On returning to the house-site on the 28th of the following month, “H” had no real hope of seeing any fairies as it had been raining heavily and the grass was wet. Contrary to expectations, they appeared immediately, and he wrote to me on the following day: “There were seven of them, and some were fairies I had seen before—those with gowns and wings of lilac, daffodil-yellow, and plum and crimson. One wore a gown of pink and cove-grey, and had silver and pink wings; another was all in green. I can’t remember the other two. They prepared for flight in the usual way, lifting their gowns, rising on tiptoe and standing poised for ten to fifteen seconds until their wings were beating very quickly, then running forward. The one in lilac became so light that she was all but flying. Her toes barely touched the grass, and as she was unable to direct her steps properly she tottered haphazardly here and there, hanging from her desperately buzzing wings and trying frantically to lift her hems from the grass. The others were even less successful. They billowed about in a rustling froufrou of frills and wings in a tremendous effort to rise, and the sound was like wind in the leafy branches of the woodland. The low sun sparkled on them, and it was an entrancing spectacle—a sort of butterfly ball in competition dancing gowns! They kept rushing on to any high points—molehills or anthills—and attempting to launch themselves, only to fall back in a confusion of frills and vainly fluttering wings.”
It was at this point that “H” recalled that I had asked him to try standing further away from the fairies in order to reduce the amount of ectoplasm that they drew from him to build up their gowns and petticoats. So he began to walk away from them, and “almost at once they seemed to grow lighter, insubstantial, and more like a cinema film.” When he retreated still further, “they floated into the air as lightly as thistledown” and vanished. But as he pointed out to me, he could not always keep his distance, as his escape was limited by the high hedges in the lane or field wherever he might happen to be, and if he moved along the lane to increase the distance between himself and them, he lost sight of them. Also, in their take-off attempts, he said the fairies were as likely to run towards him as away from him. So, in subsequent accounts, they still seem hampered by their many layers of etheric garments.
“H” has no photographs of the fairies, because he says that while he is seeing them he is completely unaware of himself. “I get so wrapped up in watching them that I forget myself entirely, and don’t know what I should do,” he explained.
On 9 June 1974, “H” wrote to say that on the previous night he had seen the house fairies again for a few minutes. They were fluttering and dancing happily on tiptoe gowned as before like eighteenth-century ballroom dancers, with flowers and sparkling “stones” in their hair. Every now and then, one gathered up her billowing skirts and petticoats and buzzed her wings in an obvious attempt to fly, but although she tried repeatedly to launch herself up, she could not leave the ground. One in daffodil-yellow “satin” with matching wings tried very hard indeed, again and again, but failed. “H” felt the usual sickness and depletion, but less than in the early days.
He had a different type of experience in 1976, and wrote on 7 February: “Having seen no fairies at the house-site, I was returning down the lane when, rounding a corner, there they were! The party seemed to consist of a ‘queen’ with a retinue of six ‘ladies-in-waiting’ and about a dozen ‘guards’ round them. The latter wore jackets of stiff cloth or skin, in dark green, with matching tights of shiny material. They carried long rods, staves, or perhaps spears. Their jackets were something like the present-day Norfolk shooting-jackets but longer, mid-thigh, and had no collars or lapels. I don’t know for certain, but they were what I’d imagine gamekeepers or huntsmen wore in the eighteenth century. Their wings were a russet colour and were much smaller than those of the ladies, which were the rich scarlet of October hawthorn leaves and were butterfly-shaped, with the lower tips brushing the grass. The gowns of the ladies were of stiff, cobwebby ‘net,’ with ‘velvet’ bodices and long, slim, puff-shouldered sleeves of a soft woodland green. The ‘Queen’ was a splendid creature; her colour scheme was totally different. Her huge wings were a glowing crimson like her ‘satin’ gown, which, over frothy, matching frills, streamed behind her on the ground. Her hair was shining silver, flowing down her back almost to the ground, in a gleaming waterfall, and on her head she wore a circlet of green leaves and red berries. She was a head higher than the others, her gown more billowing, her wings larger. She glowed all over, like a lamp, and beside her the others looked as dull as moths. They walked steadily forward for some way, looking neither left nor right, and then seemed to go through an invisible door! You know how a person going through a door or round a corner disappears progressively, not just vanishing but going out of sight? Well, the fairies did that in the middle of the open lane. It was quite weird. One by one they went through this invisible door and were gone!”
In a letter dated 29 January 1977, “H” said: “I saw a fairy again today—the first for a long period. I went up the lane behind the house-site field to get a fallen bough for firewood. It had come from an elm tree overhanging the lane, not from the site-field hedge. I looked for fairies in the site-field for a start and leaned on the fence by the oak-trees in the corner. Seeing nothing, I went on almost to the gate at the end of the lane to get the bough. On my return, I had just passed the fence, which was about level with the hedge dividing the site-field from the next, when I put the bough down to change the position on my shoulder. I turned round to pick it up again and, on glancing into the site-field, I saw a fox. I wasn’t very surprised, as they are not unusual here, but I paused to watch it. It was moving at a slow trot, with its head down, and then I realised that it was following something. It came through the fence and turned away from me, and I saw that just in front of it was a fairy! She was around fourteen inches high to her top wing tips, and wore a frilly, petticoated gown of soft, dull, dark green material resembling tulle. Her wings were a satiny, pale green, large and butterfly-shaped. She was obviously trying to fly but unable to do so, weighed down as she was by her gown, and impeded by her dragging petticoats, and she could find nowhere higher enough from which to launch herself. The fox seemed interested and puzzled as she fluttered vainly along, and the two of them continued into the field, which had an old, half-dead orchard in it. They went into this, and I followed them as soon as I’d shaken off the sort of dream-like paralysis, which always affects me when I see the fairies. As the orchard had not been pruned for over 30 years and was dense with undergrowth, I could not progress as easily as the fox and the fairy, and lost sight of them. There were countless ways they could have gone, and I didn’t see them again. Perhaps the fairy vanished; perhaps she flew. I can’t think the fox would harm her; it seemed in a sort of bemused, trance-like state, as though under a ‘fairy spell.’”
“H”’s next sighting was in September 1978. He was gathering hazelnuts when he saw a fairy carefully picking her way along inside the hedge, which was very overgrown and must have been about nine feet high and six feet wide. She was having great difficulty in getting along, because her voluminous green gown and layers of pale green frilly petticoats, and her huge nut-brown and gold butterfly wings impeded her considerably. Eventually she tired of it, climbed a yard or so up the trunk of half-fallen, sloping crab-apple tree and tried to fly off it. She was unable to spread her wings fully, however, and despite fluttering hard she could not rise, so she jumped down, breaking her fall with her wings as well as she was able. She then set off across the field but this was the flat part, lacking the big molehills or ant heaps from which she might have launched herself, and she was obviously quite unable to rise at all. Then, after she had fluttered quite desperately hard for some 25-30 yards, she disappeared.
“I have seen another fairy,” “H” told me in a letter in August 1979. “I had been waiting for a long time without success and was just about to give up when a fairy appeared, actually in flight, fluttering from left to right some five yard
s in front of me, about eighteen inches from the ground. She was dressed in a foamy pink tulle-like gown with many frilly petticoats and she had darker pink wings. Suddenly she began to gyrate very quickly in a tiny circle, her wings beating very rapidly, and I saw that she had caught her gown on a thistle. She was very soon free, however, and soared high into the air and disappeared. A gown that can catch on a thistle must be solidified and have some weight. No wonder these fairies have difficulty in rising from the ground!”
In March 1983, “H” had an experience which made him realise that the lavish amount of ectoplasm from his etheric body, on which the fairies had been depending for their very solid-looking materializations, was now diminishing as he grew older. He had noticed that a number of fresh molehills had appeared in the site-field and the vicinity of the lane so, as nobody was about he settled down to wait and see what would happen. Eventually he saw something about five or six yards away. At first he couldn’t make out what it was, then he saw that it was a portion of a butterfly-shaped wing, “like the little bits you sometimes see in old spiders’ webs, but much bigger.” Then the whole of the wing began slowly to appear, but tremulously and uncertainly, finally resolving into a pair of wings. Suddenly they vanished, then instantly reappeared, but translucently, because he could see through them. They kept flickering into momentary solidity, then he could see the whole fairy, but the vision was vague and still flickering, like the picture on a worn-out television set. She seemed to be trying to appear, but was not quite able to do so. Then suddenly she appeared completely and solidly, holding up the skirts of her gleaming “satin” “lace” covered gown. After standing quite still for about one second, she spread her wings wide, but they vanished in an instant. A look of utter stupefaction came on her face. There she was, poised for flight, but without wings to fly with. She became hazy and tremulous, and just disappeared completely. “The whole episode lasted no more than 30 seconds, perhaps less, and it seemed to come as a surprise to the fairy as well as to me,” “H” said. One is left wondering why the wings of these fairies seem so necessary to them for, according to Geoffrey Hodson, wings in general are really streaming forces from the nature spirits’ own astro-etheric auras.
Edward L. Gardner said they have no articulation or venation and are not used for flying, but I know that there are many fairy seers who have seen wings as delicately veined as those of insects, and have watched them opening and shutting during flight. On the other hand, some apparently wingless fairies can soar through the air quite effortlessly.
In the case of “H”’s fairies, it is possible they have evolved from butterflies, since they attach so much importance to the use of their wings, and “H” himself says: “I am firmly of the opinion that fairies, which are fully materialized, fly like butterflies by the power of their densified wings. At least, these do. Otherwise, why this lifting of their gowns to balance themselves; leaping off high places to launch themselves, and avoiding sheltered places out of the wind because they need a breeze to catch their wings and increase the power of their beating? They stand upright in order to balance as perfectly as possible, and in the air lean back a little on their wings, their feet lifted in front and their knees bent. They remind me vividly of swans—excellent when actually on the wing but very poor when it comes to rising from the ground.”
It seems to me that some sort of experiment was being conducted, and that “H” had been deliberately chosen by the Deva-Guardian of the area as a suitable person to help in the evolution of that particular band of fairies. He may have had a special link with the Fairy Kingdom in a previous existence. As Geoffrey Hodson said: “We do not know how far back our relationship to the nature spirit world may not be traced.”
Chapter 13: Mediums and Fairies, and Fairies in Dreams
When I visited Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, known as “Mildred and Bunnie,” in part of a charming old house in Kent, the corridor had on its walls exquisite miniatures of children, painted in watercolour by Bunnie, who was a very gentle and unassuming man in delicate health. After his passing, Mildred was in communication with him, and in a letter to me she wrote: “Bunnie (in the Spirit World) has been to see the fairies dance. He said it really was a wonderful sight. He and his Guide came to a large field, in the middle of which was a little cone-shaped house, and sitting on the top of the house was a little old man—a gnome who was in charge. Suddenly the door opened and out trooped the fairies—fairies in every colour of the rainbow, and directly their feet touched the grass up sprang a tiny toadstool and became the stage property for the dance. They did many different dances, each one lovelier than the last. Bunnie was enchanted. He is having a most wonderful time exploring the heaven worlds, and growing young again!”
Mrs. Lily McKenzie was a member of Glasgow Psychic College, of which Mr. David Smith was then the principal, and in March 1962 she wrote to me with the following news: “One evening while we were sitting concentrating, I got the feeling there was a fairy beside me. I don’t see, but sense, things. I said to myself that when Mr. Smith asks us if we experienced anything, I will not say, and just see if he saw the fairy. Well, the first thing he said to me was: ‘Mrs. McKenzie, there was the loveliest fairy sitting on your shoulder, nine inches high.’ I said ‘Yes.’ It was a beautiful golden colour, and Mr. Smith said it had its hands outstretched towards me and was looking so lovely and so very pleased.”
A month later I had another letter from Mrs. McKenzie. It was full of excitement. “I want to tell you,” she said, “I have seen the golden fairy in my own bedroom—have seen it twice in the last three weeks. It’s so dainty, and it appeared floating in the air in a lovely circle of light, about 2 o’clock in the morning.” After that, Mrs. McKenzie started having other fairy experiences, many of which are in this book.
In a letter to me dated 9 July 1950, Mrs. W. Marjorie Robinson, of Swanmore, near Southampton, said: “Miss Lucy Bruce of Iona was sitting alone in my sitting room while I was busy, when some little elves clustered round her and said they would like her to ask me if they might make their home here. I am in touch with my husband, who was killed in the First World War, and he has often spoken to me of the Little People. I had a very beloved horse and often, when I was riding on the downs, he would suddenly look intently at what seemed to me to be nothing, and then take a flying jump either sideways or backwards. I used to laugh at him and tell him he was silly to shy at nothing. Then one day at a sitting with Mrs. Osborne Leonard, the well-known spiritualist medium, my husband said: ‘By the way, don’t tell Sherry he is silly when he behaves so strangely on the downs and in the woods. He is not shying at nothing; he can see more than you can and he often sees the Little People and is startled. I have often been with you when it has happened.’
“I asked him if he knew anything about the colony of elves Miss Bruce had spoken to. He said ‘Yes, they are all about you in the cottage and garden, helping you. They only go to live where their true condition is set up by human adjustment, and they have made their home with you and they love working in your garden. A garden in which the Little People are welcome, where there is a conscious invitation extended to them, will be beautiful. It may be weedy or untidy even, but there will be points of beauty in it that will be missing in even more well kept gardens. They put vitality into the soil and help things to grow. We can see them though you can’t. They are always around you and they bring happy life into your home. They are very pretty and have beautiful spirit colours around them. They only come where they are loved and welcomed.’ That was several years ago. Quite recently he told me that the colony had greatly increased and that there are large numbers of the Little People here now and they are very happy and try to help and cheer me if I feel tired. I am conscious of their presence, and I talk to them although I cannot see them.”
When the novelist and spiritualist, Miss Margery Lawrence, was living in Spain in 1955-1956, she was in close touch, via a medium, with an interesting group of hill fairies of the gnome or earth-folk type. Sh
e was staying with friends in a house with a charming garden outside Torremolinos, and several of these little people evidently liked the garden and used to come and play around in it. One of the ancient, gnome-like entities said he was almost 300 years old, and that all his folk lived to be at least 200. They dwelt in the hills far behind the town, and worked among the minerals—mainly in crystals, a few of which were grudgingly allowed to be found now and then by men. “My friends and I went up to the hills several times,” said Miss Lawrence, “and we used to see quantities of small lights—which were too big for glow worms—flitting about. A friend who stayed with us saw a few of these little folk, but only at a distance. She said that some of them were bearded, and that they looked humped, clumsy creatures with big feet, and wore peaked hoods and tunics.”
I heard from Miss Doreen Hutchinson, of South Harrow, Middlesex, that in 1956 her mother was giving spiritual healing to a certain Mr. Glasson when she saw a fairy clothed in blue and gold. The little thing, according to Mrs. Hutchinson, was waving her wand, as if to grant a wish. She immediately mentioned her vision to Mr. Glasson, who made no comment until the healing session was at an end. It then transpired that at the moment she had described the fairy, he had been granted his dearest wish—that he should again see his mother, who had passed into the spirit world several years ago. Four or five days later, Miss Hutchinson and her mother had a sitting with Mrs. Coral Polge, a psychic artist residing in Kenton Lane, Harrow Weald. “When it came to my turn,” said Miss Hutchinson, “Mrs. Polge was considerably startled because she had been shown some fairies, and she said she did not believe in them. However, we expressed delight at this proof, and I have in my possession her original sketch and two very pretty-coloured portraits of two wee fairy folk.”
Seeing Fairies Page 37
