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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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 52: Interview with Kate ‘Hare Girl’ Ray

I speak with paranormal investigator, Kate ‘Hare Girl’ Ray from her excellent YouTube podcast show, Hare in the Hawthorn.

Originally hailing from Nottingham, Kate has a particular interest in the Wollaton Gnomes case, and is a published author on the subject. She also writes for Haunted Magazine and creates magnificent mushroom-related art pieces in her spare time!

Kate shares a gnome encounter that took place in her teens at the Uffington White Horse and describes the time she acted as a mediator between a troubled home owner and an angry French Fae being, for the TV show Help my House is Haunted.  We also discuss the strange potency of this time we are living through. 

A video version of this episode will release on The Modern Fairy Sightings YouTube channel next weekend. 

 
In the bonus episode waiting for you on Patreon, Kate shares a shocking experience which left her terrified but offered a greater understanding and respect for the Fae.  Join us there for access to a whole back catalogue of bonus episodes.

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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

In the main episode, Kate describes a being she saw on the way down to Wayland Smithy from the Uffington Horse. Here’s what she created in its likeness:

Likeness of a Fairy Being seen by Kate Ray in the bushes near Wayland Smithy
By Kate HareGirl Ray of Hare in the Hawthorn

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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 46: A Series of English Encounters

My guest’s numerous encounters include a multiple witness sighting in some British woods, the story of a haunted fairy painting that you will never forget and a Samhain-timed brush with the Fae on Glastonbury Tor.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, our guest reveals that these experiences run in the family. Sit back, relax and listen to this fascinating collection of stories from a long-time experiencer of the Otherworld. 

 On the Patreon bonus episode, our guest describes a perilous visit to West Kennet Longbarrow...the scene of many strange encounters. 

Main Image: ‘Glastonbury Tor by Moonlight 2’ by Peter Spencer49 on Flickr

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 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

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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

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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 37: Paolo Sammut: Gnomes and Fetches in the Home

My guest, Paolo Sammut is a paranormalist and a magician based in the south west of England. Paolo has had many supernatural experiences over the years, some of which we would recognise as fairy encounters. He chats to me about the time he was awoken by a very angry fairy, possibly a hobgoblin. On other occasions, he and other family members saw beings in the house that looked like other members of the family who were not present at the time. These sound like doppelgangers but in folklore, particularly Irish folklore they are known as fetches.

Paolo will be providing the Patreon group with an exclusive talk about ghost hunting in the coming weeks.

The image above is of Paolo and I at Goblin Coombe, Bristol at the beginning of May 2022. We had a delightful picnic and did not spot any fairies. 😊

You can contact Paolo at Secret Lines of London Facebook Group

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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.

Shownotes

Here’s a great account of an angry fairy shared in Marjorie T. Johnson’s, Seeing Fairies:

After the death of her husband, Mrs. Oliver went to live in a very beautiful house in Cornwall, which was not expensive because it was reputed to be haunted. She was alone, with no electricity in the house, and one night when she needed another log for her fire, she went from the library without a lamp and passed through the kitchen to the washhouse where the logs were kept. “I got down on my knees on the tiled floor,” she said, “and reached under the wash-tub to dislodge a log, when I heard a noise like a scolding squirrel—‘Chit-chat, chit-chat’—and there, on top of the logs and surrounded by a green light, stood a furious little man who looked like an artichoke but was only as big as my thumb. His face was ugly and frog-like, and he was shaking his fists at me, ordering me off his property. I grabbed a log and tore back to my fire, which I banked with coal. I was terrified.” After this incident, Mrs. Oliver met the owner of the property and a previous tenant, both of whom told her that there were “pixies” in the house, and they laughed when she told them about the little man who had been so angry and rude to her. A few weeks later, when the weather turned very cold, Mrs. Oliver left that house and went to France, never to return to Cornwall.

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. pp. 35

Paolo also mentioned some sort of Otherworldly being who appeared to have taken the form of a member of his family. A similar story was told by our guest from Episode 36: Rescued by an Orb and Other Strange Stories in the Patron-only bonus episode on Patreon. In that case, she saw a malevolent being stood at the end of her bed that looked like her husband but in a trance. However, at the time her husband was asleep in bed beside her.

BEASTIARIUM #4 Doppelganger Dark by Ars Corvinus

These beings are more commonly known as doppelgangers but particularly in Irish folklore they are known as fetches and could be some kind of fairy or spirit that manifests in the form of a person who is familiar and often emotionally close to the seer.

The appearance of a fetch is said to indicate the forthcoming death of the person who’s likeness appears but that was not the case in either of these experiences.

Icy Sedgewick of the Fabulous Folklore Podcast has written an interesting article on ‘fetches’ here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/fetch-folklore/

References

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

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

Subscribe, Rate 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

Become a Patron!

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

Music used in the audio version of this podcast episode: 
Defekt_Maschine from Pixabay and MixKit DarkShadows 64

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!

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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.