Twenty-first century Light on the Path?

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next time: stranger formed characters .....  

Tolkien ENTS in the 21st Century?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Relax. I'm an expert. 

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

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

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

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

The witness had a good attitude about anomalies, simply stating that we should all be open-minded and take them simply as they came without overly interpreting them beyond what was seen. 
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 Tinkerbell strikes again. The narrative here is written in a very feminine mode, but again I cannot tell the witness' gender. The environment of the incident sounds like a young person camping at night in their own backyard. (no other location)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MORE CASES IN THE 90s

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Faery in the Age of Anonymity: The 1990s

This post will try to do what we can with this "modern world" situation wherein witnesses no longer bother to say much about their claims, and investigators are rarely to be found in any form. It's a shame. There are still very interesting tales being told; and I'll re-tell some of them here. But in these 90s we're in danger of losing all this data. Simon Young's Fairy Census saved some of that data even if in anonymous forms, ... but it's a step. ... and entertaining. Below I'm going to begin this decade with a big gallery of some of these tales. Then let's dive into some of the pictured critters encounters.

 The numbers that exist near some of the cartoons are erratically placed there by me, just to have some reference in case you want to check the appearance for the tale we're discussing. I'll begin with several of The Fairy census cases. 

Fairy Census Case #114: Somerset, UK.
 A woman in her twenties was walking along a forest path, her companions having gone on ahead. She turned a corner on the trail, and experienced a strange atmosphere of extreme quiet (The OZ effect.) There was an unusual mist on the path there. It seemed to be glowing. Within that glow, the witness saw a "procession." Now within the area of mist, a troop of small figures in mediaeval dress were marching. They were three foot tall beings who carried lanterns as they marched. They seemed to see her, but merely marched on by. She believed that the experience lasted 3 to 5 minutes, but once checking her watch, it seemed to her to have lasted ten times as long. (Cartoon#6.) 

Fairy Census Case #136: Yorkshire, UK.
 The witness was a woman in her thirties. The encounter occurred inside. (Which, for me, is usually worrisome.) This is a very poor narrative in that it does not tell the reader what the witness was doing. She does claim an OZ Effect just before the event. The happening involved the flying of a seven foot tall female winged fairy across the room. The fairy was blonde haired and pink skinned and clothing undescribed. The wings were translucent pink. As she flew about she sprinkled glittery pink fairy dust around. The witness said that she thought the fairy had come to make her life better. (Cartoon #5.) 

Flying fairies sprinkling "fairy dust" around is a distinctly non-traditional idea, hardly being referred to in any sense until Walt Disney has Tinkerbell throw it around. Some "dust" does  appear in old stories to blind witnesses or allow witnesses to see Glamour --- but even that is rare. This story is the sort of thing which rings all the wrong bells: No good narrative; piecemeal entity description; feelings by the witness that she has been specially gifted; a gut feeling on my part that this drama could have been a form of hypnogogic semi-waking dream. But ... I don't know this, so in the interest of objectivity, and because this case contains the dreaded "wings", albeit on a monstrously big Tinkerbell, I include it.  

Fairy Census Case #38: Devon, UK. 
 The witness was a female in her twenties. This is a case where the witness wants to appear "cool" and so degrades the narrative. The main difference between this claim and the last case is that this witness here narrates a fairly smooth sequence of events from the start to finish. If we disregard the glib talk, the story is credible. The strangeness of this narrative is equal to the Yorkshire case, but strange as it is, this one is not outside the range of the stories in the previous tales in the past blogs. So, on to the case description, but with a bit more confidence. (Cartoon #2)

Here goes: Four people were camping near "an ancient woodland." They had a cabin and were partying. She heard a babble outside that sounded like children's voices. The others didn't hear it. She went outside and got scared and ran back in. Later in the night, she got herself back together and went for a walk in the woods. She kept seeing movements out of the corner of her eye. She said to herself that she didn't want these to be fairies (she said that she'd rather see a UFO since that would be cooler.) Not wanting to stare at them, she still saw that they were a troop of "pixie-like folk" dressed in mediaeval ways, that seemed to exist in a smaller scale. When she brushed past a branch, it exposed the painted end of a cart which normally would be drawn by a horse. This rattled her enough that she hurried back to the cabin. 

After a while she got antsy and went back out. This time she saw them again, and challenged herself to prove to herself that she wasn't hallucinating. To do that, she intensely focused on the central figure in the mediaeval setting. This figure she called an "Elf Queen" and was standing on the far bank of the river, perhaps 20 feet away. She was "robed in a tight-fitting cream garment with copper-colored trim and she had brunette hair pulled into a matching ornate head dress." The accompanying fairy folk were dressed in "classic" red and green "elf type gear." She saw them far less clearly than she saw the Elf Queen. All this continued to shake her and she went rapidly back to the cabin and convinced one of her friends to drive her back to the city. She later wrote a letter to FORTEAN TIMES to report this incident. 

.... so potentially rich. So much of an investigative waste. 

Fairy Census Case #113: Shropshire, UK. 

The witness was in her twenties at the time of the incident.  She was driving on a country road in an isolated area. As she approached something off the road on the verge, she saw that it was a little person pushing a cart or a wheelbarrow there on the grass. The being was three foot tall, and dressed in a two or three piece light green suit, and having a green hat. The witness was shocked by the unexpected vision and just drove by. Looking in the rear view mirror, she found that the little man and his wheelbarrow had just disappeared. 

That's it. A good old fashion "now you see me, now you don't" crossing of paths.  (Cartoon#34)

Fairy Census Case #242: Carolinas, USA.

The witnesses were two teenagers (one at least female.) The main discomfort in this story is that the two were out in the woods deliberately looking for signs of fairies. Just at dusk, and carrying "gifts" for the fairies, they walked 50 yards into the woods and halted in a clearing near some cedar trees. They made a small fire and poured wine into it, leaving some in a seashell as a more permanent offering. They then sat around and waited. They poured water on the fire and wrapped up in a blanket. 
Quite some time passed and then they inexplicably began to feel a "Wild Presence" which they could not put into words. They looked towards the seashell with the wine. Over it at about two feet there were hovering and dancing in a circle, a group of colorful small BOLs. The witnesses watched this for a while and then the BOLs vanished. The witnesses then panicked and ran all the way to their home. There were no shaped forms,  just the colored lightballs,  but both witnesses felt that there were presences associated with them. (cartoon #45)

The main reporter here also said that she and her family members had seen at different times things like black-cloaked "ghosts", a mysterious Black Dog, and an odd tract of forest which location  could not be re-located upon later attempts to locate it. 

Fairy Census Case #106: Oxfordshire, UK. 

The witness was a female in her twenties. (Yep. That again.) The witness was riding a bus back from work, when she got a tingly feeling. She had been distracted and this came just as she passed her stop by mistake. Getting off at the next stop, she began walking back. In time she came to a thorn tree (a tree type that she knew, as a druid aficionado, as a fairy tree.) When she passed the tree she thought that she saw movement and a shape walking behind her. She turned several times, but no one was ever there. 

She kept walking to the back gate of the field of her family's property. Turning slightly then, she saw a "classic gnome": two foot tall and dressed all in leathery brown, but with a cap instead of a peaked floppy hat. After that glimpse, she saw him many other times, once even bending over her cat and stroking it. This encounter seemed to open her up to other experiences of faery, as she, for instance, later on at an Easter Sunrise (Beltane ceremony?) saw some "bark-skinned figures" came out of trees to watch the service. She also had a couple of other incident types, including a "Green Man" sighting and one of a radiant figure by a stream. (Cartoon #1)

The witness being a "practicing druid" bothers me as to independence of the witness' credibility. Other than that, the story doesn't violate previous encounter details. 

Fairy Census Case #27: Cornwall, UK. 

The witness was a male in his twenties (well, at least there's some variety here.) He was driving down an isolated road which was bordered by hedgerows on both sides. There came into the moment a strange feeling of "definite silence" in the air (our OZ Effect again.) At the same time he felt compelled to look closely at the hedgerow. There standing was a two and a half foot tall "old man." The description was: brown-leathery skin, old looking face, hooked nose, large ears, bald with little other hair. Very large hands. He was wearing only a loincloth, looking very angry and pointing right at the driver with his index finger. 

The witness braked strongly. He then realized that the road suddenly swung at a bad angle towards a sea wall. Had he not braked suddenly he felt that he would have driven over that seawall and over the cliff it protected (since he was driving too fast.) This man had made an error sometime previously on his trip and was not on the road that he intended. (his wife and child were also asleep in the car, so he considered this as a helpful warning act which saved their lives.) (Cartoon #4)

Fairy Census Case #217: Arkansas, USA.

The witness was a female in her teens (along with a younger sister, who however wandered off and did not see the being.) They were visiting at their grandparents' place which had a woods on the back of the property. This was a place that they went to play along with the family dog. There were low hills and a stream there and exploring was fun. The younger sister ran happily up the hillside and over, but the dog stayed with the witness. Suddenly it stopped walking and began leaning against her with raised hackles. It was looking opposite the direction from that where the younger sister ran.

In that direction there was a blonde woman, dressed in white and walking towards her. But she was making no noise, despite the dry leaves. In fact there was no noise anywhere at all (OZ again.) No bird sound. No wind. She glowed and she smiled and waved. Her dog moved, and the girl glanced down. Just then the woman vanished. (cartoon not numbered above.)

Apparition or Fairy?

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These are the most interesting to me of the Fairy Census  cases in this batch. There are, of course, quite a few cases from other sources. Next time I'll try to cover others from the 90s. As has been mentioned previously, all of the high credibility cases of the "50" presented in earlier posts were from earlier years except for three. Only one of the better credibility cases is from the 90s (the TV documented "Shadow-cutter" case.) The cases today and in the next 90s posting will all be softer credibility cases, but I'll at least try to pick interesting ones. 

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