Seeing Fairies

by Marjorie T Johnson

  To the fairy folk the solstices and equinoxes seem very important, and on those dates they hold various celebrations or ceremonies. I think it might have been one of the latter, which took place on the night of the winter solstice 1971. My sister was gazing out of one of our front bedroom windows when she called to me to join her. It was very late, but in the eerie glow of the streetlights I could see what seemed from above to be several white crinkled paper balls, but which, if viewed from the right angle, could have been wide, frilly dresses or tutus worn by tiny beings. My sister, who had been watching them for some time, said, “Keep on looking. They are rolling now, but I’ve seen them walk! They must be some kind of fairies.” I gazed in astonishment as two or three of them began to trot, and after them came many more small white beings of the same size, who rolled, leapt in the air, and then literally danced towards the others. Presently a solitary one came down the road, and two of the first arrivals went to meet it and walked back one on each side of it. Then they began to come from all directions, and when the newcomers reached the main throng there seemed to be much rejoicing among them and they “larked about” just like children, though my sister and I couldn’t hear any sound, and their faces were not visible to us from above, owing to the dim lighting. As they were all dressed alike, the thought came to me that they had come to take part in some kind of graduation ceremony. At this point, we felt we were being watched, and we noticed that just inside our front gate was a “sentinel.” Another one was posted inside the gate, which led to the passage between our house and that of our neighbour. Then we heard footsteps on the road, and a man came along with his dog. All the little beings (with the exception of the two sentinels) had now gathered together in a large crowd on the pavement. My sister and I watched breathlessly, wondering what they would do, but when the man reached them he walked right through them, obviously quite unaware of their existence. The dog, however, saw them and paused, then walked carefully round them, lowering its head to look at them and sniffing inquisitively before following its master. A car had been parked all the afternoon and evening near the gate, and suddenly, near midnight, the small white sprites with one accord swooped beneath it and were lost to our view. With the aid of their “glamourie,” they would be able to see it as a grand Assembly Hall, where they could hold their ceremony away from our prying eyes. The sentinels, however, remained at their posts, and conveyed to us a strong feeling that we must not go out to investigate, so we went reluctantly to our beds. Early the next morning I watched the car being driven away, but of course there was no sign of the wee folk.

  I had in my bedroom a miniature ladder-back chair twelve and a half inches high, with a small, lavender-filled cushion on the seat, and when we had a cocker spaniel named Trina, she would run into my room every morning and stand wagging her tail vigorously at something she saw in the chair. Then the time came for my room to be painted and decorated, so all the contents were moved out and jumbled together elsewhere. As soon as the work was finished and everything put back in its place, I was able to return, and in the morning Trina came running in, looking expectantly towards the little chair. When she reached it, I noticed that she did not wag her tail but turned away looking very dejected. This kept on for several days, but when the smell of the paint had gone from the room she again started wagging her tail joyously at she approached the chair.

  It is not unusual for the nature spirits to become fond of one’s fairy-seeing friends, and one day the fairy of the chair showed herself to Mrs. Vera Westmoreland, whose many experiences are included in this book. Vera described her as being “lovely, delicate, and ethereal,” and she said that she had told her in a clear, bell-like voice that she had left my room for a while because so much in it had been disturbed, and the smell of paint had lingered, but now she had come back to her chair and had regained the same setting and colourful rays round that particular spot. That explained the behaviour of our dog Trina, with her alternating moods of disappointment and pleasure. Vera Westmoreland’s psychic gifts far exceeded my own, for up to this point I had been unable to see the chair’s occupant. However, Vera and her husband had spent the afternoon with me later on that summer, and then departed in their car for Derbyshire, and some time afterwards I went upstairs to my bedroom and was surprised to see for the first time a misty little figure gliding towards the miniature chair. Within the next few days I received a “Thank you” letter from the Westmorelands, in which they said that the fairy had accompanied them for part of the way home, perching between them on the back of the car seat, so it may be supposed that when I saw the fairy going to her chair she had just returned from her joyride!

  On 13 May 1961, some friends came to our house for a few hours and brought with them their two cocker-spaniel bitches, Peppy and Judy. It was a hot day, and we all sat in the drawing room with the door wide open so that the dogs could walk in and out as they pleased. Judy had fallen asleep, and I was facing the open door with Peppy lying in front of me. Suddenly she raised her head, sniffed, and craned her neck to look at something in the hall. I peeped out and saw standing there the semi-transparent figure of a gnome, or dwarf, one-and-a-half-to-two feet in height, with a large head, a beard, and a pointed cap. Although I was unable to see any colouring, he appeared to be wearing the traditional belted jacket and trousers of his kind. I think there were two more of them, but he was the clearest. He seemed to be very interested in the dog, but after a while he disappeared and Peppy settled down to sleep. I kept a watchful eye on the hall through the open door, and presently the little man returned and Peppy stirred, and again raised her head to sniff and look at him.

  On 22 July of the same year, our friends paid us another visit, and this time we were sitting in the dining room and the other dog, Judy, was facing the open door. I was seated at the side of the door and could not see into the hall, but I noticed that Judy was looking out and wagging her tail. Then the wagging stopped, but it started again after a few minutes, so I gathered that what Judy had seen must have reappeared again after a short absence. As the owners of Peppy and Judy lived in a pretty cottage in a small village surrounded by fields and woods, no doubt the dogs were used to seeing fairy folk. I might add that on this and the previous occasion the other human beings in the room were much too busily engaged in conversation to notice anything!

  It is certainly true that fairies try to enlist the help of human beings when an insect, bird, or animal is in trouble. Miss Sylvia Birchfield, of Chicago, described an experience she had on her parents’ farm in the northern part of Illinois during the summer of 1956. While walking through an open field, she was amazed to see some fairies flying out of a wooded area towards her, barely missing the tall grass as they came. Feeling that they wished her to follow them back to the woodland, she did so, and at this they showed obvious joy. As soon as she had crossed the fence, they flew towards a fallen tree—which recently had been struck by lightning—and hovered over a particular branch. She walked around it and found there an injured bird, which she later learned was a grosbeak, a bird rather rare in that section of the country. Lifting it from the branch, she took it to her brother, who fed and tended it for a few days until it was strong enough to fly onward to join its kind. All the while she was with the fairies there seemed to be “high chatter” among them, and she explained that by “high” she meant a sound of higher frequency than we can normally understand: “like the hum of electric wires in extreme cold.”

  My sister and I have been “called out” (telepathically) on several occasions to re-stake plants, which have been blown down by the wind, and to rescue birds and bees in distress. One day my sister was urgently “summoned” to extricate a very angry and frustrated bee which had just become entangled in a spider’s web. On one occasion when I was responding to a “call,” the timing was so perfect that the bee was just falling through the air to land at my feet as I stepped out into the garden. Many bees are affected by the wretched chemicals with which man is poisoning the earth, air,
and sea, and consequently all forms of life, and this bee was apparently lifeless, but a few drops of that magical antiseptic elixir, honey, placed on a leaf, slowly revived and strengthened it, and eventually it flew happily away, after circling round my head in a sort of farewell salute.

  Mr. Geoffrey Hodson tells us in his book The Coming of the Angels (The Theosophical Publishing House, London) that the bee is developing mind, just as plants and trees are developing emotion. According to theosophical concepts of the Ancient Wisdom, bees came originally from the planet Venus. My contributor Mrs. Georgina K. Evason had a Venusian visitant one night, and was shown a vision of a bee in flight. She was told that bees travel on the humming sound vibrations just as the spaceships and flying saucers are said to do. In her book Natives of Eternity (L. N. Fowler & Co. Ltd., London), the Rev. Flower Newhouse described her out-of-body journey to Venus with one of the great Masters. They visited a beautiful garden, and she wrote: “In that same garden we saw a form that resembled a mammoth bee, for it was as large as a small dog; and I sensed that it was a Venusian household pet.” It is interesting to note that these three foregoing references to the bee and the planet Venus come from three quite separate, independent sources.

  Chapter 10: Transportation of Objects by the Fairies and Fairy Apports

  It is well known among many of my contributors that the little people can cause objects to disappear and then to reappear, though not always in the same place. C. W. Leadbeater said in his before-mentioned book The Hidden Side of Things that as the fourth dimension is a commonplace part of the nature spirits’ existence, it is quite easy for them to remove articles from a locked box, or to transport flowers into a closed room. Ella Young in her book The Flowering Dusk (Dennis Dobson Ltd., London, 1945) also mentioned this mischievous side of fairies, and Capt. Sir Quentin Craufurd had proof of this during his experiments with a group of wood elves. However, they have no evil intent, and I do not think they are any more mischievous than some children and young animals.

  My Mother had mystifying disappearances and sudden reappearances of thimbles, scissors, and pencils often in the presence of my sister and myself, and I had a strange experience concerning an important letter containing accounts of fairies from a fairy seer. I had placed it carefully with my other papers, but when I wanted it I could not find it anywhere. I had searched in every nook and cranny, every drawer and cupboard in the house. I was sure I hadn’t transferred it to my handbag because I kept only unanswered letters there, and I had acknowledged this one immediately after receiving it. I had already glanced in my bag, and such a bulging packet would have been instantly recognizable—but this was my last hope. I emptied the bag entirely of its contents and examined everything separately several times, just to satisfy myself. I also felt inside the lining, though I knew it could not be there. After that, I gave up searching, for I guessed the fairies had taken it, and I asked them to return it as soon as possible. A few weeks passed, and I was feeling desperate, because I daren’t ask my correspondent to rewrite all her experiences. Then one day I went in a health food shop and made some purchases. My handbag had a safe, stiff clasp, which even I had difficulty in twisting, but when I bent down to open it for the money I saw to my horror that it was gaping wide open, and I thought I’d been robbed. Then I noticed there was something bulky sticking right up out of it, and my horror turned to delight when I discovered it was the precious letter. Why had the fairies kept me waiting so long? Had they needed special conditions before returning it, such as the atmosphere of a busy shop, where they could obtain power from other people in order to re-materialize such a bulky letter? Only the fairies themselves can answer that!

  When a friend told me that Miss Edith M. van Horne, writer, traveller, and lecturer, shared her flat in Edinburgh with a gnome and a fairy, I wrote to Miss van Horne for more details. She said the fairy first appeared as a bright, glowing light moving about her study. Then she reappeared at various times and under any conditions, always bringing with her a happy atmosphere. The gnome was about a foot high, wearing a brown jerkin, red pantaloons, and brown pointed boots. He had been seen several times by Miss van Horne’s friends, but often he was only visible as a shadow-like shape. Sometimes she could hear him call her name, and a friend’s little boy said that “Gnomey” had told him he would always look after her. Despite his concern for her welfare, however, “Gnomey” could not resist getting up to mischief, such as moving things around the house and hiding her glasses.

  Another contributor who was teased by the fairies was Mrs. Claire H. Cantlon. “The fairies help me very greatly with my garden and will make beautiful flowers come up for me,” she said, “but in the house they hide my things in a most annoying way, and seem to delight in making me vexed. Hours, sometimes days, afterwards, they will put them back in the most obvious places, like my thimble in the middle of my bed or table, where it certainly was not to be seen a minute before.”

  Miss Kathleen Hinde, of Lyme Regis, confirmed that they played pranks on her, too. “They love taking away my things and then putting them back,” she commented.

  Mrs. H. Spelman, of Cheshire, referred to them as “little imps,” and said: “They move things, and then you find them.”

  In July 1963, my contributor “H” wrote to tell me that he had started doing a fairy picture for me, in oil pastels, but he added: “One thing is annoying me. Every time I lay a pastel down, it just disappears! I have plenty of whites, but if it happens with the colours I shall have to buy some more. I have lost four whites already—actually I lost five, but found one in my bed! You know what’s happening, don’t you? It’s those darned, mischievous little fairies who keep pinching them, because normally I am most careful to put crayons, etc., down where I can put my hand on them easily. I do wish they would put them back… Ever since I first started, I have also been aware (without actually hearing anything) of rustlings and flutterings around the room—especially while sketching the fairy who couldn’t fly. Isn’t it strange how one can sense sounds very strongly and yet not actually hear anything physically?”

  In April or May 1943, Mr. G. H. Allen and a lady friend were in Yorkshire on one of their cycle outings. The weather was clear, with bright spring sunshine lighting up the Pennine Fells. Nevertheless, there was a strong wind blowing, so that high up in the hills it was rather cold.

  After mounting almost to the top of Kidstone Pass, they decided to leave their cycles in the shelter of a limestone wall while they climbed over to have a clearer view of the mountain stream, which tumbles steeply down the almost sheer slope of the fells to the right side of the roadway. They reached a place about a quarter of a mile away from their cycles and watched the lively stream leaping down over many boulders on its way to reach Cray Gill and eventually to empty itself into the river below. The grass and herbage were just beginning to take on a fresh green appearance, and forget-me-nots, violets, and the yellow wild pansy were growing in profusion. Mr. Allen remarked to his companion, “This is, I believe, a place to find fairies.” He felt sure that it was one of their haunts, for it was wild and remote. After some fifteen minutes, they slowly returned to their cycles, but before continuing their ride his lady friend opened her handbag for her cosmetics and discovered that her lipstick in its container was missing. Earlier in the morning she had proudly shown him this new lipstick in its expensive container of pale green and ivory encircled with gold bands, before returning it safely to her handbag. They searched her handbag and then their saddlebags, their clothes and pockets, the ground and the drystone wall, but there was no sign of the missing article.

  “The fairies have taken it,” said Mr. Allen, and reluctantly they remounted their machines and continued their journey, and they were soon travelling at twenty miles per hour down Cray Gill towards Buckden. After passing through this lovely Dales village side by side, some four to five feet apart, they reached the small hamlet of Starbotton and were riding through it when Mr. Allen heard the sound of something striking his fr
iend’s cycle. It hit it in three places before falling on to the road, and he called to her to stop, thinking it might be a nut from the machine. They both turned round, and there, some 60 feet behind them, they found the container with the lipstick safely inside. His friend said she had distinctly felt something strike her on the chest before she heard the tinkling sound it made as it struck the cycle. She assured him that the new lipstick in its case would not come out again. It would be preserved and treasured always.

  The most disconcerting experience in this connection was recalled by Adam Campbell Hunter, of Skelmorlie, Ayrshire. “When,” he said, “the Brownies stole the philibeg off me, along with sark, jacket, and vest, and left me naked except for hose and brogan. It happened in Glen Oykel in 1938. I had been told I’d get a grand view from the top of a certain low hill on the Sutherland side of the river, so one Sunday afternoon in October I set off alone to climb this hill and see the view. The day was sunny and very warm, especially for someone in a kilt, and as I crossed the heather I started to peel off my clothes. I was within 50 yards of the top when I sat down on a big boulder, which made a natural chair, and I laid my clothes down beside the stone and put another stone on top of them to keep them from being blown away, as there was a strong breeze. I sunbathed for a while and then decided to walk up to the top, but first I put a stone on top of my boulder seat to mark it. After going up to admire the view, I came down again to my boulder seat and my clothes were gone—vanished! There were only four or five other large boulders on the hillside and I ran to each in turn and looked, but there were no clothes and no one was hiding; there was not a man, deer, sheep, or bird in sight. I ran the 50 yards to the top of the hill again and viewed the landscape—empty! I circled the hilltop; I quartered the hill; then I searched it haphazardly. I jumped on every stone, but there was not a soul to be seen. After two hours search I was forced into accepting the fact that my clothes had vanished for keeps. I was hungry and it was time I was getting home, so, naked except for hose and brogan I set off across the muir. When I passed MacLeod’s peat stack, I saw an old torn waterproof coat, so I put it on. It covered me to near the waist, but the lower portions were torn away. Thus attired I scrambled down to the Glen road and went along it and over the swing bridge to the croft house where I was staying with Alex MacLachlan. I got right through the house and in at my own door without a soul seeing me. I went up to the attic and changed into some clothes, and then came down to my very late tea. Alex and his wife were already at theirs, and when I told them the yarn they laughed fit to kill themselves. While I was having my meal, Alex ran out to rouse the crofters, then he and the brothers Seumas and Duncan MacLeod, Alex Ross, and Jack Fleming went with me back to the spot to find my kilt and clothes. They were all quite confident they would find them right away.