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Fairies, Pixies, Elves, Sprites & Other Little Folk

Abducted to Tubbyland

Here's an interesting contemporary account of a man whisked off to fairyland (complete with green rolling hills) which could almost have come from medieval times. (Although the entities' orange garb complete with integral TV screen reminded me of the Teletubbies!)

Location. Kiev, Ukraine
Date: 1990
Time: unknown

An elderly male witness, Valentin K. was reading a book in his room while his wife worked in the kitchen. Nobody was near him at the moment. Suddenly he saw several flashes of light, which circled the air around him. In the next moment, he appeared in a quite different and unknown location.

The place was like nothing he had ever seen before. He saw a huge meadow of bright green, trimmed grass. There was a river nearby, filled with transparent, clear water. Beyond the river he could see sloping hills. There were no visible trees. He could see several humanoid figures walking around in the distance. And nearby suddenly appeared a strange semi-transparent humanoid figure, like an orange cloud.

The witness thought that it was all a dream and at that very same moment the nearby silhouetted assumed a dense nature becoming non-transparent, it seemed to materialize in front of the witness. The figure was human-like, but not completely. Its face, hands and clothing were dull orange in color. The strangest detail was the face, instead of a nose, there was a small dark opening, instead of a mouth, also a round opening, resembling that of funnel to pour water through. Ears were totally absent. The entity's eyes were large, yellow-brown in color, which stared at the witness intently but with "kindness".

The alien "walked" closer to the witness in a strange floating gait, almost floating in midair. The alien wore totally bizarre clothing; the front section resembled that of a screen. Suddenly two other similar entities appeared nearby, which differ only in height, the first and original one was as tall as the witness, the second smaller and the third was taller than Valentin. The witness still thought that he was dreaming, but the humanoid closest to him somehow read his thoughts and answered via telepathy, "No, this is not a dream, I am real, Give me your hand!" Mechanically the witness obeyed the humanoid and stretched his hand. The alien gave him its hand. Valentin shook the alien's hand, which felt normal like that of a human, hot, with five fingers.

"Where are you from?" asked the witness, overcoming his sense of fear. Instead of an answer, the "shield" located on the alien's chest, began emitting bright colors and soon the witness saw images of "galaxies", constellations, planets, it resembled digital figures seen on electronic watches.

After that the witness remembers nothing. He came to his senses again in his bedroom. He felt somewhat torpid and his hand was hot. His wife apparently had not notice him missing; she remained in the kitchen all the time, and apparently the whole "adventure" lasted only several minutes. The witness, who was an accomplished artist, drew portraits of the scenes he witnessed.

source

telletubbies.jpg
 
Wow ! Sounds like he dropped an acid tab after watching the Teletubbies.
 
Fairies

Do fairies exist? Answer on my bad days - "Maybe." On my good days - "Probably, in some sense or the other."

What are they? Likely a manifestation of some type of control mechanism for this planet (or perhaps solar system). I suspect that they may bear at least some vague relationship to ball lightning and other "balls of light" phenomena.

Morality? Some are likely good, some evil. And others (such as the elementals) may very well be "lillies of the field."

Those who cannot conceive of evil fairies might do well to read Arthur Machen's novellette or long short story THE WHITE PEOPLE. Yes, of course I realize that this is only fiction. At least I HOPE it is only fiction. But somehow as in reading Peter Straub's GHOST STORY I get this extremely uncomfortable feeling that while the characters are indeed fictional the evil is real. (And thus it is merely fictional characters which protect us from the evil!)
 
There's an interesting (if poorly organised) collection of fairy sightings here:
http://www.fairygardens.com/sightings/index.html

Many of them are of prettily bland fairies straight out of Victorian children's books - rather than the more 'earthy' fairies of yore - but there are a few rather more ambivalent accounts:

My childhood friend who was of Irish decent as well and six years old, lived on a farm. There were many large potato barns and fields. She was running through one of these fields when she looked across the field and saw a figure standing in the entryway of the barn. She thought it was one of the farm hands, Barney, who used to give her candy and tell her jokes. She yelled "Barney!", but got no answer and started running for the barn.

As she got closer to the figure, she noticed it wasn't Barney at all. It was a tall, transparent figure with no features, no eyes, no mouth, nothing, but it had the outline of a tall, slender, bald man. She said she felt like it was "beckoning" her though it didn't say anything. She said when she looked through it was like "looking through time" though she can't explain it.

She said she never saw anything that even remotely resembled it until she saw the liquid figures in the Terminator Movies or the TLC "Waterfalls" video. It scared her deeply at the time and she eventually ran away from it. She told her family she had just seen "the Gingerbread Man."

And here's an interesting little vignette for those interested in the way cultural belief shapes our experience of the paranormal:

Midsummer Dusk, 1988. My best friend and cousin on the same Irish side of the family, was out on a four-wheeler in the woods with another friend. They stopped because they saw a blue sparkling light along the side of their path, moving up and down rapidly as if it were connected to an invisible wire. Being just young, they immediately at first thought it was "tinker belle" but then remembering that tinker belle was a cartoon and not real. My friend then said, "Maybe it's an alien." To which they both sped off as fast as they could.
 
This morning whilst watching BBC Breakfast, I saw they did a story on a planning decision that has forced some contractors to move their building works in order to protect a boulder under which locals were convinced fairies lived. It was either Glenfinnan or St Finnian's or something in Scotland (I missed a lot as I was running about trying to get ready for work.) I've heard of it happening in Eire and Iceland but not Scotland before.

Can I find a sniff of it on the web? Can I heckers like...

Instead I present a link about a wee girl who wasn't allowed to take her baby teeth home for the Tooth Fairy because the hospital designated them bodyparts. The rotters....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4392778.stm
 
staticgirl said:
This morning whilst watching BBC Breakfast, I saw they did a story on a planning decision that has forced some contractors to move their building works in order to protect a boulder under which locals were convinced fairies lived. It was either Glenfinnan or St Finnian's or something in Scotland (I missed a lot as I was running about trying to get ready for work.) I've heard of it happening in Eire and Iceland but not Scotland before.

Can I find a sniff of it on the web? Can I heckers like... cause the hospital designated them bodyparts. The rotters....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4392778.stm

This story was on the front page of the site yesterday.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 12,00.html
 
Rotters

staticgirl said:
"....a wee girl who wasn't allowed to take her baby teeth home for the Tooth Fairy because the hospital designated them bodyparts. The rotters...."

The medical staff at one British hospital are obvious computers in very ill-fitting human suits being passed off as people.

Or if they actually ARE living, breathing people....aren't you happy that you didn't have endure THEIR childhoods?

P. S. If there is indeed such a thing as a "dangerous" baby tooth, all you have to do to make it safe again is to swish it around in a little rubbing alcohol. Maybe the hospital can't afford that?

Rights of parents to their child's baby teeth? Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
 
Little folk

I have always been interested in tales of faeries, elves, trolls, etc. all my life. However, I rarely find interesting, supposedly true stories about them here in the U. S.

I've read many of the stories on various websites on the Internet, but feel there HAS to be others out there waiting to be told once more.

I'm wondering if anyone out there can tell their favorite story about these creatures. It doesn't necessarily have to be an IHTM story, but perhaps your own personal favorite.

Thanks.

T7
 
Supposedly someone saw one of the little folk near an opening to the Gypsum mines around here. The account I read didn't inspire belief and sadly, I've never seen anyone even remotely resembling one of the gentry.

A woman who owns a vinyard in Michigan tried to develop a tourist trade based on the idea that the little folk inhabited her land, but that wasn't very convincing either. She must have only read modern versions of Leprechauns and it all sounded childish and silly.

I have read some interesting accounts from the Pacific Northwest and from the Smoky Mountain region. Bannik and some others might actually have some good stories for you. A man named Michael Mott wrote a very strange book about Underearth dwellers. Between some of his rants you find some really good accounts of gnomish type humanoids trying to lure children away from camping grounds or from buildings that are built partly into the mountain wall. Good scary stuff.
 
Here is one account from Michael Mott's book that I really liked because it's a modern telling of the troll under the bridge.

Quote: "I was driving from Birmingham, Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi, when I had a blow-out on the interstate," he relates. "It was almost sundown, and the tall pines around, along with the hilly terrain, had created a dark atmosphere already. I was close to Meridian, Mississippi when it happened, and pulled over just past an exit and overpass. While I was working on changing the tire, I kept having an eerie feeling that I was being watched. You know, the hairs on my neck and arms were standing up (electromagnetic affect? -W.M.M.), my spine was tingling. Pretty soon, this feeling became unbearable, and I jerked around to have a look, like (as if) by instinct. That's when I saw it, a short, stocky figure, about fifteen or twenty feet away, toward the overpass. He was wearing pants, I guess, and a big dark coat with a hood. I thought it was a kid, so I turned to speak to him, and I involuntarily raised the lugwrench - one of those cross- or plus-shaped ones, you know - and he started moaning. I mean, it was the creepiest sound I've ever heard! Then I saw his face, or got a brief look at it -- pale, kind of reminding me of a fish or some other thing that didn't get much sun. Couldn't see his eyes, they were deep and sunken-in, shadowed. He gave me the creeps like you wouldn't believe, so I stood up, and he skedaddled out of there! I watched him run to the overpass, then scamper up the concrete embankment and disappear. I figured he was hiding out in the shadows. I thought he must be a midget because his face was shaped like a man's."

The account goes on to say that he finished replacing the tire and drove under the overpass to get a look. He carried a gun so he felt fairly safe. He thought he saw the creature hunched under the pylons but there was something unnatural and frightening about it so he drove away. A few days later, he stopped again in daylight and actually walked up under the ramp. He could find no openings, no holes, no indentations, only concrete and hard clay, and "no sign of a little man, midget, or kid, or anything else!"

The book is Caverns, Cauldrons, and Concealed Creatures by William Michael Mott. I don't know if it's still available because it was self-published and bound in a plastic ring binder. It has some really wonderful accounts, and it's one book that I would actually be heartbroken if I lost because I feel it's irreplaceable: a real book of "scary" fairy lore from our time.
 
With a tip of the liberty cap to Tim Buckley:
http://www.honolulu.ichotelsgroup.com/trivia.process/MID_431/bgcolor_333399/OID_80/

While other cultures claim elves, leprechauns, and fairies, Hawaii boasts its own society of little people. Known as menehunes, these small-statured beings are elusive but hard-working. In ancient days, they often appeared in the night and worked tirelessly to construct temples, fish ponds, and other structures for the benefit of islanders. If humans came upon them, the menehunes would scatter, leaving the project undone. Their work allegedly includes the Ulupo Heiau in Kailua on windward Oahu.
 
1 fairies are not tiny beings for a start they can change size thats why there is no account of a true size. also fairies not have any gold but they do have the power of wish but that does not mean they will grant your every wish. they can talk any being this as something to do with the magic they also talk gnomish with is there native tongue.the word fairy does not mean just small creature it relates to any creature that comes from the fairy world.

2 faires do exist just because you can not see them does not mean they are not there .they can only been seen by people that belive them thats why childern can see them that is because they belive in them without seeing them first its to do with magic but not to sure how it works there are other ways to see them try magic mushrooms people would use these to invoke spirits also indians belived in tree spirits which i think are another name for fairies.

by the way there are to many people belive in what books say dont belive every thing you read if you want to no more read fairy Tales there is more truth in them than you think.
 
One of my favourite encounters is that reported by Irishman John Keely, which occured when he was a schoolboy in 1938. Walking along a country lane in County Limerick, he encountered a wizened 3-ft-tall fairy man. He intercepted it and asked where it came from and where it was going.

"I'm from the mountains," replied the Fairy curtly. "And it's all equal to you what my business is!"
 
TulipTree said:
The book is Caverns, Cauldrons, and Concealed Creatures by William Michael Mott. I don't know if it's still available because it was self-published and bound in a plastic ring binder. It has some really wonderful accounts, and it's one book that I would actually be heartbroken if I lost because I feel it's irreplaceable: a real book of "scary" fairy lore from our time.
I want the book!

It's U.S. fairy stories you want specifically, T7? Here's one (guaranteed true!) which took place in Queens, NY: http://paranormal.about.com/library/bls ... r04_05.htm

Also, there are the Tommy-Knockers who are American descendents of the British Knockers.
In the 1820's, immigrant Welsh miners brought the Knockers and their theft of unwatched items and warning knocks to western Pennsylvania (where they were called "Tommyknockers") when they gravitated there to work in the mines. Cornish miners, much sought after in the years following the 1848 gold rush, brought them to California. When asked if they had relatives back in England who would come to work the mines, the Cornish miners always said something along the lines of "Well, me cousin Jack over in Cornwall wouldst come could ye pay ’is boat ride", and so came to be called Cousin Jacks. The Cousin Jacks, as notorious for losing tools as they were for diving out of shafts just before they collapsed, attributed this to their diminutive friends and refused to enter new mines until assured by the management that the Tommyknockers were already on duty. Belief in the wee miners remained well into the 20th century. When one large mine closed in 1956 and the owners sealed the entrance, fourth and fifth and sixth generation Cousin Jacks circulated a petition calling on the mineowners to set the Tommyknockers free so that they could move on to other mines. The owners complied.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommyknockers
 
An interesting page
THE QUEEN OF ELPHAME

Scottish witch trials in particular were often notable for their accounts of the Fairy Queen, or Queen of Elfhame [‘Elf Home’]. Isobel Gowdie said that she met the Fairy Queen when she went into the hollow hills, and learned all her magic from the fairies whilst there. She spoke of the wildfolk that waited upon her coven as Robert the Jakis, Sanderis the Reed Reever, Thomas the Fairy and Swain the Roaring Lion, but she was stopped from speaking further by the interrogators, as she often was when she spoke of fairies, as can be seen from the transcripts. The interrogators only wanted to hear of devils and evil deeds.

In 1588 Alison Pearson was condemned for ‘haunting and repairing with the Good Neighbours and the Queen of Elphame’. It seems that the Fairy Queen sent messengers to summon likely witches. In 1670, Jean Weir said that when she kept a school at Dalkeith a tall woman came to her house. She had a child upon her back and two at her feet. The woman desired that Jean should employ her to negotiate on her behalf with the Fairy Queen. This was how Jean first became involved in witchcraft. Her brother Major Weir offered himself up and was executed as a witch in Edinburgh, refusing all attempts to convert him. In 1576 Bessie Dunlop stated that as she lay in childbed, a stout woman came and sat down beside her, comforted and drank with her. The coven leader told her that it was the Queen of Elphame, his mistress.

The old British witches called their supernatural mistress the Fairy Queen and it was she who led the Sabbat. Similarly, many Italian witches believed in the historical existence of a woman [or goddess] named Aradia, who brought about a revival of Italian witchcraft, travelling the country and preaching the old Pagan religion of Diana, whom they called Queen of the Fairies. There was a Rumanian Pagan sect known as the Callusari who, during the Middle Ages, worshipped a mythical empress who they sometimes called "Arada" [possibly Aradia] naming her as Queen of the Fairies. The Cǎlluşari dancers were the followers of the Fairy Queen, and their dances were thought to have originated in the Otherworld. Similar Macedonian dance troops were called Rusalia or 'Fairies'. Like fairies, they were responsible for bringing fertility to the land.

The Italian carnival society of the Cavallino assembled under the banner of Erodiade, a name for the Queen of the Fairies, possibly synonymous with the witch goddess Herodias. The society grew to prominence in the Middle Ages, appearing in processions, pantomimes and healing sessions, but may have had a very ancient, Pagan origin. It was exclusively male, its members dressed in women's clothes and wore make up. They always gathered in odd numbers, such as seven or nine or eleven. The Catholic Church persecuted them as Pagans who worshipped the goddess Diana.
 
Was walking home across the meadow last night and saw what I would shurely have mistaken for pixies or fairies were i not such a credible and impartial observer ;) (and yes, I had had a drink, but not much). Port meadow is an especially atmospheric place - at night it can have a real "blasted heath" look and iron age mounds are semi visible, etc. It was quite a spooky night, not foggy but hazy, and I was feeling a little on my own.

Anyhow, after having walked through a field, and getting back on the meadow, I saw what appeared to be small dark shapes, which I took to be people (visibility was very low, as I discovered later when I found cows looming at me suddenly within a metre or two). The thing is, the undefined dark blobs disappeared the near I came to them, only for me to notice them a little to the side, etc. I also noticed two tiny flashes, or sparkles, coming from the same direction. Then I shrugged (I may not have actually shrugged) and carried on with my walk.

As I said, there was rather low visibility - it was a very dark night, though cloudless, and the air near the ground seemed somewhat hazy - so I'd put it down to a vision thing. Time was about 1:30.
 
i was talkin to someone i konw the other day and they were going on about fairies, pixies and elfs saying how he thought they are real and not jsut made up by the legend surrounding magical fairy tale creatures,

does anyone one else agree or disagree?
 
I think the Secret Commonwealth of Elves Fauns and Fairies is quite real!

I've run into things I think may be it's inhabitants, for example a couple in old style Highland dress (long shirts and belted plaids) on the Fairy Hill by Aberfoyle. Me and my partner saw them on the path ahead of us and thought they were tourist guides in costume or something similar, until they stepped off the path, turned slightly and vanished. They couldn't have gone between the trees because we'd have seen them and when we got to the spot where they'd been there was nowhere to hide. It almost looked as if they'd stepped out through an invisible door!

I suppose it could a trick of the light, but it'd be strange for two of us to mistake shadows for the same thing.
 
I believe in fairies, but do not know what they are.

If you can get a copy of Katherine Briggs's Encyclopedia of Fairies, you will never regret the purchase.
 
If they are real, they are well beyond my understanding of how the world works. Like God, I tend not to believe, but you never can be entirely sure. ;)
 
PeniG said:
I believe in fairies, but do not know what they are.

If you can get a copy of Katherine Briggs's Encyclopedia of Fairies, you will never regret the purchase.

Probably the best general backgrounder on the subject. Also highly recommended by Neil Gaiman who's produce some very good fairy stories himself...he understands the unseelie court as well as the seelie court.
 
Now that fairies are getting fashionable, the Encyclopedia needs a new edition. My American paperback dates back to 1976.

In addition to her straight folklore work, Briggs also wrote two excellent fairylore novels, Hobberdy Dick and Kate Crackernuts. If you see 'em, buy 'em.
 
PeniG said:
Now that fairies are getting fashionable, the Encyclopedia needs a new edition. My American paperback dates back to 1976.

My UK paperback's from about that time too. Her "The Vanishing People: Fairy Lore and Legends" is quite a useful book as well.
 
I think she was chair or president of the folklore society.

Which emphasises the academic worth of her work - she's after the collecting/antiquarian stage of the discipline and was part of the group which set a pardadigm for the serious study of the field, and moved away from the Margaret Murray thesis.

Kath
 
Pooh! I `like` the Ms Murray thesis....

I will admit it doesnt work for `everything` though

I think McRichtie (a victorian predeccesor of the `faries are the old people` school of thought) was going a bit far when he identified various burial chambers as habitations (though they may have been used as such in later times) but he had various valid points.

Some houses `did` look like turf mounds (the ones of N Rona, for example, theres a classic account of a visitor sitting on a mound to talk to the shepherd, and only when the fires lit does he realise hes sitting on a house!)

Ms Briggs book (one I read, I dont think it was the dictionary, secret commonwealth, perhaps?) certainly seems to be a garbled account of a bronze age pastoral society encountering new fangled things like chickens and iron.
 
The Secret Commonwealth of Elves Fauns and Fairies, is RoberK Kirk's accound of the fairies of the Highlands.

Is the Katherine Briggs book "The Vanishing People: Fairy Lore and Legends". I'll see if I can find my copy to check.
 
Odd that belief in faeries died out when the more technosavvy greys entered into the mix.
With the idea that greys can cross light years across the universe only to fail to apply the brakes at the right moment and crash into the earth rendering the whole thing stupid, the belief of the faerie has risen in currency. And I mean currency as there are books to be written and, more importantly, bought about this subject.

I recommend Jaques Vallee's 'Passport to Magonia' if you can find a copy.
 
I'd recommend John Michell's The Flying Saucer Vision as well which also looks at the interconnections between the Fairies, Dragons, Earth Mysteries and the Aliens.
 
The Secret Commonwealth is fab, and written by someone who is supposed to have vanished soon afterwards, down a hole or something into god only knows what...

Oh, go on - treat yourself and read it:
http://ftp.fortunaty.net/com/sacred-tex ... /index.htm

I never really went for the Murray take on the matter as it struck me as an attempt to rationalise High Strangeness.

More stuff: WB Yeats, The Celtic Twilight:
http://ftp.fortunaty.net/com/sacred-tex ... /index.htm

Yeats, immersed in Theosophy and The Golden Dawn as he was, believed in The Good Folk, and collected accounts around and about the Irish countryside. Intriguing book.

Do I believe in them? There is a Southern European proverb 'I don't believe in witches, but they exist!' That is my take on it: It is an outrageous notion, but people do indeed experience something very odd so there must be something going on.
 
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