“It was all because we came on them, when they were dancing. They won’t be disturbed when they are at their revels and enjoying themselves. Had they got me down into the road, maybe I should have lost my sight or my hearing or the use of my limbs, and in any case my soul.”
“I was walking alone in my garden. There was great stillness among the branches and flowers and more than common sweetness in the air. I heard a low and pleasant sound and I knew not whence it came. At last I saw the broad leaf of a flower move and underneath I saw a procession of creatures the size and color of green and gray grasshoppers, bearing a body laid out on a rose leaf, which they buried with songs, and then disappeared. It was a fairy funeral.”
In 1907, an old blind man living with his wife in Ireland told Lady Archibald Campbell a truly incredible story. He claimed that he had actually captured a fairy and kept it for two weeks before it made its escape. The being was two feet tall, the man said, with dark but clear skin and red hair. It was dressed in green clothes and boots, and wore a red cap.
“I gripped him close in my arms and took him home,” the blind man said. “I called to the woman (his wife) to look at what I had got. “What doll is it you have there?” she cried. “A living one,” I said, and put it on the dresser. We feared to lose it; we kept the door locked. It talked and muttered to itself queer words.
It might have been near on a fortnight since we had the fairy, when I said to the woman; “Sure, if we show it in the great city we will be made up (rich). So, we put it in a cage. At night, we would leave the cage door open, and we would hear it stirring through the house. We fed it on bread and rice and milk out of a cup at the end of a spoon.” After the tiny being escaped, the couple’s fortune took a turn for the worse. The man lost his sight and, it was said, eventually died, along with his wife, in poverty.
All members of the gentry were not tiny or dwarfish in appearance. They could also manifest themselves as normal human-sized beings; some could even become giants if they chose. And even though they were ill-tempered entities at best, not all of them were always malevolent towards humans.
“I saw them once as plain as can be; big, little, old, and young,” said Mrs. Biddy Grant of upper Toughal, Ireland in 1909. “I was in bed at the time, and a boy whom I had reared since he was born was lying ill beside me. Two of them came and looked at him; then came in three of them. One of them seemed to have something like a book, and he put his hand to the boy’s mouth; then he went away, while others appeared, opening a back window to make an avenue through the house; and through this avenue came great crowds. At this I shook the boy, and said to him, “Do you see anything?” “No,” he said, but as I made him look a second time he said, “I do.” After that he got well.
These good people were the spirits of our dead friends, but I could not recognize them. I have often seen them that way while in my bed. Many women are among them. I once touched a boy of theirs, and he was just like feathers in my hand; there was no substance in him, and I knew he wasn’t a living being. I don’t know where they live; I’ve heard they live in the Carrige (rocks). Many a time I’ve heard of their taking people or leading them astray. They can’t live far away when they come to me in such a rush. They are as big as we are. I think these fairy people are all through this country and in the mountains.”
Two dwarf-like creatures with glowing eyes and wearing tall hats reportedly appeared to two boys in Caerphilly, Wales in 1914. Many years later both the men, a Mr. Uden and Mr. Hopkins, now well on in their years, still spoke of the mysterious little figures, the memory remaining fresh in their minds.
The following is a letter written to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, circa 1920, by a Mrs. Hardy, a settler in the Maori districts of New Zealand:
“After reading about what others have seen, I am encouraged to give you an experience of my own, which happened about five years ago. Will you please excuse my mentioning a few domestic details connected with the story? Our home is built on top of a ridge. The ground was leveled for some distance to allow for sites for the house, buildings, lawns, etc. The ground on either side slopes steeply down to an orchard on the left, and shrubbery and paddock on the right, bounded by the main road. One evening when it was getting dusk I went into the yard to hang the tea towels on the clothesline.
As I stepped off the veranda I heard a sound of soft galloping coming from the direction of the orchard. I thought I must be mistaken, and that the sound came from the road, where the Maoris often gallop their horses. I crossed the yard to get the pegs (clothespins), and heard the galloping coming nearer. I walked to the clothesline, and stood under it with my arms uplifted to peg the towel on the line, when I was aware of the galloping close behind me, and suddenly a little figure, riding a tiny pony, rode right under my arms, I looked round, to see that I was surrounded by eight or ten tiny figures on tiny ponies like dwarf Shetlands.
The little figure who came so close to me stood out quite clearly in the light that came from the window, and I could not see his face. The faces of the others were quite brown, also the ponies were brown. If they wore clothes they were close-fitting, like a child’s jersey suit. They were like tiny dwarfs, or children of about two years of age. I was very startled, and called out, “Goodness! what is this?”
I think I must have frightened them, for at the sound of my voice they all rode through the rose trellis across the drive, and down the shrubbery. I heard the soft galloping dying away into the distance, and listened until the sound was gone, then went into the house.
My daughter, who has had several psychic experiences, said to me; “Mother, how white and startled you look! What have you seen? And who were you speaking to just now in the yard?” I said; “I have seen the fairies ride!”
“The Sidhe (another name for the “hill people,” or fairies) cannot make themselves visible to all. They are shape changers; they can grow small or grow large, they can take any shape they may choose; they appear as men or women wearing clothes of many colors, of today or some old forgotten fashion, or they are seen as bird or beast, or a barrel or a flock of wool. They go by us in a cloud of dust; they are as many as the blades of grass.”
-Lady Augusta Gregory, 1920.
Everyone knows that fairies can fly, but not all of them have wings it would seem. The following testimony was first presented in the British magazine Flying Saucer Review and concerns the appearance of a most unusual diminutive:
“I was born in 1924 at 57 North Road, Hertford; ‘Herts.’ One day in 1929, at about the age of five, I was playing in the garden. With me was my eight-year-old brother. He was suffering from an infected knee, due to a fall, and was consequently confined at that time to a chair. At that date, the road was a lane, with just two pairs of houses, one of which was ours, and behind the houses there was an orchard.
So far as I can truthfully recall, what happened was that we heard the sound of an engine; what I would today liken to a quieted version of a trainer plane. My brother and I looked up and saw, coming over the garden fence from the orchard, this small airplane (of biplane type) which swooped down and landed briefly, almost striking the dustbin (garbage can). It remained there for possibly just a few seconds then took off and was gone, but in that short time I had a perfect view not only of the tiny biplane but also of a perfectly proportioned tiny pilot wearing a leather flying helmet, who waved to us as he took off.
Neither my brother nor I ever spoke of the strange sight, so far as I can recall, until about ten years ago when, in the presence of our mother and other members of the family, I asked him whether he recalled the episode. He replied that he too had wondered many times, over the years, about that tiny plane and its tiny occupant. May I be permitted to add here that my brother is so honest that he would certainly not claim anything beyond what he could truthfully recall of an experience?
I am very sorry that I cannot swear to the exact measurements but I would estimate the wing span of the tiny aircraft at no more than twelve to fifteen inches,
with the tiny pilot in perfect proportion thereto. Although I do not recall his having said it, my brother apparently went into the house and told mother; “That airplane nearly hit the dustbin.”
This is a true and honest account as I remember it. The house and garden still exist, but the orchard has long ceased to be there.”
-Mrs. I. J. Goodwin, Stranden, Bournemouth, England.
A very impressive case for the existence of fairies appeared in a Dublin newspaper, the Irish Press, in 1938. The incidents described all involved multiple eyewitnesses claiming encounters with two-foot-tall beings.
“Watching for fairies has leaped into sudden popularity in West Limerick,” the paper reported.
“A number of men and boys, it seemed, claimed that they had seen “troops” of fairies passing by and had even chased them; to no avail. Witnesses claimed they could not catch the tiny beings because “they jumped the ditches as fast as a greyhound.”
One witness, a schoolboy named (curiously enough) John Keely, claimed he’d met a fairy while walking down a road one afternoon. He ran off to tell some friends who, with many a wink and grin I’m sure, urged him to return and find out who the fellow was. So Keely did just that. He returned to the scene and, finding the little man still there, approached him and asked him where he was from. The tiny man answered curtly, “I’m from the mountains and it’s all equal to you what my business is.”
The next day not just one but two tiny entities appeared again before Keely and a group of friends at a crossroads six miles from Rathkeale. Amusingly, the two tiny men were skipping rope, one boy later said, and “they could leap the height of a man.” As his companions watched from the bushes, Keely walked up to the fairies and one of them let him hold his hand. The fairy then began to lead Keely by the hand, setting off, in the company of the other being, down the road.
Just where they were intending to take the boy will never be known. Luckily for John Keely, the entities spied the other boys hidden in the brush and, taking fright, ran away “like the wind.” Keely and the others pursued the pair but could not catch them or, I suspect, even come close to catching them.
The witnesses described the beings to the reporter as standing about two feet tall with “hard, hairy faces like men, and no ears.” They were dressed in red, wearing knee breeches and ‘vamps’ instead of shoes. One of the creatures was wearing a white cape. Several men who had chased the gnomes claimed that “though they passed through hedges, ditches, and marshes, they appeared neat and clean all the time.”
A vicious little humanoid was also said to haunt the area of the English and Scottish borders known as the Pele Towers. This dwarfish entity was known as ‘Redcap’ and said to take the form of a squat old man with long fingernails and wear a red cap allegedly dyed thus by the blood of his human victims.
Several witnesses reportedly observed a diminutive entity with glowing eyes on the Algerian shore of Ain-el-Tuck on October 24th, 1954. Ten years later on June 2nd, 1964, while walking past Leam Lane, Gateshead, Durham, England, fourteen-year-old David Wilson noticed in the distance a group of about ten ‘children’ standing near a haystack. As he got closer, to within 100 feet or so, he was surprised to see that the ‘children’ had now climbed to the top of the haystack and were digging through it as if searching for something.
What was really astounding, however, was the appearance of the ‘children.’ They stood only two and a half feet tall, wore green suits and, strangely, their hands seemed to be glowing like “lighted electric bulbs.” Other children of the area also reported seeing the entities. One witness, a little girl, said their leader was “dressed in black and carried a baton with pink stripes.” Another young girl claimed to see one of the dwarfs sitting on the roof of a barn. In yet another case, multiple eyewitnesses, all of them children, said they had seen a dwarf riding on the back of a cow. Both before and after the dwarf sightings, the area experienced a wave of UFO activity.
Several weeks later one woman claimed she had witnessed “strange objects glistening in the sky whizzing over the river toward Liverpool from the Irish Sea.” Soon thereafter in Liverpool, the dwarfs appeared to another group of children who claimed they saw “little green men in white hats throwing stones and tiny clods of earth at one another on the bowling green.” Throwing rocks and dirt clods is not the type of behavior one might reasonably expect from members of a highly advanced extraterrestrial race; regardless of physical stature.
Two English schoolboys claimed they saw “a little blue man with a tall hat and a beard” as they walked to school in the rain on the morning of January 28th, 1967. Alex Butler, one of seven boys walking to school that day, happened to look up over the dell at Studham Common, near Whipsnade Park Zoo in the Chiltern Hills, and was startled and amazed at what he saw. He and another boy rushed toward the creature, only to see it vanish in “a puff of smoke.”
Undaunted by this amazing disappearing trick, the two boys kept looking for him. As if in reward for their tenacity, the being appeared again, this time on the other side of the bushes from where he was first seen. Again, they tried to approach the entity and again it disappeared, reappearing at the bottom of the dell. Then they heard a “foreign-sounding babble” coming from the bushes. This sound frightened the boys and, for the first time during the encounter they felt threatened. The creature made its fourth appearance just as the school bell rang, summoning them back to class.
Inside the Studham Village Primary School their teacher, Miss Newcomb, remarked on the boys agitated state and asked them what they’d seen. She then interviewed all seven children and all told the same story which she had them write down. The account was published in a booklet entitled The Little Blue Man of Studham Common.
Later some of England’s top Ufologists investigated the case and found that several local residents had reported seeing UFOs in the area in recent months. One had even allegedly landed very near the location of the blue man sighting. According to one of the participating UFO researchers, R. H. B. Winder, when later interviewed in the presence of their teacher, the children described the being in detail. According to Winder’s summary of the case:
“They estimate the little man as three feet tall (in comparison with themselves) with an additional two feet accounted for by a hat or helmet best described as a tall brimless bowler, i. e. with a rounded top. The blue color turned out to be a dim grayish-blue glow tending to obscure outline and detail. They could, however, discern a line which was either a fringe of hair or the lower edge of the hat, two round eyes, a small, seemingly flat triangle in place of a nose, and a one-piece vestment extending down to a broad black belt carrying a black box at the front about six inches-square. The arms appeared short and were held straight down, close to the side at all times. The legs and feet were indistinct.”
The puff of cloud seemed to have resembled a whirling cloud of yellowish-blue mist. “When they disappear,” one Irish woman told folklorist W. E. Wentz, “they go like fog.”
Another group of children, this time in France, was walking through the bushy fields that lead to the forest which surrounds the village of Arcsous-Cicon on the afternoon of July 17th, 1967. One of their number, a girl named Patricia Bepoix, had gotten a short distance ahead of her companions and was walking through the thicket when suddenly she stopped, screamed, and ran crying all the way back home.
She tearfully recounted the story to her mother shortly afterwards. She had apparently surprised some “little Chinamen” standing behind a bush. One of the “Chinamen” had stood up, she said, as if he was about to grab hold of her. Another member of the youthful group, a ten-year-old boy, didn’t see the “Chinamen,” but did notice what he called “smoke” coming from one of the bushes.
The boy’s sister, fifteen-year-old Joelle Ravier, and her friend Marie-Reine Mairot, hastened to the spot as soon as they heard the story. They were not disappointed. Once there, they observed a weird inhumanoid creature running from bush to bush. The thing was black, they
said, three feet tall and wore a short jacket which floated behind him as he ran. He had short legs which moved faster than a human’s. The girls noticed that he had a protuberant belly, but could not see his arms or face. The two chased after the little “man” until he disappeared into a bush. Then, from this same bush, they heard the sound of someone talking in a strange, singsong voice and became terribly frightened, just as in the English case earlier in the year. They then beat a hasty retreat.
Six days later it was still possible to see the series of strange marks; almost like scorch marks; on the grass around the bush where the beings had vanished. The marks reportedly led to the forest 150 feet away. The grass was withered inside these marks, and still hot to the touch.
“Short and stocky, monkey-like, covered in hair, wearing a tight-fitting helmet and sharp metal claws.” Such was the description of the ‘Monkey Man’ that was said to have attacked many citizens of New Delhi, India in 2001 and 2002. Attacks which left many of the victims hospitalized, suffering from scratches and hysteria.
With every new attack public panic mounted, just as, to one degree or another, it has always done. Several people were beaten in the darkness, accidentally mistaken for the beast. The attacks lasted several weeks, then the ‘Monkey Man’ apparently retreated back beyond the borderlands of the unknown.
Fairies Across the Pond
The ‘wee folk’ have been encountered by witnesses from all walks of life and are not restricted, it seems, to European locales. Evidence does suggest that a race, or races, of intelligent, diminutive, human-like beings may have existed at one time, or may still exist, in other parts of the world as well. Some of the ruins of ancient cities in South America, it is said, have been found to be honeycombed with tiny, passageways, staircases and tunnels so small that their discoverers had to traverse them on hands and knees.
The Inhumanoids Page 9
