I speak to a man in Auckland New Zealand, who grew up in what was originally native bush land. As a child, he had what sounds like a gnome encounter inside his home. His response to the frightening experience had a profound effect on how he decided to live his life from that point forward.
Our guest’s inspiring story suggests what may be possible if we can look beyond our fears and lean into communication with landscape and the non-human beings who reside there.
It feels like an important story for us to hear at this time.
Image: Comus, Arthur Rackham (1921)
Warning: These are not fairytales. The Modern Fairy Sightings Podcast is designed for viewers andlisteners 16 years and older. This show is unsuitable for children or anyone who might be sensitive to creepy content.
Podcast intro music: Transmutate by Snowflake (c) copyright 2020 Licensed. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
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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
A most poignant story about a little boy from Oklahoma who came face to face with a gnome in his bedroom.
As a child he had felt very alone and afraid for much of his childhood but it was an Otherworldly being that reached out and showed him love. Now as an adult, he recalls how this experience, “changed (his) life and the way (he) saw the world”.
Trigger Warnings: Our guest describes having survived an abusive childhood with aspects of neglect. As an adult, they were the first one to find their parent who had sadly, passed away.
⭐️ BONUS EPISODE ⭐️ In this Patron-exclusive full-length version, we hear of another experience which you may find shocking. Our guest’s elder brother was attacked by some kind of Otherworldly creature which is well-known in Native American Seminole folklore.
Warning: These are not fairytales. The Modern Fairy Sightings Podcast is designed for viewers andlisteners 16 years and older. This show is unsuitable for children or anyone who might be sensitive to creepy content.
Podcast intro music: Transmutate by Snowflake (c) copyright 2020 Licensed. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Main Image: ‘Robin Goodfellow, A Sprite‘ by Charles Folkyard (1910)
Our guest shared the following picture of a Duende which he says looks similar to the being he saw:
Interestingly, while looking for the artist of the above Duende I came across this intriguing story about ‘The Toucan Man’ who, in Belizean folklore was said to abduct children (this is a well known folkloric trope). Although our guest did not hear music, the guy who later told our guest’s brother about his encounter, had heard music.
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
I chat to a woman originally from the south east of England, about her real experiences with fairy beings. They include childhood levitation, a bedroom based fairy visitation, and a multiple-witness sighting of a tiny humanoid disappearing into a hedge. She describes seeing orbs inside her bedroom as a child as well as lights in trees and we hear the strange case of a fairy-related text message which the sender had not written!
The bonus share is the story of a ‘Stick Man’ or ‘Tree Being’ which she and her husband became used to seeing around their home in New York State. I hold a special place in my heart for these creatures. Having seen one myself a number of years ago. They appear to be sensitive, peaceful beings who are connected with the land in which they appear and are perhaps even guardians of that land. We hear snippets of previous guests encounters with Stick Men (some of them previous exclusive bonuses)
Some of the experiences described may be unsettling for some listeners who are sensitive to creepy content. These stories are not suitable for children.
Image: Margaret Tarrant ‘On Primrose Hill’
Music: Elf Meditation by Kevin Macleod
Warning: These are not fairytales. The Modern Fairy Sightings Podcast is designed for viewers andlisteners 16 years and older. This show is unsuitable for children or anyone who might be sensitive to creepy content.
Fairy Census submissions which feature in this episode:
#90A – Reception teacher in woods #30 – Tinkling lights in hedge #94 – Gnomes in the playbox #364 – Parade of fairies across bedroom floor #61 – Dancing fairies on duvet #123 – Elf in the grass #142 – Fairy being followed them home
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
I meet Paul from Alberta, Canada who tells me about his experience with a shape-shifting being. The encounter took place during a visit to a forest environment which he had grown to love.
We discuss the importance of nature in our lives and the instinctive responses which we should always pay attention to.
This is a lovely, heartwarming chat .
Paul will be joining ‘The Curious Crew’ who support the show this summer for an online Q and A plus…
🌳 narrated modern encounters from Dr Simon Young’s Fairy Census 2014 – 2017 and Marjorie T. Johnson’s Seeing Fairies, that bear resemblance to the encounter in this episode.
🌳 our extended conversation which continued off-episode
⚡️🍄⚡️MUSHROOMWARNING: I do of course need to add a disclaimer here to protect folks. The brown capped mushroom that looks like Fly Agaric could be Panther Cap which is highly toxic and in rare cases, can kill. Please do not go picking or ingesting mushrooms unless you are with a trained professional.
Warning: These are not fairytales. The Modern Fairy Sightings Podcast is designed for viewers andlisteners 16 years and older. This show is unsuitable for children or anyone who might be sensitive to creepy content.
Shownotes
If you have had a fairy sighting, please complete Dr Simon Young’s ongoing Fairy Census which is found here.
Warning: I do not advise people to pick or ingest mushrooms unless they are with a professionally trained ID expert. Many mushrooms are poisonous and harmful if you don’t know what you’re doing.
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
In this episode we hear about an encounter which took place en route to a Wiccan ritual in a large park in England. It’s a lovely share, as the experience was so gloriously matter-of-fact. Are fairies simply an aspect of Nature that we don’t currently understand? Do they pop up unpredictably or are there circumstances which make it more likely? We touch on these ideas in this episode.
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.
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Fairies at Midsummer
‘Midsummer Eve’ by Robert Edward Hughes
We’ve all heard of Midsummer Night’s Dream and so the connection between this time of the year and fairies is already embedded in our psyche. Our guest made the point that maybe Shakespeare knew a thing or two.
Perhaps he did. It’s a very interesting point which people have mused on and it’s one worth returning to. Particularly so when you bear in mind that Shakespeare, drawing on folkloric depictions of the fae at the time, was doing so against the backdrop of religious Reformation. His playwriting took place between the time of Reginald Scot’s 1584 anti-superstitious literature, ‘Discoverie of Witchcraft’ and King James’s ‘Daemonologie‘ of 1597, in which fairies were portrayed as demons. I plan to look at Shakespeare’s fairies in a future article.
§104C) England (Nottinghamshire). ‘I was bought up in Wollaton and back then a lot of the area was woods fields old dried up canals, ponds, slag heaps of coal etc where we used to play as children we were probably about half a mile from Wollaton Park main gates and back then you could almost walk to Wollaton Park without going out of the woods and fields I am fifty now so I am going back to the late 1970s. One evening in summer me and a friend were stood on the side of an old dried out canal it was midsummer, maybe 9 o’clock at night, just going dark but you could still see quite well and I looked across the other side of the canal and directly opposite us was a small shiny white humanoid creature about eighteen inches high you couldn’t see its face because it was too bright and shiny glowing white like a light bulb but shaped like a small person I just felt it was looking at us and standing still. my friend was really scared he had really short hair but I can remember what bit of hair he had was sticking up on his head. I wasn’t so scared and climbed into the dried up canal with the intention of climbing up the other side to get a better look my friend followed, the creature then bolted into a small wooded area then out onto the big field we chased it but it bolted too fast so we just stood there and watched it get further across the field until it disappeared out of sight. It never bothered me but it really affected my friend he was scared of dolls and ventriloquist dummies, action man toys, anything like that after. He often discussed it with me for years after and told me he could never watch a Chucky movie because dolls terrify him. Not too long after maybe even only a few months we heard about the kids who saw the gnomes on Wollaton Park we even went there looking for them but found nothing.
Here’s another Fairy Census midsummer experience from the US:
§328) US (New Jersey). Female; 2010s; ‘It was at twilight on Midsummer. My husband and I had friends over. We had done a ritual earlier and were finishing up our meal. Suddenly, a green light, much larger than a firefly, emerged in the field in our backyard. It flew intelligently. The being flew toward us at the table, hovered, then circled us a couple of times. It then hovered again and took off very quickly. Most of us saw it, but didn’t say a word until it disappeared. Comparing notes we all saw the same thing. It was not an insect, and definitely acted with interest and intelligence. I have seen this being several times on my own, but this was the first time others were with me.’
