversation (not recorded.) 

A month later Crombie saw another faun. This one was taller than himself and "radiated tremendous power." It was the demi-god Pan himself. A month after that, he saw a figure covered with a monk's habit lying on the ground. Approaching, the figure stood up and was twenty five feet tall. Pan again. Pan announced that he was a "Servant of the Almighty God," and here to serve nature and through that service, Man. Finally four months later still, Pan suddenly came walking beside him AND ENTERED HIS BODY. When that happened, Crombie was able to see the Folk Kingdom World arrayed all about with its nymphs, dryads, fauns, elves, gnomes, fairies, et al. 

Folks. I'd like to believe all of that, but that's not my style to put such things into a "Beliefs" category, as you know. But even more: I can't find any reason to relate these tales to any objective reality either. This is "nice" for me but little else. I think that if someone wanted to attempt a bit more "comfort" with these tales, one would have to try very hard for more context --- i.e. more about Crombie and more about other persons' claims about nature spirits at Findhorn. Wish it was true ---- think that it may well be not.
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E. Heilbron, Germany. 1955. This case is a sleeper; probably a good case, but just out of reach. The problem, for me anyway, is the provenance (as usual).

This case came to my files from that best of general sources Janet Bord's Fairies. That is always a very good start. But Ms Bord, like all of us, wants to present the best array of cases out there, and can only work with what's available. She, of course, had references and that sends us to a book by Andrew MacKenzie called The Seen and The Unseen. If I own that book it's back at my original house and out of reach. So it's a dead-end. 

MacKenzie was a vice-president of The Society of Psychical Research and may or may not be someone I can count on. I can only guess that he came upon the case via some communication to the SPR. IF that was true, and if that communication included testimony by the primary witness, then this is a good case. But ????? Anyway, MacKenzie being an expert on "ghosts" included this story in his book about Ghosts cited above. 

This encounter took place in a castle, and the primary witness is the "royal" owner of that castle, Baron Maximilian Hofer von Lowenstein, for whatever that does for us. (despite my "Yankee" shrug when it comes to royalty, it still generally helps my view of a claim when the claimant has something to lose.) This castle had a reputation of being haunted since at least WWII. The wife of the Baron felt that she had seen a very clear apparition of a young child in a sailor's suit. The Baron felt that he had experienced strange music in the castle but could never track it down. Different from all of that was the "goblin" sighting.

 The goblin sighting was actually a series of sightings by the Baron. He saw a two-foot tall little man, dressed in yellow, who would suddenly appear in the castle outlined by a pale blue light. The "goblin" had a beard and a pointed cap (I've colored it also yellow, but that was not stated), and would caper around. The Baron who saw him several times would try to capture him, always failing as the "goblin" would simply vanish. This gnome was later seen by the Baroness as well. 

What to do with that? This could be a really good one if we could ever get the whole personal story. But this is all we've got.
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F. Chester, CA. 1956. This is the case above with the simple cartoon with no writing. That's true because it was an incident which I got a poor description of at first and even the state name was wrong. I mention this just to give a warning about trusting second hand references. I was lucky and retrieved the better case remarks from the UFO literature. Also, thank goodness that we had a UFO investigator on the hunt. The case was investigated, interviewed, written up in detail. The investigator's name was Paul Cerny. I knew Paul, a good fellow and an engineer, who was VERY interested in UFO research, a passion which both aided and hindered his work. It aided his work in that he worked very hard at the investigations plus his enthusiasm made the witnesses see him as someone who wouldn't laugh at them --- so they told him their whole reports rather than hiding things. It hindered him in that (after he had gathered the information) he often would speculate upon what might be behind the facts, and then his "romance" would get away from him. Fortunately, with Paul, it was always easy to tell the difference between his investigated facts and his later guesswork. 

The encounter was reported by a high credibility witness, an off-duty deputy sheriff in the region he patrolled. He and his sister had gone hunting. They were separated. He was taking a moment literally sitting on a log in a clearing. He heard some movement behind him, like gravel shifting on the hillside. He stood and turned. About 70 feet away, there was a little man about four foot tall staring back. He was brightly clothed: a red and gold cap on brown hair, Closefitting green pants, a long sleeved jacket also gold colored and open in the front, a tan shirt underneath, light brown boots. He was human proportioned and adult faced (40 years old?). 

The two stared at one another for a minute and then the being turned away and lept up the hillside in twenty foot strides. He reached the top and disappeared over. Through all of this, all his (more distant) sister saw a small man some distance further away. 

Paul was a UFO researcher and was moved to try to see this as a UFO case. But there was nothing Ufological about it; a fact that I think he ultimately realized. But it was a MYSTERY, so he published it in a UFO publication. To me, this is VERY like an elfin type of sighting in every way, so here it resides.
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All six of these encounters fall into the prime height zone for our Gnomes, Elves, Pixies, Leprechauns: two to four feet, even the first of the faun stories. Other cases coming later will violate that "club." But for now, we're still overloaded with characters in that range. Perhaps that means something real. 

                         Please give me a couple of days till the next time. Stay healthy folks.