Seeing Fairies

by Marjorie T Johnson

  Miss Kathleen Hinde, of Dorset, was pixie-led in her youth. With three cousins she went to have tea at a friend’s house, and as they were coming away after the visit she remarked: “I have never gone through that field on the left. It’s a way home by the moor; let us do it.” Her companions agreed, but when they were all halfway across she had to admit: “It’s odd, but there seems no way out.” They looked back, only to discover that the gate through which they had passed was no longer there! The eldest cousin declared “Nonsense! This just can’t be. Let us each take one side and work round carefully. Of course there are gates—we have seen them.” The others did as she suggested, but on joining forces in the middle of the field they were much flustered because in each case they had seen nothing but a thick, unbroken hedge. By this time they were feeling rather frightened and were just deciding to make an attempt to break through the hedge, when one of the cousins caught hold of Miss Hinde’s arm and pointed. There, in front of them, was a large white gate, and with one accord they rushed through it before it disappeared again. Later, when this experience was related to the friend with whom they’d had tea, she exclaimed: “Oh, I wish you had told me; I would have stopped you! It’s the pixie field, and we are sick of friends coming back to our house, quite shattered, having spent ages trying to get out.” Miss Hinde told me she had never seen a fairy or a pixie, but she once caught a glimpse of a tree spirit (the experience is included in the appropriate section of this book).

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  The greyhound breeder, Mr. Ralph Parsons, of Cornwall, had a similar experience of what he called being “pixie-laid.” “It was back in the days when I had to poach a couple of rabbits or there was no meat for the family,” he related in the weekly Dog World of 17 February 1984. “This night in particular I was out and had a whippet working, and on hearing a peculiar sound in the field I went to investigate. It was not completely dark, just enough to discern an object. I made for what I imagined was the centre of the field, but failing to find anything I started back for the gate. For some strange reason I just could not find the place where I had come in. I went around the field time after time but to no avail. Eventually I got out by putting the whippet on a lead and telling her to head for home, and she was able to lead me to the gate I had been unable to find.”

  I wrote to ask Mr. Parsons about the sound that he heard, and he said: “It was like the call of a bird—a low-pitched whistle, perhaps. I went in because it was so unusual. Perhaps I thought the dog had caught something. Although it was not a black night, it was some time before the dog found me. There was no moon, and it was, in fact, a perfect poaching night—a night when the rabbit did not cast a shadow. It was a field where I would have gambled on catching one, but the dog just returned to me without a thing. And on going with the dog, she pulled on the lead and I went with her, whereas at other times she would walk alongside without straining at all.” Mr. Parsons tells me that since then the field has been enlarged and the hedges removed to make way for bigger machines, but each time he passes by his thoughts wander back to what happened there nearly 50 years ago.

  Mr. Thomas McGreal of Airedale, Castleford, Yorkshire, wrote to tell me he had seen “fairies in dozens” and would give me details if I wished. Unfortunately he passed away shortly afterwards, but his son, Mr. F. McGreal, who had shared his father’s experience, was kind enough to send me the full story, as follows: “It happened in the autumn of 1933. My father and I had been visiting friends, and dusk was falling as we set off for home around 5 p.m. We had to cross a small mountain lying between Westport and Drummin, near a village called Letterbrock, in County Mayo, Eire. To a person who was unfamiliar with the place, it would be very easy to get lost or drowned, but my father and I knew the way home blindfolded. The journey itself, under normal circumstances, would take only half an hour. We left the cart road and entered what should have been rough and marshy land, but suddenly the area changed and the ground became solid. It was very strange, and my father and I tried to get back to the cart track, but we couldn’t see any familiar landmarks. Father studied his position and came to the conclusion that the fairies had got us. We carried on walking, but we hadn’t a clue where we were going. Father put his fingers to his mouth and gave a sharp blast like a whistle. Immediately little brick and slate houses sprang up in all directions about a quarter of a mile away from us. Little people came out holding storm lamps and running around. I cannot recall the dress they wore, but they were approximately two feet six inches in height, and there seemed to be eight or twelve little people to each house. I remarked to father that maybe they had come to help us. We would change our direction to one of the houses, but when we thought we were almost upon it, it would disappear and spring up elsewhere. This went on for some time, and I began to get afraid, but father said they were only having fun and they would not let any harm come to us. He told me to bend and pull up turfs of grass to make sure that we were not on a lake (there are two on our normal way home), as he would stop the little people if we were not on water. I found we were still on solid ground, so my father took his coat off and turned his waistcoat inside out. As quickly as they had appeared at his whistle, they now disappeared. We looked around us and found a familiar landmark, so we knew where we were. How we had arrived at this particular spot without getting muddy, wet, or even drowned is still a mystery. Although the journey, under normal circumstances, would have taken only half an hour, on this particular night we had been walking for several hours, yet had not felt tired until the spell was broken, and I was exhausted when we arrived home about 11 p.m. My grandmother was waiting for us, and before we explained what had happened she remarked that it was ‘a very strange and eerie night.’ If my father had been alive, he would have corroborated the story. He was a very highly respected person in the place where he lived.”

  After receiving the foregoing accounts, I thought how interesting it must be to be pixilated, little dreaming that many years later, on 31 March 1979, I would have a similar experience—in a large, well-known cemetery, of all places! I had been up the same road to the chapel at the top of the hill many times before, to attend the funerals of various friends and relatives, but on this day I had gone just to look in the Memorial Book. Although it may have no relevance to the experience that followed, I had better mention that the outer door to the Memorial Chapel seemed to be locked, and I pulled and struggled for several minutes without avail. I couldn’t understand it, because the door was always opened at a certain time every morning, before people arrived for funeral or cremation services. I seemed to be the only person in the cemetery and had just given up in despair when two men arrived in a car. I asked them if they could help me, and both of them struggled with the door, but with no success. Then one of them said, “Wait here, and we’ll drive to the office at the entrance and ask for the key.” They returned looking rather puzzled. “The people in the office told us that the door isn’t locked,” said one of the men. “It doesn’t stick and should open easily.” As he spoke he turned again to try the door, and it opened at once! The two men seemed to have come just to look at one of the graves, and by the time I came out of the Memorial Chapel they had gone. I felt strangely uneasy about the door incident; there seemed something queer about the atmosphere, and I was anxious to get away from the place as soon as I could. I started back down the hill only to find that the road had altered! It should have been straight, but was now curved. I couldn’t understand it, but there seemed to be only one explanation possible. As there are several parallel roads in the cemetery, perhaps, absent-mindedly, I had taken a different one, but I knew that all of them joined a horizontal road at the bottom of the hill and that this would lead me back to the entrance gates, so I was not unduly worried. I continued walking for another few yards and then stood still in utter bewilderment. The road had become very narrow and ended in a small, purposeless loop, the inside of which could not have been more than three feet long and two feet wide. I looked around me and saw several other paths o
n either side, much narrower, but when I followed them I found that they, too, ended in loops. After exploring the last of them, I turned back to the road, but it had disappeared and, apart from a large old thorn-tree under which I found myself standing, only gravestones were there. I looked down to where the long, horizontal road should be, which would have led to the entrance gates. It wasn’t there; the gravestones reached right to the bottom railings. I seemed to be near one end of the cemetery, but there was no way out. There were railings along the side, and beyond them there appeared to be a road, but with no signs of life on it.

  Then I noticed, for the first time, two plain-looking brick houses within the railings, which seemed to have sprung up suddenly not far from where I was standing. Anyone reading this will wonder why I didn’t go to one of them to ask for help. I couldn’t, because I was filled with apprehension. I knew that they hadn’t been there the moment before, and if they had been real houses there would have been a gate in the railings to give ingress and egress to the occupants. The air was deathly still, and by that time I had realised—especially when I thought of the paths with their nonsensical loops—that the fairies were playing tricks on me. I did not want to be offered any of their etheric food, as it has a strange effect and can make the recipient very otherworldly. So I went away from the houses and walked in the opposite direction, trying to pick my way between the gravestones, which now stretched ahead of me, seemingly for miles. I did not relish the thought of having to spend the night there, and I knew that my sister would be wondering what had become of me. Then I thought of shaking myself and twisting my body around to shatter the existing vibrations, at the same time declaring that the divine spirit within me was all-powerful. Instantly the spell was broken: I saw a straight road, and on rushing up it I found myself back at the chapel. From there I was able to see the road up which I had come originally, and that led me safely down to the entrance gates. I arrived home very late and, fortunately for me, my sister believed my story because she could see how shaken and exhausted I was. I could not get the experience out of my mind, and felt I must go again to make quite sure how much of the scenery really had been transformed on that day. I begged my sister to go with me, and we went some months later. The landscape on this occasion was back to normal, and we were able to confirm that the roads had no loops, and that they led straight down to the road, which lay horizontally along the bottom of the cemetery. There were no tiny paths with loops, and where I had seen gravestones reaching to the railings there was only a wide grass verge. As I had suspected, there were no houses where I had seen the two standing.

  I must confess that I kept feeling drawn back to the place, but thought it wiser not to go there alone, though I did go again later, and this time I walked along every path and explored every part of the large cemetery, until I was able to prove to myself that under ordinary conditions it would be impossible to get lost. I looked to where I had seen the railings at the end, with the road beyond, but no road was now to be seen; only a small woodland full of tall and beautiful trees, which must have been there for many years. I searched for the large old thorn tree under which I had found myself standing on that day, but it was now no longer to be seen. According to tradition, hawthorn trees are used by the fairies as trysting places, and the fields on which this cemetery was made may once have been fairy ground, such as the grounds of Kenilworth Castle and Kensington Gardens are reputed to have been.

  Chapter 5: More Fairy Experiences

  Tom Charman

  Mr. Tom Charman, of Godshill, near Fordingbridge, Hampshire, was intensely interested in elemental life, and I am grateful to his wife for allowing me to take some extracts from his notes.

  As a child he saw only one fairy. “Well I remember,” he wrote, “how I was in the middle of howling over something or other, when suddenly there appeared in the darkness a sort of animal rushing through the room, in shape and size something like a huge rat, and on his back sat a little nature spirit. It was all so quick that I cannot recollect what he was like beyond the fact that he (the nature spirit) wore a little cap. But it quite stopped my crying! It was not until many years afterwards that I became clairvoyant again. During this interval I was a sceptic and a materialist. I have always given thanks for the gift of psychic vision, which came to me and has never left me since, because it meant to me the opening of the gates to the vast invisible world around us, and made often repeated spiritual truths become living realities. The elemental or Fairy World is a vast world including all conceivable varieties of elemental beings. They differ from mankind chiefly in that they are rudimentary both in body and mind, and represent partial stages of development. Proportion or balance of form is lacking amongst most of them. For example, quite a number have very long thin necks, whilst others have scarcely a neck at all. Some appear almost all head, whilst others appear almost all body and so on. From this it looks as though they develop one part at the expense of the rest, only becoming balanced by degrees. Beauty of proportion is seen amongst the highest types of fairies, who are as symmetrical as human beings. Frequently on a stormy day when roaming through the wind-swept trees, I have seen sylphs flying with the gale, now soaring above the treetops, and now taking great swoops downwards, after the fashion of swallows. What with the flying leaves, the swaying branches, and the artistic evolution of these beautiful creatures, I have felt enthralled by this mingling of earth and fairyland… These air elementals, or sylphs, are amongst some of the most beautiful of fairies. I have already said how they love to be tossed hither and thither by a storm, and how my walks on a windy day are enlivened by these airy sprites. The most typical of them have long, thin necks, with long hair and flowing garments, which stream gracefully behind them as they float through the air. They bring with them an atmosphere of gentleness and calm, which shows itself in a grace and smoothness of movement seen amongst few other fairies.

  “One of my most beautiful clairvoyant experiences was the witnessing of one of their great gatherings. I had shut my eyes and was thinking of nothing in particular, when there appeared in the darkness a little sylph clothed in a most exquisitely coloured dress. No sooner had she come than multitudes of others equally resplendent came floating in from all sides. The magnificence of the colouring and the grace of the dress took my breath away, and I could not refrain from exclaiming at the beauty of the scene. Then they floated gracefully up and down and round about, in a continuous undulating line. This continued for a long time and I had a rare feast. Their dresses resembled light and feathery clouds at sunset time, or rainbow-coloured cobwebs on bright, early autumn mornings. As the word ‘fairy’ has become associated with beautiful and fragile beings, it is not descriptive of many of the forms I see, so I shall often use the term Elemental, which is at times more appropriate. I can only draw then when I am, so to speak, so much in the fairy world that I am almost one with them. Whilst drawing, actually I feel I am doing with them the different activities shown in the pictures, my pencil moving almost unconsciously. An intensely vivid vision will often give me the necessary inspiration for a drawing. The unusual appeals to me, and the Fairy world is full of the comic and the grotesque. My love of this and my natural turn for the comic may have made me unconsciously exaggerate some of the figures. I have frequently seen little Red Indians elementals running along, with bows and arrows. At one time I saw them sitting on the hands and shoulders of the etheric body of an Indian, who was obviously pleased and interested in them. Once I saw a number of hairy elemental savages, and I have frequent glimpses into the regions of Chinese elementals. This makes me wonder whether the varieties of human beings on earth had first an elemental existence on the etheric plane.

  “Personally I have never seen fairies with wings, but this does not in the least imply that they do not exist. Different people often see into different planes. Also, their wings may be purely decorative and, like their clothes, the product of etheric thought, which makes it as easy to have a pair of wings as a gauzy dress. I have
occasionally seen fairy palaces and houses of the utmost quaintness. They often have very artistic domes and minarets. On earth most of them would be structurally impossible. There, however, that question does not arise, and so, as with clothes, they have full scope for any dwelling they fancy. Their little cottages are often made of crooked branches and any kind of rough material, so that they harmonize completely with the curve and colours of nature.

  “Most of my clairvoyant experiences occur on retiring at night, which I often do at an early hour, for the darkness and quiet of my room provide just the right conditions. Then, with my eyes shut or open (it makes no difference, because I am seeing with my etheric eye), I get fascinating glimpses into the Fairy World. When I am in this psychic state, I am never in a trance, which is fortunate for me, as I am always extra-conscious and so able to enjoy my visions. But I am never able to command a vision of fairies. It comes or it does not. There are, of course, numbers of nature spirits of all kinds, including little folk in brown clothes, which some people call brownies. These seem to keep guard whilst others more beautifully dressed play about on branches of trees, or swing from bough to bough like monkeys. These are usually in green, with little caps on. The gnomes, or little old men and women, have kind faces, and appear to take great interest in the smaller elementals around them. As well as those with the special characteristics of earth elementals, there are some amongst them very similar to one or other of the groups already described, as though they were a combination of two types. I have drawn a number of pictures showing little boats riding huge waves in stormy seas, and in the boats quaint little figures. Now, it is probable that these little fishermen are an amalgamation of earth and water elementals. I have seen quite a number of dancing fairies. This is a favourite pastime amongst them, and some are especially gifted. They are on the whole slight in build, with long thin necks, and long thin arms and legs. There are those, though much fewer in number, who are beautifully proportioned, but these dancers are more angular in build and less smooth in motion than sylphs. One night I had a beautiful vision of a little dancer. As she floated into sight, she began spinning round and round, slowly at first, and then gradually gaining in speed, until I could see nothing but a blur of colour.”