Fairies and Wee Folk

Episode 7 of: UFOs, Aliens and the Fairy Kingdom by Nigel Graddon.

What may we draw from our study of the Wee Folk? If we have gained one essential perspective it is that the life forms under our lens can neither be described as wholly “wee,” nor as wholly “folk.” However, one notable aspect in both popular tales and in serious studies is the lack of information regarding detailed physical descriptions of fairy folk. This is hardly surprising, seeing that reported instances of sightings are mostly confined to the “I knew someone who knew someone who thought they glimpsed a fairy” category, while reports of actual encounters are very few and far between.

One is either exceptionally fortunate (or unlucky, depending on what one sees and the actions that follow) to see a fairy. From the available data fairies across the spectra of type and classification, with some bizarre exceptions described in the next chapter, resemble to some degree the human form, ranging in size from inch-high to at least human proportions and exhibit human traits and behaviours. Pixies the size of a child’s hand sport translucent wings, have an oversized head and pointed ears and nose but are still recognisably human in appearance.

Viking lore speaks of the light-elves (the Ljossalfs), which inhabit Ljossalfsheim, one of the nine worlds that made up the universe on the upper level of the World Tree above the human world of Midgard. On the other hand, the unfriendly Swartalfs, the black elves, occupy a region between Midgard and Helheim, an underworld on the lower part of the Tree. Despite differences in appearance, both sets of elves bear humanlike features. Higher up the size scale are the Gwragedd Annwn: beautiful Welsh fair-haired fairy women, the same size as humans, who live in underwater palaces beneath the lakes of the South Wales Black Mountains region. The same may be said both of the Brownie, a good-natured household fairy with brown skin and brown clothing and its opposite in temperament, the ill-tempered Boggart, characterised by its unkempt dense covering of hair and its ragged attire. The fearsome, elf-like Red Cap, its tam o’shanter dyed with the blood of its wayfarer victims, may have blazing red eyes, grey beard and the claws of an eagle but its humanlike features are unmistakeable. And as for the Coblynau, one has only to turn to Thorin Oakenshield’s company of dwarfs in the Tolkien stories to see what the mining folk of Middle Earth must surely resemble.

On first consideration, fairies’ similarity to humans may appear to be a counter-intuitive circumstance. It certainly does not follow that beings from the Otherworld should look human-like. In fact, one might expect exactly the opposite, considering the infinite variety of possible evolutionary forms that might abide there. Increasingly, evidence suggests that fairies are energy forms whose home is one or more dimensions that are as much an intrinsic part of the earth plane as humankind and which intersect with our world at an indeterminate number of access points. In other words, they have always been here, whereas humans are the late arrival.

In support of this line of thinking, anthropologist Roger W. Wescott[1] believes that our Earth may exist in a “hyperhistorical” sphere in which beings from our religions and folklore might become intrusions that can be explained rather than passed off as miraculous occurrences. In this case, extraterrestrial anthropology includes not just a study of possible interplanetary phenomena but also that of our own planet with other associated spatial and temporal dimensions added to it. In this model the supporting analytical disciplines would not be astronomy and aeronautics but mythology, folklore, and Fortean-style anomalies.

Current scientific thinking supports also the principle of convergent evolution, in which different species will independently evolve similar common features. In this context it is not unlikely that humans’ physical appearance gradually and selectively evolved to incorporate features of neighbouring life forms, including those that occupy dimensions that interlace with Earth.

Moreover, in line with the Genesis dictum that “God created man in his own image” there is a common belief in a cosmic archetype of creation that reflects the attributes of the makers of life, the Universal Powers, and with which life forms in all dimensions conform, including humans. The striking human-like being that so impressed contactee George Adamski during their encounters from November 1952 onwards told the professor that the human form is a universal archetype, the only differences being in stature, colour and in the shape of details. Interestingly, the visitor told Adamski that he had lived on Earth long ago.

Remarkably, analysis confirms that the same craft in which Adamski’s visitor arrived at California’s Desert Center is also the one seen and photographed by ten-year-old Stephen Darbishire over Coniston Lake in the northwest of England in February 1954. The late Prince Philip, a UFO buff and a fan of Adamski’s book The Flying Saucers Have Landed,” was so impressed with Darbishire’s experience that he invited the boy to Buckingham Palace for a full debriefing.

Humans and the inhabitants of fairyland may indeed share a semblance of likeness but mutual awareness of one another is evidently one-sided. Very few humans can see into the world of the wee folk whereas they appear to come and go into ours with relative ease. And when they come their intention is often to tease and torment humans, even to carry them off into fairyland, some never to be seen again: the same practice of torment and seizure observed in numerous instances of UFO phenomena. It is evident that the residents of the Otherworld should not objectively be called “fairies” but, for clarity, non-human entities.

Time and again, people have found themselves in the presence of one or more beings for which they are unable to provide a meaningful description. In groping for words that conform to their cultrural, experiental and mental parameters, they want desperately to pin a label on what stands before them when, in fact, its unknowable nature defies rational attempts at objective portrayal. For peace of mind an onlooker will reach for terms embedded in the collective unconscious by centuries of mythological conditioning and, hence, perhaps seize on “fairy” or, more latterly in human history, “alien.”

There is an element of safety in this psychological process of recall because, frankly, if one truly did know the real nature of what had stepped through that hole in the bedroom wall one’s sanity might not be guaranted to survive the experience. Here are some fascinating examples that underline the dichotomies facing the observer when confronted with instances of “things are never what they seem.”

While travelling to Leipzig during September 1768, Goethe came upon a ravine in which there was a beautifully illuminated amphitheatre. In it were innumerable tiny lights that dazzled the eye. These lights danced and jumped about, here and there. Goethe couldn’t decide if they were will-o’the-wisps or a company of luminous creatures.

A professional gentleman returning home one day in 1905 to his Welsh home in the village of Bryncrug saw a gigantic figure rising over a hedgerow with its right arm extended over the road. A ball of fire appeared from which a long white ray descended. The ray struck the figure, which then vanished.

Christmas 1910—a Co. Kerry man and another young man, both aged 23, were on horseback near Limerick. Near Listowel they saw a light half a mile ahead moving up and down, to and fro. The light expanded into two yellow luminous flames each about six feet tall and four feet wide. In the midst of each flame was a radiant being in human form. The two beings were of a pure dazzling radiant white like that of the sun, which appeared as a halo around their heads. After a short while they vanished.

Nora, the 18-year-old niece of Colonel Henry Jordan of Connacht, Ireland, was visiting her uncle. It was 1919. Nora was in the bedroom of one of the colonel’s young daughters. The younger girl told Nora that a man had appeared from nowhere in the room. He was four-feet tall, wore a green brimless “flowerpot” hat, a close-fitting green cutaway coat, a yellow waistcoat and cravat, buff knee breeches, grey woollen stockings, and brogues on his feet. He stood watching the pair for a while and then vanished. He became known as the Thornhill Fairy.

In 1951 two teenage sisters were walking in County Wicklow in Ireland when they saw a little man appear in front of them. He was two to three feet tall and dressed all in black with a black cap. Terrified, they ran into a nearby field. The little man watched them as they ran. They turned and saw he had gone but, curiously, balanced on top of the bar of the gate they had run though was a tin kitchen clock!

In 1954 a Czech living in France met a heavy-set man, medium height, wearing a grey jacket with shoulder insignia and a motorcyclist’s helmet. He was carrying a gun and spoke an unknown language. The Czech tried Russian and was understood at once. The man asked in a high-pitched voice: “Where am I, in Italy, in Spain?” and then asked how far he was from the German border and what was the time. The Czech said it was 2:30 p.m. The man looked at his watch, which said 4:00 p.m. He then got into a craft that had then landed in the road. It was like two saucers glued together, five feet in diameter and three feet high. The craft rose making a sound like a sewing machine.

In the same year a French farmer saw a round object the size of a small truck shaped like a cauldron. It landed and two normal looking men emerged in brown overalls. They asked: “Paris? North?”

Sixty years earlier in 1897 the humanlike occupant of a flying disc was questioned by a Texan witness. He was asked his name and replied that it didn’t matter but he could be called “Smith.” Asked where he came from, he said, “from anywhere, but we will be in Greece the day after tomorrow.” Similar occupants of flying craft have been described over the years, including those resembling GI mechanics, and short stocky types with yellow hair cut in a crewcut, yellow eyes, light complexion and wearing Nazi-like uniforms.

While an engineering student was out walking with friends in some trees in July 1961, he became separated from his companions. Shortly afterwards he was lifted into a cabin from within a translucent “elevator.” He was taken to a machine, which during the next three hours fed recordings into his brain. At no time did he see any occupants. When he was returned eighteen earth days had passed. All during this time searches had been made for him by the police and the military. When he appeared, he was still wearing the same fresh flower in his buttonhole and his suit was still neatly pressed and impeccably clean. He decided the least line of resistance to avoid prolonged questioning about an episode that no one would believe was to admit to a hoax on his part. The case was soon forgotten. Over the next few months, he found he needed less and less sleep and that all the things he had been taught during the recordings came back to him during the units of his university course. He discovered he could leave his body at will, and also carry out acts of psychokinesis like Uri Geller.

In August 1965 a young woman from Seattle woke at around 2:00 a.m. unable to move or make a sound. A tiny football-sized dull grey object floated through her window. Its three tripod legs descended to the carpet and a small ramp appeared. Five or six tiny people wearing tight clothing clambered out and engaged in what seemed like repairs of some kind. They finished, ascended the ramp into their craft and sailed out of the window. Only then was she able to move.

Another French farmer, Maurice Masse, encountered in 1965 two beings less than four feet tall. They were pilots of a small egg-shaped craft that had landed in his lavender field. They were dressed in one-piece, gray-greenish suits. On the left side of their belts was a small container; a larger one was on the right side. They had human eyes but their heads were three times the size of a human’s. They had practically no mouth, only a very small opening without lips. They wore no respiratory device, no headgear and no gloves. They had small, normal hands. When Masse approached them, one took a tube from its container and pointed it at him, rendering him immobile. The pilots exchanged communication like the sound of throat gargling. Masse remained paralysed for twenty minutes after they returned to their craft and flew off. The craft disappeared in an instant.

Tiny beings in white suits were seen in Lumut in Malaysia in June 1980. Girl witnesses described them as two inches tall, very hairy and resembling monkeys. One wore a white hat and boots in addition to its white suit. They carried packs and a long weapon

In Panama City in 1986 three children playing at a stream saw 8-10 little beings. They had claws for hands, very little hair and two small horns. They had no feet and levitated above the water.

November 1978—farmer Angelo D’Ambros of Gallio, northeast Italy, experienced a close encounter while gathering firewood near his home. He was confronted by two beings three feet in height hovering in the air about eighteen inches above the ground. They had bald heads, big pointed ears, sunken white eyes, large noses, fleshy lower lips, two large pointed fangs, very large hands and feet relative to the rest of the body, and long fingers and nails. They were dressed in tight, dark garments. Their appearance was terrifying. Angelo asked what they wanted but they replied in unintelligible mumblings. One tried to take Aneglo’s woodcutting tool but he managed to hold on to it as they struggled for possession. He felt an electric shock course through his hands. He grabbed a branch intending to deal a blow to his assailants, who, anticipating his intentions, fled. They got into a metallic disc 12-feet wide and 6-feet in height, which stood on four legs, and took off.

A 10-year-old boy, surname Gowran, was walking up towards Clonmellon Hill in the Irish town of Edenderry accompanied by his 8-year-old friend Jack and two 9-year-old girls. The year was 1901. The girls suddenly called out. They were looking into a field where was gathered a group of human-sized, dark figures standing in a circle ten yards in diameter. Black capes draped over their heads hung across their shoulders and dropped down to the ground. The figures stood completely motionless. Their cloaks appeared to be made from very fine cloth. Above the black drapes was a casket or coffin similarly covered in the same black material. Lying on the casket was a set of old Irish bagpipes: three drones each about three feet long. The bag and the mouthpiece hung down over the side of the box. A farmer and his 18-year-old son came by and seemingly saw nothing, after which the figures vanished.

At 6:00 a.m. on 4 January 1979, Mrs Jean Hingley of Rowley Regis in England’s West Midlands region saw an orange light by the carport at her home. It was coming from an orange sphere hovering over her garden. Three small figures shot past her into the house. They were three and a half feet tall wearing silvery tunics and transparent helmets like goldfish bowls. The figures had large oval wings seemingly fashioned from thin paper decorated with glittering dust. Each figure was surrounded by a halo and thin streamers hung from its shoulders. They had neither hands nor feet and their silvery-green limbs tapered to a point. They pressed buttons on their chests before speaking in unison. Their answer to Mrs Hingley’s question “Where do you come from?” was “from the sky.” She felt that the buttons were some form of translation device. With every word they didn’t understrand they did 1-2-3 very quickly on their chests with a “bleep-bleep-bleep.” She said to them, “You’ll learn a lot of things from me with the bleep-bleep,” and they said, “Yes, yes.” They shone a light at her head repeatedly. She complained, saying it was giving her a headache but they said they hadn’t come to harm her. They went around her room touching various things, which lifted up as if being pulled by a magnet. They seemed interested in the drink bottles left over from Christmas. She asked if they wanted some and they answered, “water, water, water.” Mrs Hingley then lit a cigarette to show them how to smoke, an action from which they recoiled, evidently afraid of fire. They then glided out of the house, each taking a mince pie as they went. They returned to their craft and took off leaving Mrs Hingley feeling very poorly. Electrical items in the house were damaged.

Jean Hingley, alien fairy, artist unknown_ — An illustration of one of the winged creatures that visited Jean Hingley, artist unknown

One cold night at Hønefoss in Norway on 23 October 1985, children aged seven to twelve were outside observing a lunar eclipse. An oval light appeared in the sky and moved towards them. One child shone a torch at it. The light’s bright glow illuminated where the children were gathered. Inside the light the children saw hundreds of tiny beings less than two feet tall in the road. On their heads were box-like objects of many colours, including white, brown and black. On seeing the children, the tiny beings ran away but over the next three hours were seen time and again. The children thought that they were playing a game of hide and seek. Some ran home to tell parents but none came out to look for themselves! (What is it about us grown ups we are so willing to abandon our innate sense of curiosity and wonder so readily?) A jogger passing by claimed he saw only a cat. Footprints left by the beings were defaced by an excited dog.

Isle of Man resident John L. Hall was walking with a friend in a wooded valley in Glen Aldyn near Ramsay. It was Sunday 4 September 1994. He felt “odd sensations,” “uncanny feelings,” and heard “musical sounds and tinkling voices.” He wondered if the sounds were being made by the Little People or by a rushing stream. He sensed movement and also felt he was being watched. He looked round but saw nothing. Feeling sick, Hall decided to turn back, taking photographs as he went. On one of them can be seen what Hall described as a “strange-looking green man on a pedestal” up in the leaves.

A boatman named Carr from Sligo took two strange men from the mainland bound for Innishmurry. The two disappeared before his eyes at a place on the water where legend situates an invisible island that reveals itself to mortal sight once every seven years.

Graham Brooke and his son Nigel were out for a run one night in the autumn of 1987 as part of Graham’s training for the 1988 London Marathon. Their route took them by the Stocksbridge bypass northwest of Sheffield, which was under construction. As they approached a layby by Wortley Village, they saw a figure walking towards them with his back towards the oncoming traffic. Graham said later: ‘My brain just could not take in what I was seeing. He was dressed in what I would say was eighteenth century costume and wore a dark brown hood with a cape covering his body. He was walking in the ground, not on the level of the road itself and I just could not make out what I was seeing. Then I looked at him directly and saw his face. He was carrying a bag and it was slithering along the surface of the road. It was a dark coloured bag with a chain on it and Nigel said he could hear the chain rattling on the ground. I just gasped and said “who is this silly person?” and realised my son was seeing him too, and at that moment the hairs on the back of our heads just stood on end and we could smell something really musty, just like we were standing in an antique shop. I saw him clearly and was looking directly at him, probably no more than fifty yards away from me. His face was towards me and his back was to the traffic. He was so close I could see that every half-inch down the cape there was a button, it was that clear. It was a long cape, dark brown in colour and very worn, with a “lived in” look about it; it was so real you could have walked up and touched it. He walked straight past as we stood there amazed in the middle of the road. Then a lorry came with its lights on and he just disappeared. I will never forget that musty smell, the cape he wore and the blank face. I looked right into the face and everything was black, just like a miner’s face but without any eyes. It was the strangest experience of my whole life.’

Ten years later, New Year’s Eve, 1997, Paul Ford and his wife Jane became one of many who have encountered the “Wortley Road Ghost.” They were driving to Jane’s sister’s home in the steel-making town of Stocksbridge. To trim their journey time, they were travelling along the recently contructed bypass, which runs along the hills high above the Don valley with the town and its steelworks below. Suddenly, Paul spotted a figure. From a distance it looked like someone who was trying to cross the road. As they got closer, they could see it was like a man in a long cloak. When they realised it had no face and was hovering above the road, Paul slammed on the brakes and swerved to avoid hitting it. Jane had to grab the wheel to keep the car on the road and avoid an accident.

In Hockley, Birmingham, a grey humanoid creature was seen jumping across the road, kangaroo fashion, although seemingly gaining momentum by swinging its arms. The entity stopped in the road and looked at an oncoming car before turning into the grounds of a cemetery.

The town of Nome in Alaska in August 1988 was the scene of five consecutive nights of sightings of little men two to three feet high. They had a greenish luminescence, well developed musculature, trained athlete’s broad shoulders, and muscular legs. They ran at around forty to fifty-miles per hour. Men passing by in a car ran right over one but felt no bump or thud. Later the being was seen again, this time turning colour from green to silver before witnesses’ eyes. Every now and again its feet got darker. It chased some kids back to their car. They noticed its red eyes and heard it making a dry whistling, hissing sound. Another night three little green men were seen, one becoming silver, another black, one remaining green. When they changed colour, they retained a greenish-blue aura. Another night they were seen dancing across the road.

Between the early 1930s and the mid-1940s an unidentified assailant known variously as the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, the “Anesthetic Prowler,” Friz, the “Phantom Anaesthetist,” the “Mad Gasser of Roanoke,” or, simply, the “Mad Gasser,” launched a number of gas attacks in Botetourt County, Virginia and Mattoon, Illinois. The assailant was described as being a tall, thin man dressed in dark clothing and wearing a tight-fitting cap. Another report described the gasser as being a female dressed as a man. Some saw it carrying a flit gun, an agricultural tool for spraying pesticide, purportedly used to discharge the gas.

Investigators of Fortean phenomena have categorised the Mad Gassers as belonging to that skein of entities known as “phantom attackers.” These appear to be human but often display superhuman abilities, and their seeming paranormal nature makes them unapprehendable by the authorities. Victims commonly experience the “attack” in their bedrooms, homes or in other seemingly secure environments. In one case a 6-year Irish girl woke in the middle of the night to see a little man, unclothed, grey all over. In its hand was a big ball of wool, which unravelled as it backed out of her room. The little man then vanished upon the stair. The girl was fortunate. Often victims report being pinned or paralysed or describe a prolonged state of siege during which they try desperately to fend off one or more menacing intruders.

The Mad Gasser has been likened to Victorian cryptid, Spring Heeled Jack. Press reports in Britain of a “peculiar leaping man” appeared as early as 1817 but his activities twenty years later. On 18 February 1838, 18-year-old Lucy Scales was attacked while walking through the London’s Limehouse district. A black figure leapt out from the dark shadows, spat a blast of blue flame in the girl’s face, leaped onto a nearby rooftop and vanished. “Spring Heeled Jack” (artist illustrated) went on to terrorise more victims. 18-year-old Jane Alsop, East End resident of Bow, described her attacker as wearing a tight-fitting black cape or cloak that felt like oilskin. On his head he wore a helmet; his hands were icy cold with sharp claws, and he had staring, orange eyes that protruded from his head. A week after her attack a similar one was attempted on a servant boy who noticed a gold filigree “W” embroidered on the front of “Jack’s” costume. In 1843 Spring Heeled Jack appeared in Northamptonshire, Hampshire and East Anglia, where he frightened the drivers of mail coaches. In November 1845 a fire-breathing “Jack” confronted a 13-year-old prostitute named Maria Davies in Bermondsey. He breathed fire into her face then threw her into a ditch where she drowned. Throughout the 1850s and 1860s this strange creature was seen all over England. People stayed off the streets at night. Concerned Londoners formed vigilante committees to patrol the streets at night in an effort to track down the assailant. Police put out extra patrols in search of the villain, but no one even came close to catching “Jack.” In 1877 he appeared at Aldershot Barracks. He was last seen in Liverpool in September in 1904 when the newspapers reported a figure seen “jumping over a building in William Henry Street.” “Jack” made dozens of appearances between 1938 and 1945 in the U.S., belching flames and making gigantic leaps, then “melting” into the darkness. In the 1970s he returned to England while at the same time he was still seen in the U.S., but by this time he had grown his hair long. In 1976, at least a dozen residents of Dallas saw a creature that leaped across a football field in a few strides. He was 10-feet tall, thin and had long ears.

Consider the extraordinary tale of the “Gnomes of Wollaton” (one below drawn by a witness). To readers who are familiar with the British television puppet characters, Noddy and Big Ears, the account will evoke memories of that bygone time. The event took place in September 1979 at Nottingham’s Wollaton Park in England. The park surrounds stately Wollaton Hall, home of the Hollywood blockbuster, The Dark Knight Rises. Six children aged eight to ten—Angie and her siblings Glen and Julie, brother and sister Andrew and Rosie, and Patrick—were enjoying late-summer playtime in the park grounds at around 8:30 p.m. Light was beginning to fade. The children’s attention was attracted by a bell-like sound coming from a nearby fenced-off swampy area. To their astonishment, they saw a group of around sixty little men about two feet tall. They had wrinkled faces with a greenish tinge and they laughed joyfully but in a quirky manner. They sported long white beards with red tips although one boy said the beards were black. They wore what the children described as old-fashioned nightcaps, just as puppet Noddy wore, with a bobble on the end. They also wore blue tops and yellow or green tights. Some tights that were torn were sewn with yellow patches. One child said they didn’t talk; another said they shouted at each other but not in a language he understood. Despite the looming darkness, the children were able to see them all plainly. One child said he could see them clearly as there was a light hanging in the trees. Patrick later explained to their Headmaster, “I could see them in the dark. They all showed up.”

For most of the fifteen minutes that they were under observation the little men rode around in little bubble vehicles, once again appearing to behave just like Noddy and Big Ears. The cars were of mixed colour: some were green and blue, others red, or red and white. The cars had no steering wheels but were equipped with a round thing with a turning handle. There was no sound of engines but the cars travelled quickly and could jump over obstructions like logs. On this occasion, the gnomes chased the children in a playful manner, but one child mentioned that they had seen the gnomes on a previous occasion during the long summer holidays but then the little men just ran off. Another child mentioned that on an earlier occasion, while being chased by the men he ran out of the wooded area through a gate whereupon the gnomes immediately stopped their pursuit. Interestingly, the child said they did this because “they don't come out in the light and might have died.”

At no time did the children either touch the little men or were touched by them. The children’s parents roundly disbelieved their account but just like the pupils at Broad Haven Primary School two years earlier they insisted on the truth of it. Their Headmaster interviewed them separately soon afterwards and, despite a few minor discrepancies in their accounts and differences in emphasis, the children’s reporting was consistent.

The Wollaton case is echoed by an event that occurred in 1929 in the English town of Hertford. A five-year old girl and her eight-year-old brother were playing in the garden. Alerted to the sound of an aeroplane, the children looked up to see a biplane with a wingspan of twelve to fifteen inches swoop down over the garden fence. In the cockpit was a tiny pilot wearing a leather-flying helmet. The plane narrowly missed overturning a trashcan before landing briefly. Waving cheerily to the children, the pilot took off and flew away.

Instances of being “pixy-led” are occasionally reported. In Ireland the phenomenon is described as the stray sod (Foidin Seachrain). It is said to occur when a person steps on turf on which a fairy spell has been laid. Consequently, the hapless person who is in the wrong place at the wrong time cannot find their way out of a familiar place they have walked hundreds of times before. Wearing one’s coat inside out is supposed to be one way in which to counter the stray sod experience. In Scandinavia the way to turn the tables on the mischievous Lygtenand or Lyktgubhe is to turn one’s cap inside out.

“William found a mean for our deliverance

Turn your cloakes

Quoth he, for Puck is busy in the oakes.

If ever wee at Bosworth will be found

Then turn your cloake, for this is fair grounde.”[2]

In 1935 an Irish girl lost herself on Lis Aird, a fairy fort in Co. Mayo. When she tried to leave the hill, an invisible force kept her from passing through the gap in the outer bank. The force physically turned her around so that she was always walking towards the fort. She felt an atmosphere of strong hostility building around her. Darkness fell. She could see the lantern lights from the search party. She heard the men call her name. She shouted but no one heard her and the searchers went away. All at once, she felt the barrier disappear and she was able to return home.

An early nineteenth century event in Wales powerfully illustrates the baffling conundrums of perception and psychology facing those that seek to compartmentalise events of high strangeness. One night David Williams, a servant living at Penrhyndeudraeth, Gwynedd, in north Wales, was walking some distance behind his mistress, carrying home a flitch of bacon. He arrived back three hours later insisting he had been gone for only three minutes. He told of how he had seen a meteor overhead and a hoop of fire. In the hoop were standing a handsomely dressed man and woman of small size. With one arm they embraced each other and with the other they held on to the hoop, their feet resting on its concave surface. When the hoop reached the earth, the pair jumped out and immediately inscribed a circle on the ground. Out of the circle emerged a large number of men and women who straightaway danced around to the sound of sweet music. A subdued light lit up the ground. After a while the meteor and hoop returned. The pair boarded and went off and the fairies vanished from the circle. Mr Williams had never heard the term UFO or flying saucer and so his “hoop of fire” simile makes perfect sense in describing the unusual couple’s extraordinary mode of arrival. But then what happens? No sooner do the man and woman, the only reported passengers in the hoop, alight from their fiery orb than the circle they inscribe on the ground, clearly an act of invitation, becomes filled with Little People that emerge out of the earth.

All at once, what we have is a unique and remarkable account of Wee Folk meeting UFOlk, an episode that connects them in common purpose and, for all we know, origin. As Janet Bord noted,[3] it is the apparent incongruity of the events that provokes the deepest questions. What was the reason for the Wee Folk and the UFOlk to meet in this fashion? Did they really come from different places at all? What was the purpose of the dance and why the abrupt departure? Did David Williams temporarily step into another world like so many have been reported doing in centuries of fairy tale tellling?

I referred earlier to the Rendlesham Forest event. I am including it here because the NHEs that communicated to witnesses during this incident claimed that they were time travellers from our far future. The event took place in the vicinity of two military bases (both now decommissioned): RAF Bentwaters, north of the forest, and RAF Woodbridge which extended into the forest from the west and was bounded by its northern and eastern edges. At the time USAF was using both under wing commander Colonel Gordon E. Williams. The base commander was Colonel Ted Conrad, and his deputy was Lieutenant Colonel Charles I. Halt. The encounter occurred in the early hours of 26 December 1980. The craft fired a pencil-thin mean of light into the nuclear weapon storage bunkers, penetrating beneath the surface.

On that night three small humanoid beings glided down from the craft in a beam of light and landed in front of General Williams. They looked like children: 3-4 feet tall with large heads and catlike eyes. They were dressed in silvery overalls.

Staff Sergeant James Penniston and Airman 1st Class John Smith (alias) encountered the alien ship a few hours after Penniston had had Christmas dinner with his family. Under hypnosis in September 1994 Penniston described the appearance of blue and red lights at the Bentwaters East Gate at 2.00 a.m. He saw a white light and a large disc-shaped craft with raised symbols on its surface. He reached out and touched them and received binary code information. The occupants told him they needed people to interpret the lights. He was told that there were many interpreters. Human interpreters such as Penniston, he was told, may come from a bloodline that carries memory files locked inside genes that are necessary for communications between mankind and our future selves. The decoded message was “Explain. Mission. Purpose”: the mission being “Contact,” the purpose “Research.” The future Earth travellers said they needed something connected with chromosomes from the interpreters, which they take from abductees. They can only travel back into the past; future travel is impossible. They need sufficient speed to make the time travel possible. They can go back a maximum of 40,000-50,000 years; any further they might not be able to return. They have been coming to Earth for 30,000-40,000 years. They took nothing from Penniston because they were interrupted. Penniston was not supposed to understand the program but by touching the symbols he activated them. He did this unseen while they were making repairs. They have a physical problem trying to sustain their children. To address this, they use us not like breeding stock but like band-aids. They take foetuses when necessary. One of the photos from the Bentwaters landing showed the insectoid type of greys (EBE Type II). Eyewitnesses described them as 1.5 metres tall, wearing what appeared to be nylon-coated pressure suits with no helmets. They had claw like hands with 3 digits and an opposable thumb. One struggles to reconcile these all too familiar “greys” descriptions with time travellers from earth’s future!

A popular term for ufonauts is “little green men,” a phrase often used disparagingly. However, the Majestic-12 manual does refer to some greys as having a green or greenish tinge, and there is considerable documented evidence that describes such occasions.

Case number 1—in 1947 Italian artist R.L. Johannis was on a geology trek, making his way up a short valley called the Chiarsò, near Villa Santina, Carnia in northeast Italy when he saw a large disc of a vivid red color. It was seemingly of varnished metal, lens-shaped with a low central cupola with no apertures. From its tip protruded a shining metallic telescopic antenna. It appeared to be embedded in the valley rock. Johannis decided to take a closer look and saw what he first perceived as two “boys” slowly coming towards him. As they got nearer Johannis saw that they were not boys but dwarf-like figures that were approaching with tiny strides, their hands at their sides and their heads motionless. They halted a few paces from his position, at which point Johannis felt all his strength drain away. Unable to move, he was now able to see them perfectly.

“They were no more than 90 centimeters in height, and were wearing dark blue-colored overalls made of some material that I would not know how to describe. ‘Translucent’ is the only term for it. They had collars and rather deep belts, all of a vivid red color. Even the cuffs and the shins of the legs ended in ‘collars’ of the same type. Their heads were bigger than the head of a normal man, and gave them a caricaturish aspect… They had no signs of hair, but in place of it they were wearing a sort of dark brown tight-fitting cap, like an Alpinist’s bonnet. The ‘skin’ of their faces was an earthly green. The only colour that comes close to it is the plasticine commonly used by sculptors, or of clay dipped in water. The ‘nose’ was straight, geometrically cut, and very long. Beneath it was a mere slit, shaped like a circumflex accent, opening and closing again at intervals, very much like the mouth of a fish. The ‘eyes’ were enormous, protruding, and round. Their appearance and color were like two well-ripened yellow-green plums. In the center of the eyes, I noticed a kind of vertical ‘pupil. I saw no traces of eyebrows or eyelashes, and what I would have called the eyelids consisted of a ring, midway between green and yellow, which surrounded the base of those hemispherical eyes, just like the frame of a pair of spectacles.”

Unwisely, Johannis waved his pick-carrying arm toward them and asked if they needed any help. Interpreting the gesture as threatening, one dwarf touched his belt and Johannis was struck by a puff of vapour that felt like an electrical discharge. He fell to the ground. The dwarfs came to where he lay and reached for his pick, allowing Johannis a good look at their claw-like hands. They were green with eight jointless fingers, four of them opposable to the others. He saw that their chests were quivering; like a dog’s when it pants after a long run was how Johannis described it. Johannis managed to get into a sitting position and saw the dwarfs return to the disc, which shot straight out from its “embedded” position in the rock and rose into the air.

Case number 2—on the evening of 15 November 1957 John Trasco had just returned from work at a paper mill to his home in Everittstown, New Jersey. He was feeding his half-blind, ill-tempered dog, King, when his wife, standing at the kitchen window, saw a light in front of the barn about sixty feet distant. She thought that “it was a pond or a puddle” reflecting the day’s last gleams of sunlight, and then realised that it was coming from a luminous egg-shaped object, 10-12 feet in length, which was hovering while moving up and down a few feet above the ground. She saw no occupants.

Meanwhile, her husband, having gone outside to see what was causing King to bark so furiously, came face to face with a little man 2.5 to 3.5 inches tall with a putty-coloured face and frog-like eyes. It was dressed in a green suit with shiny buttons, a green tam-o’-shanter cap, and gloves with a shiny object at the tip of each finger. It said to Mr Trasco, “We’re peaceful people, we only want your dog.” Trasco grabbed the little man’s arm and told him angrily to “get the hell out of here,” whereupon the visitor got back into the ship without apparently opening any door or porthole. The object then rose quickly in the sky “like a scrap of flame which escapes from a campfire and goes up” as Mrs. Trasco imaginatively described it. Keen eyed readers will, of course, realise that what Mr Trasco actually met in his yard that autumn night is a close match for that classic Wee Folk favourite—a leprechaun!

Case number 3—retired policeman Philip Spencer was taking an early morning walk to his father-in-law’s house across Ilkley Moor in Yorkshire. The date was 1 December. He was carrying his camera, hoping to take photos of strange lights on the moor. Ilkley occupies the highest part of the moorlands between Ilkley and Keighley in West Yorkshire.

It is a place of mystery and legend. UFO reports abound. There are strange lights that come and go eerily in Ilkley Moor’s dense fogs. Not many miles distant lies the Menwith Hill Station, which fronts as a Royal Air Force facility to provide “rapid radio relay and conduct communications research.” NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden claimed that Menwith Hill Station, in collaboration with U.S. partners, eavesdrops on satellite and other wireless communications around the world. Spencer was equipped with a compass to ensure he kept to the right direction before sun-up, and a camera: a Prinz Mastermatic camera loaded with 400 ASA Kodak film.

Philip Spencer’s original photo, with level adjusted, and with his suggested colorisation. Kodak said no trickery was involved.

Spencer was keen to take some decent shots of the town in the valley below. At around 7:45 a.m. while heading for the village of East Morton Spencer heard a humming noise, and then saw saw through the fog a small being on the slopes of the moor. It had a dark green appearance and a large head. Spencer took aim and snapped a shot. He felt that the being was trying to wave him away. The bizarre creature then ran off behind a rocky outcrop. Spencer was very curious to know more about the being and ran after it. As he did so Spencer was stunned to see a flying craft, “like two silver saucers stuck together with a square box with holes sticking out of the top.” It rose up from the ground and quickly disappeared into the sky. He was not quick enough to photograph it. Giving up his plans, Spencer returned home expecting it to be about 8:15 a.m. but bewilderingly the church clock was showing 10.00 a.m.

Spencer boarded a bus to Keighley and had his film developed at a 1-hour photo shop. The shot of the strage green entity came out. Kodak laboratories subsequently confirmed that ths photo had not been produced by trickery. After taking comparative photos on Ilkley Moor, Spencer calculated that the being was around four and half feet tall.

Spencer decided to consult a clinical psychologist and in two sessions Jim Singleton hypnotically regressed his subject. Afterwards Singleton was convinced that Spencer was describing events that he truly believed had taken place. In the sessions more pieces of the timeline fell into place, Spencer recalling that he had been taken aboard the UFO by a number of the green entities. Inside the craft, he encountered a strong magnetic field, which attracted both his compass and camera. He also recalled being subjected to medical examinations. Subsequent examination of local folklore records unearthed accounts of a similar green entity being seen in and around the White Wells area of Ilkley Moor.

The event was was written up by investigators as an example of an encounter with a grey alien of UFO fame. It is evident from the photo that it could just as easily be described as one of the fairy folk.

These three encounters raise important questions around perception and psychology. When something appears on a Yorkshire moor, in a farmyard barn and in a rocky valley: events that are so far removed from the percipient’s frame of reference as to preclude any possibility of recognition, identification or categorisation, how does one even begin to explain it in absolute terms? If a neighbour’s dog or cow wanders on to our property, we see in a nanosecond what it is, understand the situation immediately, and take steps to redress the matter. Substitute a frightful green dwarfish character that steps from a flying disc, and the human observer can only search their mind for an answer relative to present day conditioning.

1947 was the nascent year of UFO reporting, beginning in May with sightings in Alaska, Canada, Hungary, Guam and Japan. On 24 June private pilot Kenneth Arnold’s observation of 9 discs over Mount Rainier in Washington, D.C. became worldwide news. From this date forward sightings proliferated, including the infamous Roswell event of 2 July, and during the UFO flap over Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1952 flying 7 objects flying above the White House. Nevertheless, Johannis, no doubt aware of American sightings of strange objects, disregarded any pre-conceived impressions and spoke not of seeing a UFO and aliens but of a disc and two dwarfs. It was as if his instincts were telling him that he was observing a “Magonia” event but was not inclined at the dawn of the the atomic age to speak of fairies.

By 1957, and certainly by 1987, the prevailing cultural memes, influenced by growing numbers of sightings of “alien” spacecraft and little green and grey men, added even more weight to the expectation that witnesses of high strangeness were likely to say, “Ah, I’m a witness to a UFO event.” However, neither the Trascos nor Spencer spoke overtly of experiencing a UFO encounter (Spencer only doing so later under hypnosis) but instead spoke respectively of seeing a little green man and his ship, and a little green entity and its curious looking craft.

In the circumstances described by each party, had they experienced their encounters in the nineteenth, and even in the early decades of the twentieth century, they would have had nothing to help identification and description other than the tropes of folk tradition. The first and obvious thought at the time the scenes unfolded would have been, “I’m witnessing the fairy folk,” no other available explanation being at hand that their conditioned consciousness could bring forward. Such descriptions would have been of the type to provide rich source material to Evans-Wentz and inspire his groundbreaking folklore studies.

Cases 4 and 5 are presented neither as encounters with Wee Folk nor with UFOlk but with remarkable people by all appearance’s human except for their greenness.

Case 4 relates the famous twelfth century English legend of the green children of Woolpit who claimed after their spontaneous appearance that their true home was a subterranean world. One day at harvest time, during the reign of King Stephen (1135–1154), the villagers of Woolpit in the English county of Suffolk discovered by one of the wolf pits that gave the village its name two green-skinned children. They were brother and sister. Apart from their unusual skin colour the siblings were of unremarkable appearance although their clothing was unfamiliar and they spoke in an unknown language. Villager Richard de Calne took the children into his home where for the first few days they refused all food until they came across some raw broad beans, which they consumed eagerly. Traditionally, green is the Celtic colour symbolizing death and beans are traditionally the food of the dead. Eventually the children learned to eat other food and lost their green pallor. After a while the boy, the younger of the two, turned sickly and died. His sister was baptised shortly afterwards, given the name Agnes. After she learned to speak English, the girl explained that she and her brother had come from a land where the sun never shone and the light was like twilight. She named it Saint Martin’s Land, a subterranean world where everything was green, including its inhabitants.

She was unable to account for how they had left their mysterious homeland and arrived in Woolpit. All she could remember was that they had been herding their father's cattle and became lost when they followed the cattle into a cave. After being guided out from the cave by a loud noise (the Abbey bells of Bury St Edmunds, a town six miles from Woolpit), they suddenly found themselves by the wolf pit where they were found. Agnes was employed for many years as a servant in de Calne's household, where she was considered to be “very wanton and impudent.” She eventually married a royal official named Richard Barre from King’s Lynn.

Finally, Case 5 is an account of what was described in 1910 as a fairy encounter. The story was passed on to Alasdair Alpin McGregor by Reverend Alexander Frazer, Minister of the Small Isles, as told to him by the family concerned. McGregor recounted it in his book, The Peat-Fire Flame. The encounter took place on the island of Muck off the west coast of Scotland. Local man Sandy McDonald’s two sons, aged 10 and 7, were playing on the seashore when they found an unopened tin. While trying to open the tin they saw a little boy dressed in green standing beside them. He invited the lads to look at his boat. They saw a tiny boat on the water a few feet from shore. A little girl three feet high and a dog the size of a rat were aboard. The girl offered the lads biscuits, which they ate. After the lads had been invited to make an inspection of the boat, the green children said that it was time for them to leave. They said they would not be coming back but that others of their race would be coming.

These examples demonstrate that it is impractical to seek to compartmentalise NHEs into specific categories. As Michael Hesemann said to Whitley Strieber:[4] “You can’t explain one phenomenon you don’t understand by another phenomenon you understand even less.” Let one be content to satisfy a need for explanations and a sense of rational meaning by simply accepting that NHEs exist, and that they visit us for reasons in thepresent stage of our evolution that we are hopelessly ill equipped to divine.

[1] Magoroh, M., & Harkins, A., Culture Beyond the Earth, Vintage Books, NY, 1975

[2] Keightley, T., Fairy Mythology, vol. 2, VAMzzz Publishing, Amsterdam, 2015

[3] Bord, J., Real Encounters with Little People, Michael O’Mara Books, London, 1997

[4] Hesemann, M., The Fátima Secret, Dell Publishing, Randon House, Inc., New York, 2000