The physical reaction was that Mr. X’s wife was so completely unnerved as to be almost hysterical, and the aunt had to look after her. The boy said he felt “weird.” They didn’t know what to do, and Mr. X had to gather his family together and gradually recall them to normal, as they had “seen something nobody would believe.” They went home feeling as if they had all unwittingly participated in “some awful act,” but the aunt had taken a camera with her and had managed to obtain a photograph of one of the little green men, which she had surprised leaning against a tree. She kept the photograph hidden away, and nothing would induce her to part with it, but L. Verdoye’s pupil saw it and drew it from memory. Like the others, it had long legs, pointed cap, green body, and lightning movement. When the photograph was taken, the shape had its back to the camera, and its hand was resting lightly against the tree trunk. It went round the bole of the tree (elm or beech) and vanished without trace when the boy’s aunt moved forward.
L. Verdoye then spoke of this family’s strange adventures to a trustworthy colleague, who, at the end of the tale, confessed that on Midsummer Day in 1943 he had been bird watching in the same woods alone at night, and he, too, had seen figures that seemed identical to those described by L. Verdoye’s pupil. Like Mr. X and his family, he could not see any facial delineaments on these elves, which were sitting at various places under the woodland weeds and bushes, and in one place there were two or three together. After his conversation with L. Verdoye, he went again to the woods, and found they were teeming with the little creatures, which crawled away from the trees at dusk and went to and fro underneath the high leaves of dock, bogweed, hazel, etc., and then back again. He said he was “stunned” by the sight and on one occasion had gone into a kind of “swoon,” for how long he did not know, but he awoke to find himself “all wet.” L. Verdoye said that when he met him shortly afterwards, he seemed partially “fairy-struck.”
Later, L. Verdoye himself spent two whole nights with a witness in the woods. He visited the spot where the X family had their picnic and examined every inch of the ditch up the bank of which the green shapes had vanished, but it did not reveal anything unusual, “nor,” he said, “the existence of mounds that an Elizabethan manuscript said are the fairies’ closed houses.” He noticed however, that in the clearing where Mr. X and his family had innocently surprised the elves, there were eight or nine trees with curious holes round their roots, and on examination he found that every hole had been neatly carpeted with brown, dry, un-rotted leaves laid regularly down. At the back of the hole in each case were tiny tracks leading into the ground. He conjectured that these carpets of leaves could have been the work of (a) small children, but if so they must have spent hours on it; (b) animals such as squirrels; or (c) the elves. He believed that it was the work of the last.
The woods were closed to the public for some years after that but had since been reopened, and one day L. Verdoye overheard a remark made by an elderly woman who had been on an organized bus-trip to the woods, and she was saying to her friend: “All the time I was there, I felt that I was being watched, and the trees are such odd shapes, and the roots look all so snakey. I felt things were looking at me. What funny bare patches there are here and there. I was relieved to get into the bus. I could never go there alone. I never felt easy the whole time I was there.”
After my correspondence with L. Verdoye about the wood elves, he decided to visit the woods alone on 25 June 1956. He again noticed the unique way in which the dried branches of the previous year’s growth were neatly stacked between the young tree trunks, and firmly believed that this was done by the elves who had been “tidying up.” He was convinced that children could not have done it because he had to burst through hawthorn and hazel bushes to see the spectacle. Again and again, in the most secluded parts of the wood, he came upon this “stacking,” and he said, “As a botanist, I know that twigs do not fall naturally in this way.” Where young ash trees were springing from numerous suckers, some twigs had been piled neatly between the interstices, and in the case of a lime, which had germinated from two seeds in juxtaposition, some twigs had been bent and laid across the trunks just above the join.
By this time, my sister and I were getting anxious to see the woods for ourselves at the earliest opportunity, and that same year, at Whitsuntide, we journeyed by bus to Lincolnshire, and then had to take another bus, which put us off near the woods. Unfortunately, although L. Verdoye had drawn a small plan indicating where the wood elves had been seen, the exact spot could not be found as the men from the Forestry Commission had felled many of the old trees and were making a new plantation on the other side of the road. We discovered when it was too late that we had entered the wrong part. Nevertheless, both of us saw something that confirmed the existence of fairy life there.
The plantation consisted of conifers with glades in between, and, on the way down one of these lanes, I saw what can only be described as a green, shapeless, ectoplasm mass, which may have been an embryo elf, hovering above and then flying in and out of some bushes on the left-hand side of the lane. Unfortunately my sister was some distance behind me, and by the time she reached me it had disappeared. We then went a few yards further up the lane to eat our luncheon sandwiches, and we sat down near the beginning of another lane, which lay crosswise. I had my back to it, but my sister, who was facing it, caught sight of a little figure crossing a little way down it, and in one place it vanished just as she was telling me to look at it. When we went to investigate, we found a neat little hole in the ground at that spot, and we heard later that L. Verdoye’s colleague had seen one of the elves disappear into a similar crevice.
During our walk through the plantation, I came upon a small mound, which had one tiny opening and was beautifully decorated with several shades and varieties of moss and some perfect miniature plants and trees. It was so delightful that I took a photograph of it, but when the film was developed the negative of that particular photo was quite blank!
My sister and I wished we could have stayed for a much longer period, though during most of the time we were there some of the foresters were still at work in another part, and consequently the peace of the woodlands was rather disturbed. We had rested under various trees several times during the day, and on each occasion the branches immediately above us had been so vigorously and loudly shaken that we had glanced quickly upwards to see if any animal or bird were there, but there was nothing to account for it and we could only conclude that some of the elves were behaving like mischievous children. At no time did we find the atmosphere hostile, as it seemed to be to some of the other visitors to the woods, but these elves were at a very rudimentary stage of development and it must have been a great shock to the witnesses who came upon them unawares, without having any previous belief in their existence. One wonders whether any of the foresters were startled by a sudden glimpse of the little green men!
Later on I was taken by my friend and her husband in their car to visit the original fairy wood on the other side of the road and to meet L. Verdoye there, but unfortunately we missed him. It was a rainy day, and owing to the length of time taken by the journey we could not stay very long and did not see any of the little creatures although we sensed their presence and knew they were aware of us. Bert Heason stayed outside the wood, but his wife Phyllis went in with me. She thought she saw some movement at the foot of a tree, and then, being of a practical nature, decided she must have imagined it, though I do not think she had. I had left her for a moment to look more closely at a ditch, which I could see through some bushes. As I was passing under a very large old tree to reach it, the tree-branches were shaken violently and deliberately, and I was heavily drenched with showers of raindrops.
In some of his articles and books on folklore, Alasdair Alpin MacGregor mentioned the spectral Black Dog of Lincolnshire, whose counterpart in Scotland is known as the “Fairy Dog,” a goblin in animal guise. The Lincolnshire Dog is known to be more benevolent than the Black Shuck, which
haunts other parts of the country, and I think my friend Phyllis and I were privileged to see it. Years ago a brother and sister who were in the habit of taking a shortcut home after dark had told how they were invariably escorted by the Black Dog as far as a hand-gate at the corner of these particular woods, and on the day Phyllis and I were there we were walking towards the hand-gate, which led into the woods at the top corner, when we saw an enormous black dog standing motionless near the gate, with its eyes fixed on us intently. Both of us exclaimed at the huge size of the dog and hoped it was friendly. We wondered where it had come from, as it was alone. Just as we reached the gate, the animal passed in front of us from left to right and then turned and loped off down the field to the boundary, where it just seemed to vanish, but, strangely enough, neither of us thought of the Fairy Dog story at the time.
Over ten years went by, during that time I continued to feel regretful that I’d had no opportunity to go again to the Lincolnshire woodland. I could not stop wondering how the little elves were faring, and longed to see how they had settled down in the new plantation. The Guardian Angel of that area must have taken pity on me, for one morning, while at home and fully conscious, I was shown a clear vision of the elves in their own surroundings and was able to watch swarms of them climbing up the stems of plants and sliding down again, then darting over and through the undergrowth with astonishing rapidity. Though I knew I was at home, I seemed to be no more than a yard away from them in the woodland and could even sense their strong, magnetic quality. It was good to see them so happy and my mind was set completely at rest.
Mrs. Gwen Cripps, of Cheshire, gave me an interesting description of a green elf that she encountered during an astral projection experience, and she sent me a painting of it. “My attention,” she wrote, “was attracted to a narrow ditch dividing two fields, beyond which was a high bank of long grass, and, in that high bank, standing erect and facing me, was the most weirdly beautiful little creature I had ever seen. It was apparently sexless, roughly about ten to twelve inches in height, completely green as the grass it was standing among, and holding what looked like a little cup. It appeared to be gazing at me intently, and I, with great astonishment, gazed back. When I recovered from my surprise I made to approach it from a distance of five or six yards away. I called ‘Come here, little thing, come here.’ A twitch passed over its very expressionless little face; it took fright and made one bounding leap across the ditch towards me and then jerked sideways away from me into some undergrowth, which proved a natural protection for it.”
In her picture, Mrs. Cripps had not given the elf fingers, nose, ears, mouth, toes, or hair, as she could not see any signs of such. The eyes she had noticed carefully. There were two apertures and the iris was green, but if there was a pupil it couldn’t be distinguished. “I have since wondered,” she said, “how the elf obtained its nourishment; maybe from the air. The little creature certainly displayed awareness and fear of me. The twitching of its face suggests some nervous reaction. I was struck by the appearance of its not having any bone structure. Rather did its body look as if made of green spongy rubber. It was very agile and perfectly proportioned. In no way did it resemble any preconceived ideas of mine regarding fauns, leprechauns, elves, or pixies. One wonders if this little thing might be a link in evolutionary development.”
In December 1956, Major G. H. Tristram, of Sussex, lent me a book called Letters from Lancelot, which consisted of letters received through automatic writing by his wife from their son, who had passed on at the age of eight. This book included some interesting drawings of wood elves, and the following description is obviously of a variety of elves very similar to the previous examples: “His head goes up in a point, and he is all green. It all goes pointy like a bird, but he has arms and legs like a man. He is whistling through his beaky point… He’s hopping away… He went in a hole in a tree over there, and he is down below in the roots of the tree digging with his hands.”
In the case of the creature last described, we are given a fascinating hint of the manner of development in the early stages of transition from bird life into fairy life. This alliance between the bird kingdom and the fairy evolution is stressed in many of the occult teachings, including the works of C. W. Leadbeater, Geoffrey Hodson, Alice A. Bailey, Flower A. Newhouse, Peter Richelieu, and White Eagle.
Apart from the small green wood-elves, there are larger types of green beings, and these seem to be connected with hedges and bushes. While looking out of the window on a fine, sunny morning, I saw one such creature gazing at me from the privet hedge, which bordered our garden. He was slender, with a pointed chin and narrow, slanting eyes, and his green naked body would be about three feet in height.
The novelist Miss Margery Lawrence told me about a “green boy” who sounds very similar to my gentleman-of-the-hedge. She saw him when she and her husband were staying at a hotel, which was a charming old manor-house set in a beautiful garden in Stratford-on-Avon. The boy’s body was olive green, naked, and slender, and his head was covered with small, tight curls, also as green as an olive. He had very long toes and fingers, slit-like eyes and a narrow, foxy type of face that ended in a sharply pointed chin. He was about the height of a seven-year-old boy, but in build was more like an adolescent of some fifteen years.
I am grateful to a lady named Mrs. Hughes for an account of other green beings of similar type seen in the Wye Valley by Mrs. J. S. Mackenzie, an invalid. She was looking through her window when she saw behind one of the bushes a green face with blue eyes. She thought the creature saw her before it disappeared. Then two more figures showed for a moment and were gone. They were about the size of human beings, but slightly built.
Mrs. Carley Dawson, a writer of children’s books in West Virginia, wrote: “I wish Edith Olivier were still alive. During my many years in England, she told me often of having seen ‘the green men’ running in the hedges, but unfortunately their size was not mentioned. She was also able to move in time and saw many things, later proved, which exist no longer. It was she who saw an avenue of monoliths on Salisbury Plain. These monoliths were then six feet underground, but later were uncovered.”
Miss Olivier had other interesting psychic experiences, but she will be known to many readers through her preface to the 1934 reprint of the fourth edition of An Adventure (Faber & Faber, London), that fascinating book by the two cultured ladies, Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain, who, when visiting the Trianon in 1901, experienced a “time-slip” and witnessed scenes from the past that, like all the events in our lives, are indelibly imprinted on the electrical ethers in the true Memory of Nature—known in the East as the Akashic Records.
Chapter 3: Water Fairies, Fire Fairies, Tree Spirits, and Banshees
In her childhood, Mrs. Ellen Jackson lived near Bradford, Yorkshire, in a house with a large garden, part of which was wild and heather-covered. There was a good stream of water, which, after flowing into a pond, trickled over some rocks in the manner of a waterfall, and thence to a glade of over-hanging willow trees. Indeed, she and her playmates always called this place “The Willows,” and they were quite sure it was the haunt of fairies. Constantly they looked for them and would sit and sing little fairy songs to tempt them out, but their efforts were in vain. One evening, however, before answering the bedtime call, the six-year-old child Ellen and her sister, who was three years her senior, decided once again to “look for fairies.” It was a lovely evening—one of those long twilights that one gets in the North—not fully light but not yet dark. They ran together down the garden, skirted the pond, which, they remarked, was looking “very sparkling,” and stood above the waterfall, gazing down into “The Willows.” To their amazement they saw three small, nude, female figures sitting upon a rock a few yards below them. Beautifully formed, and of a milky-white colour, they seemed between eighteen inches and two feet in height, but as they were seated it was not easy to be more definite. On the rock beside them lay some white, gauzy drapery. Mrs. Jackson said, “We s
tood breathlessly watching them for a few moments, then one of them looked up and saw us. She raised her arm and pointed to draw the others’ attention to us, and they all slipped off the rock into the water. Just before disappearing, one of them reached back to retrieve the drapery they had left. Then they were gone.” My contributor pointed out that, as she and her sister were firm believers in fairies, one would be justified in thinking they had imagined them, even though they both saw the identical figures and actions, but the kind of fairies they had thought of were always those with wings and wands and brightly coloured clothes, whereas these water sprites were wingless and colourless, and of a kind unimagined by them.
Here is a statement from Mr. Richard Ingham, who was a postmaster in Suffolk: “The early years of my life were spent living in a small farmhouse on the outskirts of Halifax, Yorkshire. The house was on the edge of a stretch of moorland, and some of my happiest memories are of wandering about the moors alone, quietly watching the wildlife. One spot that always attracted me was where a stream of water coursed from the moor down a small gully of rocks, forming small pools here and there. A certain pool held a deep fascination for me, and I would lie face downward and wait patiently for the pool life to move about. I remember—and it is a scene that remains very clearly in my mind—one sunny afternoon in this sheltered place, when, slowly raising my eyes, I saw four or five small, almost transparent little people in a group on the rock and nearby grass across the pool, only a few feet away. For a moment I felt frightened, and then, without moving, I smiled, and I feel sure I saw a look on their faces of what I might describe as recognition, as they slowly disappeared.”
Seeing Fairies Page 16
