Ep 55: Terrified by Goblins in my London Flat!

In 2018, after months of unusual phenomena in her London flat, a woman finally came face to face with the troublesome culprits. During a night time trip to the bathroom she was horrified to see two goblins, stacked one atop the other, peering at her from the threshold of the door. 

Since that time, she has struggled to come to terms with the reality of what happened.  In our western society, people are wholly unaccepting that these experiences take place, least of all that they could ever happen in urban areas. 

We discuss the events that finally led to that night, her relationship with the flat, which had always unnerved visitors and how the decision to share her story was not taken lightly. 

Is it purely location that invokes these visitations? What other factors are involved? We discuss aspects of liminality including thresholds, stages of life and geographical landmarks. 

In the bonus episode on Patreon, I narrate several other modern encounters which bear a striking resemblance to our guest’s experience. Join us there for just £3 a month and get access to the Discord group and regular events.

Main image: Created by the guest as a close likeness of the one of the goblins she saw in her flat.

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Warning: These are not fairytales. The Modern Fairy Sightings Podcast is designed for viewers and listeners 16 years and older. This show is unsuitable for children or anyone who might be sensitive to creepy content.

Show notes

Briggs, K. (1976) An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies and Other Supernatural Creatures. New York: Pantheon Books.

Bathing Fairies of Ilkley on Boggart and Banshee Podcast (Simon Young and Chris Woodyard)

Bord, J.  (1997) Fairies: Real Encounters with Little People. London: Michael O’Mara Books

Goblin Market, Christina Rossetti (composed in 1859 and published in 1862)

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If you enjoy the show, please consider sharing your favourite episodes with friends. Don't forget to rate and subscribe wherever you listen, and if you can, please support by joining The Curious Crew on Patreon

Want to report a sighting?

Contact me at: scarlettofthefae@gmail.com
If you love the show and want support it and join our loving community you can find us at Patreon 

Ep 53: Dartmoor Gnomes and Seer Lineage

Another delve into the original interview recordings I made in early 2017 when the Modern Fairy Sightings Project first launched.  Mark Norman and I were at the time researching for the Devon chapter in Simon Young’s book Magical Folk.

One particular woman responded to a poster I’d pinned up in Dartmoor, calling for people to contact with their fairy encounters! We spoke about her family history with fairies and her own understandings of the Otherworld. 

Later on in the show, I share more reported fairy sightings on Dartmoor featured in Janet Bord’s book, Fairies: Real Encounters with Little People.

In the bonus episode on Patreon, we explore  20th century Dartmoor folklore by Theo Brown, which mentions a few stories of sightings in Postbridge, not far from Bovey Tracey, where our guest had lived.

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Warning: These are not fairytales. The Modern Fairy Sightings Podcast is designed for viewers and listeners 16 years and older. This show is unsuitable for children or anyone who might be sensitive to creepy content.

Shownotes

Janet Bord’s Fairies: Real Encounters with Little People (1997)

Theo Brown’s Tales of a Dartmoor Village: Some Preliminary Notes of the Folklore of Postbridge (1973)

Susan Chittenden’s A Romance of Two Worlds (2021) (pls email me for Susan’s contact)

J. R. W. Coxhead – Devon Traditions and Fairytales (1959)

Edward L. Gardner: Fairies: A Book of Real Fairies (1974)

Marjorie T. Johnson’s (Simon Young ed) Seeing Fairies: From the Lost Archives of the Fairy Investigation Society, Authentic Reports of Fairies in Modern Times (2019)

Dermot MacManus Middle Kingdom: The Faerie World of Ireland (1980)

Simon Young’s Magical Folk: British and Irish Fairies: 500AD to the Present (2020)


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If you enjoy the show, please consider sharing your favourite episodes with friends. Don't forget to rate and subscribe wherever you listen, and if you can, please support by joining The Curious Crew on Patreon

Want to report a sighting?

Contact me at: scarlettofthefae@gmail.com
If you love the show and want support it and join our loving community you can find us at Patreon 

Ep 49: Artist, Brett Manning discusses dreams, inspirations and magic rabbits

Brett’s book is available on Etsy

A beautiful in-depth chat with Brett Manning – a well known and much admired artist of the strange. Her new book, One Foot in the Green presents insightful and characterful interpretations of the Fae and cryptid beings. 

Brett’s sense of the Otherworld is inspired by her own dreams and personal experiences.  This chat is a really generous and open hearted discussion about her relationship with these beings and their realms. 

Connect with Brett’s work on Instagram at BrettManningArt and BrettisaGirl on Etsy. 

Hop over to the Patreon BONUS EPISODE to hear excerpts from Brett’s book, One Foot in the Green.

Brett Manning’s Art

Content warning: These are not fairytales and the content is unsuitable for children. Some episodes may contain details which some may find unsettling or frightening. The Modern Fairy Sightings Podcast is designed for listeners 16 years and older.

Please do subscribe, rate and share this episode and support the podcast by joining Patreon if you can. Thank you 

Podcast intro music: Transmutate by Snowflake (c) copyright 2020 Licensed. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Modern Fairy Sightings Green Man Artwork: Peter Hall Studios

Ep 44: Contact with Star Beings and Coping with Personal Awakenings

Todd Grube is a long-time experiencer and a previous guest from Episode 21, Awakening to Them

I talked with Todd about the apparent upsurge in encounters and people’s personal awakenings.  He describes his observation of an orb-like ship that shot into the sky from a lake, near his previous home. He and his wife later experienced entering the ship. After that time he began communicating with what he describes as, ‘Star Beings’.  

Todd shares some more recent experiences he’s had with what appear to be yoga deities. He also suggests some meditations and exercises for letting go of old thinking patterns.

On the bonus episode on Patreon, he reveals another experience with what sounds like a being from another Star System, who had a message for him 

Todd teaches yoga, Tai Chi and Qi Gung in Sweden where he lives with his family. He provided our Patreon group with a ‘tea ceremony’ workshop last year which introduced us to a whole new way of connecting with Otherworldly beings. 

Main image: https://www.reunitingall.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Starseed.jpg

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Show notes

☕️ Tea Ceremony Workshop
Introduction to Tea Meditation and Ceremony (Cha-Dao):

Tea meditation or Cha-dao is a ancient form of Shamanic meditation practice coming from south China using the plant medicine Camellia Sinensis or tea!

🧚‍♂️It was used by shamans, healers and Taoist for about 20 thousand years and was used as a tool to communicate with the gods, Fae, elementals, guides, Star people and power animals.  

🌱Tea is a plant teacher and medicine which helps open you to receive messages and even communicate with different Fae and light beings!  

🌟In this workshop I will talk about  : history of tea  : how to do a tea meditation  : what teas are good for tea meditations  : philosophy of tea meditation  : how to use tea as a medicine, and a connection with the Fae and light beings  : and any questions you may have to get started!

We’ll run a ritual ceremony during the workshop followed by an opportunity to share our experiences and ask questions etc. The whole workshop should take around 1 to 1.5 hours depending on numbers of participants. Todd will advise various teas that you can use for the ceremony, ahead of the workshop.

Register your interest for the tea ceremony workshop at scarlettofthefae@gmail.com

The Qi Gong is an exclusive workshop for patrons. You can join and support the show here: 
https://www.patreon.com/themodernfairysightingspodcast

Here’s what the Patreon group said about the workshop:

🌟That was brilliant! Thank you soo much for setting up the tea ceremony workshop!”

🌟“Todd was just lovely and an informative teacher too. I had no idea that tea had this spiritual history to it.  I’m looking forward to experimenting with it too”

🌟“The tea ceremony yesterday was amazing!! Thank you again for hosting. I’m looking forward to another possible future exchange.”

🌟“it was inspiring… I look forward to experimenting with it!”

QiGong Workshop

🧘🏼‍♂️ Shamanic Qigong 6 week course

Suitable for all levels, this 6 week course is a introduction to Shamanic Qigong.  Legend says it was created by the Feitan (Chinese nature spirits). It’s an easy to learn, yet very powerful practice that:

-consists of both standing and sitting movements.
-opens the energy body
-heals the Yin and Yang aspects of the body
-heals DNA
-connects you to the Angelic heavens.

In this course you will learn:
-water breathing qigong, as warm ups  
-shamanic qigong standing postures  
-sitting postures  
-qigong self massage  

The course is six weeks, each session is 1 hr. The cost is £50 and deposit is £20.

This course is only open to Curious Crew Patron members at Patreon. The course will start in January 2023.

Star Beings and Star Seeds

Todd has provided the following links that may be helpful for listeners interested in learning more about Star Seeds:

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If you enjoy the show, please consider sharing your favourite episodes with friends. Don't forget to rate and subscribe wherever you listen, and if you can, please support by joining The Curious Crew on Patreon

Want to report a sighting?

Contact me at: scarlettofthefae@gmail.com
If you love the show and want support it and join our loving community you can find us at Patreon 

Ep 43: “Listen to your kids…they are closer to the soul world”

My guest describes how he supported and encouraged his son’s explorations and experiences with beings from the Otherworld.

I previously spoke to his son, Tristan (now aged 27), in Ep 15 but here we hear about how, as a father, he became a scribe for Tristan’s mystical encounters. Their moonlit forest walks, packed with extraordinary visions and interactions, were documented between the ages of 11 to 19 and form a collection called, The Books of Dreams and Visions (B.O.D.A.V.s).

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Warning: These are not fairytales. The Modern Fairy Sightings Podcast is designed for viewers and listeners 16 years and older and may contain creepy or frightening content.

Show notes

I mention using Insight Timer App. It’s free and has a wide variety of meditations and visualisations to listen to. Meditating every day, even for five minutes really aids wellbeing.

Our guest mentioned, Phantases: A Faery Romance by George McDonald and Moon Magic by Dion Fortune.

You can find The Books of Dreams and Visions Facebook group here.

Examples of some illustrations drawn by Tristan at the time of his experiences:

Bonus Episode

The bonus episode on Patreon continues the conversation and we hear what it was like to revisit all the ‘baby books’ and journals during the Covid lockdown of 2020. 

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If you enjoy the show, please consider sharing your favourite episodes with friends. Don't forget to rate and subscribe wherever you listen, and if you can, please support by joining The Curious Crew on Patreon

Want to report a sighting?

Contact me at: scarlettofthefae@gmail.com
If you love the show and want support it and join our loving community you can find us at Patreon 

Episode 42: Into the Wilderness

Originally from New Zealand but living in Vancouver, our guest tells us of her Otherworldly experiences whilst on a vision quest in the Rocky Mountains. She also describes a number of UFO sightings and offers some insight into her husband’s upbringing in a First Nations community.

We end with a good ol’ chat about energies of place and reflect on the journey of transition that the world is currently going through.

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Warning: These are not fairytales. The Modern Fairy Sightings Podcast is designed for viewers and listeners 16 years and older.This episode is particularly unsettling and is unsuitable for children or anyone who might be sensitive to creepy content.

Show notes

Our guest described her experience of “the little people” as clearly heard children’s laughter, though at the top of a mountain in potentially dangerous conditions, there were no children in the vicinity. Sounds of unusual strange laughter are sometimes reported in conjunction with Otherworldly experiences. People do occasionally describe hearing children giggling with no apparent source.

Simon Young’s Fairy Investigation Society Fairy Census (2014 – 2017) is a collection of reported encounters. The census is ongoing and you can report your own experiences at The Fairy Investigation Society. The following entry, no. 306 was reported by a male from Michigan, took place in the 1990’s when the witness was in their 20’s. They were by themselves in woodland between the hours of 6pm to 9pm. They report feeling a ‘profound silence’ before the experience:

‘While out walking after having eaten dinner, on a moonless night, taking a ‘short-cut’ through the woods behind the library in *** (a small stretch of land that runs east-west between ***and ***) I heard the sound of small indistinct voices talking, whispering and laughing from trees around me. I could see nothing, but caught glimpses of small black shadows moving in the branches. The night was pitch black and impossible to see, and though I had walked the path through the woods many times and houses with lights could not have been more than a hundred yards away, I felt quite lost and confused of my way. On a whim, I reached into a pocket of the backpack I was carrying with and found a small metal bell that I had found someplace and had kept as an oddment. I tinkled it for a few minutes and said aloud, ‘Here, you can have this,’ and hooked in on the nearest branch I could reach in the darkness. The woods seemed a little less dark and the path, though not visible, was suddenly discernible underfoot, as a flat clear space to walk. I quickly found myself out of the woods and on the sidewalk and made my way straight home without looking back. I went back to look for the bell the next day. But it was nowhere in sight.’

Simon Young’s Fairy Census (2014 – 2017) The Fairy Investigation Society

During the episode I read from Ron Quinn’s book, The Little People (2010). The book contains reported encounters from New York State, in particular the Catskill Mountains region.

This week’s bonus ‘Lost Time’

Our guest describes a playful prank between First Nation shamens which resulted in an extraordinary ‘lost time’ event. Released 11pm, 26th September.

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If you enjoy the show, please consider sharing your favourite episodes with friends. Don't forget to rate and subscribe wherever you listen, and if you can, please support by joining The Curious Crew on Patreon

Want to report a sighting?

Contact me at: scarlettofthefae@gmail.com
If you love the show and want support it and join our loving community you can find us at Patreon 

Episode 41: Finding Fairies – From This World to the Next

A gentle story in this episode. A man from Maryland describes meeting an Otherworldly being, backstage at a music festival and tells of his son’s childhood fairy friend. We look at stories of encounters with tall other-than-human folk, who appear and disappear and we explore memories of childhood experiences.

Main image: Holly Fairy by Cicely Mary Barker

NB: This episode has a trigger warning for themes of death and dying.

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Warning: These are not fairytales. The Modern Fairy Sightings Podcast is designed for viewers and listeners 16 years and older.This episode is particularly unsettling and is unsuitable for children or anyone who might be sensitive to creepy content.

Show notes

The episode features excerpts from Seeing Fairies by Marjorie T. Johnson (2014) (ed. Simon Young) and the Fairy Investigation Society’s Fairy Census which you can still take part in here.

“Naked Fiddler with an old fool from Basel” (Nackte Fiedlerin mit einem alten Basler Narren). Urs Graf, 1523.

Bonus Episode

This week’s bonus on Patreon is a recording of Evensong at Canterbury Cathedral. We arrived there just in time to be admitted to this choral service after walking the ley line from Chartham.

The book I was inspired by, The Ley Hunter’s Companion by Paul Devereux and Ian Thomson, suggests that the alignment of the cathedral possibly stands on a previous ancient megalith site.

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If you enjoy the show, please consider sharing your favourite episodes with friends. Don't forget to rate and subscribe wherever you listen, and if you can, please support by joining The Curious Crew on Patreon

Want to report a sighting?

Contact me at: scarlettofthefae@gmail.com
If you love the show and want support it and join our loving community you can find us at Patreon 

Episode 38: Dr Simon Young discusses fairy sightings research and Marjorie T. Johnson

Dr Simon Young, an academic on the supernatural, fairy sightings and related folklore meets with me to discuss: Marjorie T. Johnson, ‘The Fairy Investigation Society’, fairy sightings research, experiences running through family generations, The Fairy Census and the academic study of fairies. 

Become a Patron! and get access to lots of bonus episodes and online events 💚

Content warning: These are not fairytales and the content is unsuitable for children. Some episodes may contain details which some may find unsettling or frightening. The Modern Fairy Sightings Podcast is designed for listeners 16 years and older.

Dr Simon Young

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is the-boggart-696x1024.jpg

Simon is a British folklore historian based in Italy. He has written extensively on the nineteenth-century supernatural. His book The Boggart (from Exeter University Press) and The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends (from Mississippi University Press) are both due out in 2022. A companion volume to accompany The Boggart is available freely here.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Seeing-Fairies-A-687x1024-1.jpg

Simon and Ceri Houlbrook’s Magical Folk: British and Irish Fairies 500 AD to the Present, was published to great acclaim in 2018. He is the editor of Seeing Fairies: From the Lost Archives of the Fairy Investigation Society, Authentic Reports of Fairies in Modern Times Marjorie T. Johnson’s, post-humously published collection of modern fairy sightings – which is a must-have for those interested in the subject. An article concerning the life of Marjorie Johnson is available here.

Continuing the work of The Fairy Investigation Society, Simon initiated a new Fairy Census in 2014, the results of which (2014 – 2017) are available for free online. The census continues, so please do take part if you have anything to report.

Simon is the editor of Exeter New Approaches to Legends, Folklore and Popular Legends and teaches history at University of Virginia’s Siena Campus (CET).


Podcast intro music: Transmutate by Snowflake (c) copyright 2020 Licensed. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Artwork: Peter Hall Studios

Subscribe, rate, review and share the wonder ❤️✨

If you enjoy the show, please consider sharing your favourite episodes with friends. Don't forget to rate and subscribe wherever you listen, and if you can, please support by joining The Curious Crew on Patreon

Want to report a sighting?

Contact me at: scarlettofthefae@gmail.com
If you love the show and want support it and join our loving community you can find us at Patreon 

Episode 34: Chat with Lucy Brydon of the ‘One Scot One Not’ Podcast

Lucy and Karen Campbell present Celtic myth, legends and folklore in their informative yet humorous show, which is always uplifting.  They’re on Instagram if you’d like to follow them.

In our chat, Lucy shares a number of her own extraordinary experiences including a visitation from a female being, while in the early stages of pregnancy and a strange case of a call to a fairy ring which was narrowly avoided.  

Beautiful and practical! A journal from Lucy’s collection available on Etsy

Lucy also creates beautiful art, check out her personal Instagram! She has an Etsy shop and teaches online art classes.

Lucy Brydon’s vibrant artwork available on her Etsy shop


If you’d like to hear more of the conversation you can head to Patreon where there is a bonus episode treat just waiting for you! 

As with many of my chats with other researchers, I will release a video version of our interview in the coming months. Enjoy!

Join The Curious Crew and Support Modern Fairy Sightings 💚

Warning: These are not fairytales and the content is unsuitable for children. Some episodes may contain details which some may find unsettling or frightening. The Modern Fairy Sightings Podcast is designed for listeners 16 years and older.

Shownotes

Pregnancy is a liminal state of being, along with other transitional life experiences such as birth, puberty and death. In the Modern Fairy Sightings Podcast Episode 11: Make Haste for Midsummer, our guest was pregnant at the time of the fairy encounter and the time of year – being the summer solstice at the threshold between the light and darkness – is also a liminal space.

Mother Nature by Urban Threads



Here is another example of an extraordinary experience whilst pregnant. Similarly to Lucy, the person was only a few weeks into her pregnancy at the time:

§358) US (Oregon). Female; 2000s; 21-30; ‘It was around 10 or 11 am in the early summer of 2002, and I was in the bathroom, just starting my bath. It was so warm and bright that I had the small window open, and the breeze was coming right in from the backyard. (There was never a screen on that window because it was a little high up, and too small for a person). I shrugged off my robe, and sat down on the tub edge, waiting for the tub to fill. Quite suddenly, a flickering cloud of little lights came right in through the window and, as though attracted to me, flew close, almost touching, around my head and shoulders. I was so shocked that my brain just froze! There was a tickle in my nose, and something in my understanding just clicked. I said out loud, and I mean, LOUD, (though as a twenty-nine-year-old woman such a thing had never occurred to me as being within the realms of possibility or even reality) ‘Hey! Faeries! Go away!’ And I tossed my head and flicked my wrist. The cloud of little lights zoomed off a little bit away from me, then gathered close together, for just a second, and I almost heard a sound, but it wasn’t quite a sound, really, more of an impression that there was communication between them that I could very nearly hear, like a buzz or a high frequency whine or bells shimmering like when they bless the Host in Mass – and then they flew as one, right out the window again! I was so surprised that I jumped up, naked as a jaybird, shut the window, and yelled out to my husband to come to the bathroom. My knees were too wobbly to support me just then. Whew! Never thought I’d get a chance to tell that to someone who didn’t think I was NUTS!!! Hmm… Let’s see. I don’t think there is anything else. This was nearly fifteen years ago. Oh, and I was a few weeks pregnant at the time, just about to find out, in fact. My backyard at the time was overgrown with blackberry thickets, dandelions and bluebells, and our part of Portland is in the Southwest portion, in a place called *, which we are very privileged to still keep very green and lush. There is a lot of ivy, oak and holly here, and the Wildwood and *, one of the largest urban parks in America, are just a few miles away. The Wildwood Trail is beautiful and over thirty miles long, and * covers five thousand one hundred and fifty seven acres.’

Simon Young’s ‘Fairy Census 2014 – 2017’ The Fairy Investigation Society

Please subscribe, rate, review and share this episode and support the podcast by joining Patreon if you can. Thank you ❤️ 

Podcast intro music: Transmutate by Snowflake (c) copyright 2020 Licensed. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Episode 31: Arrival of the Fairy Host

This episode is a truly spectacular personal experience.  A young child has a visitation from a host of fairies, which begins a whole series of events. Many of us have memories of extraordinary encounters as young children and hearing these particular experiences resonated very deeply with me, as it will for many listeners. 

The repeated visitations and later UFO event suggest the house was on a ‘fairy path’. See notes below.

This forms the first of a two part conversation and a further experience is discussed in the next episode.

We’ll be exploring this theme of childhood experiences further as the year goes on.

A bonus episode available on Patreon features extra material from the conversation and further explores possibilities.

Please do subscribe, rate and share this podcast. Thank you ❤️

Warning: These are not fairytales. The Modern Fairy Sightings Podcast is designed for listeners 16 years and older.This episode is particularly unsettling and is unsuitable for children or anyone who might be sensitive to creepy content. Trigger warnings: discussion around occult practices, gory details featuring blood (folklore), ghosts.

Shownotes

Fairy Paths

It is possible that the house was built on a fairy path – or the fairies’ pass. These are routes of strong energy used by the fairies as they go about their business. There are many different cultural practices which understand and work with lines of energy within buildings and landscapes eg. Chinese geomancy and Feng Shui. The concept of ley lines, as named by early 20th century archaeologist Alfred Watkins are now well known as lines which cross the globe, like rivers of energy intersecting with sacred monuments. 

As Paul Devereux describes in his book, Spirit Roads: An Exploration of Otherworldly Routes, fairies also had their own routes through the landscape which you’d be well advised to steer clear of. Even in the early 20th century in Ireland, people were still very careful about to fairy paths wherever homes or extensions were built. Obstructing these paths could result in bad luck or illness for the family and sometimes even poltergeist energy in the home.

There were various methods of putting this right as advised by local wise women, such as filling up two side doors and opening alternatives or ensuring that windows remained open at night, to permit the onward journey of the fairies. To avoid antagonising fairies in the first place, tradition held that you should place stones or sticks at the four corners of the intended building spot overnight and see if they remained there in the morning. If they had been clouted over by protesting fairies then you’d be wise to pick another spot.

Fairies Visiting at Bedtime

Simon Young’s Fairy Census (2014-2017) is an excellent resource for anybody interested in contemporary fairy encounters.

The following two accounts were mentioned in the podcast episode as bearing similarities to our guest’s experience. Both feature ongoing night visitations. The first involves a conversation with a ‘leader of the group’ and the second describes flying over rooftops, being in control of the flying and the sense of ‘exchange that occurred’.

§167) Scotland (Glasgow). Male; 1950s; 0-10; ‘I was about seven years old (1953). I had been sharing a bedroom with my elder brother, who was about eighteen at the time, but he left to join the army. So, I was left on my own in the room. I went to sleep as normal, but woke after a time to find a group of the little people dancing around on the floor at the head of my bed. I know I had a conversation with what appeared to be the leader of the group, but at this distance of time, I couldn’t say what it was about. This went on for some months on a more or less nightly basis, but gradually the interval between appearances became longer and longer until it stopped altogether.’

Young, S. (2018) ‘The Fairy Investigation Society’s Census (2014-2017)’ available online at: http://www.fairyist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/The-Fairy-Census-2014-2017-1.pdf

§338) US (New York State). Female; 1960s; 0-10; ‘Not sure when it began as a child but I know it ended on my tenth birthday because I recall the disappointment and correlate that year. They came to me in my sleep, very often and the purpose was always the same. To take me to fly above the rooftops and tree tops throughout my neighborhood as a very exciting treat. I thought for years it was just an odd recurring dream but the details of the things I saw from that bird’s eye view would be impossible to have been a dream. In latter years I was able to understand and recall more emotional details. I don’t recall the first or last time they came but I know no actual words were spoken. They were fluid like beings that were dressed in material that barely covered and was white and thin  and always flowing as they too never touched the ground although [they] had legs and feet. I went willingly and trusting as I knew it was under my control where I was to fly and when I was to return. I now feel there was an exchange that occurred. I feel they (as many as five or six) absorbed the excitement from me. Never draining although I slept deeper and always briefly awoke at the point of being back in my bed. They oddly had no identifiable age but male/female was apparent and not concealed.’

Young, S. (2018) ‘The Fairy Investigation Society’s Census (2014-2017)’ available online at: http://www.fairyist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/The-Fairy-Census-2014-2017-1.pdf

In 1951, Dr Purcell, a lecturer from Cambridge, wrote to Marjorie Johnson of the Fairy Investigation Society. He describes seeing trooping fairy soldiers cross his bedcovers some fifty years before, as a five year old child :

In the year 1900-1901, during the /south African War, when I was about five years of age, I lived in Gillingham, Kent. Every night for some months, after my mother had kissed me goodnight and shut my bedroom door, there was a short interval, and then I would begin to hear distant, massed Lilliputian bands playing. The music grew louder and louder as it came nearer and nearer. There was a night light burning on the mantelpiece, and by the light of this I saw column after column of tiny soldiers marching up from the right of my bed over my eiderdown (I remember its pattern and colour clearly) and across to the other side where they disappeared over the bedside. Each soldier was about nine inches high and wore a red coat. There was battalion after battalion of them, and each was headed by a brass band. As these passed, they played minute martial music, far more exciting than any music I had ever heard in the daytime. The march-past lasted for a few minutes, and then I fell asleep. The direction was always from right to left. I never tried to touch the soldiers, but they were completely real. I actually did see them, and I should be prepared to state this on oath, if necessary, in any Court of Law’

Johnson M.T. (2014) ‘Seeing Fairies: From the Lost Archives of the Fairy Investigation Society, Authentic Reports of Fairies in Modern Times‘, Anomalist Books: San Antonio

This last account from 1656 describes a host of fairies arriving into a bedroom late at night. It’s reported in a letter by John Lewis of Cardiganshire, Wales who was an acquaintance of the man experiencing the encounter.

A man and his family being all in bed, about after midnight, awake in bed, he could perceive a light entring a little room, where he lay, and one after another of some a dozen in the shape of men, and two or three women, with small children in their arms, entring in, and they seemed to dance, and the room to be far lighter and wider than formerly: they did seem to eat bread and cheese all about a kind of a tick upon the ground; they offered him meat, and would smile upon him: he could perceive no voice, but he once calling to God to bless him, he could perceive the whisper of a voice in Welch, bidding him hold his peace, being about four hours thus, he did what he could to wake his wife and could not: they went out into another room and after some dancing departed, and then he arose; yet being but a very small room he could not find the door, nor the way into bed, until crying out, his wife and family awaked. Being within about two miles of me, I sent for the man, who is an honest poor husbandman, and of good report: and I made him believe I would put him to his oath for the truth of this relation, who was very ready to take it.

William E.Al Axon, LL.D. (1908) Welsh Folk-Lore of the Seventeenth Century’, Y Cymmrodor, Vol.XXI p. 116 in Bord, J. (1997) Fairies: Real Encounters with Little People, Michael O’Mara Books: London

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