When Mrs. Frances Pinter, of Leeds, attended a private séance, she had the following experiences: “First, there was a lovely fragrance, and exquisite flowers appeared. Secondly, at least twenty elves dressed in grass green circled in a joyous dance round a bowl of flowers. Then they flew across to a cage of birds and flitted all over it before they went back again to the flowers, round which they gave a final dance before disappearing.”
Another contributor, Mrs. Minnie Griffiths, attended a séance conducted by the Preston medium Mr. James Gordence and saw fairies there on four occasions. “I felt their little dresses touch my hands,” she said. “They are very lively and friendly little souls, and seem to like the tune of ‘Jingle Bells.’”
In 1952, Miss Katie Richardson, a spiritualist in London, was being used as the medium for a small group who met for absent healing, and they had been sent the name of a small boy aged three or four, for whom the doctors could do nothing. The moment the child’s name was given out, the woman guide said, “Oh, but this little one belongs to the Little People,” and even before she had finished speaking these words we were shown a vision of the fairies carrying the child away and placing him on a small couch, which just fitted his body. “The fussing and petting, and the feeling of happiness that came from them was unbelievable. They patted the coverlet, and his hair and face, and moved in a constant stream around him.” Miss Richardson, whose mediumship took the form of conscious control, remembered thinking what a fuss they were making as though he were a long-lost brother, and the controlling guide told the group that the little one had already been gathered up by his own kind. Afterwards, they heard that the boy had passed over between his name reaching them and the day of the healing circle, so the guide’s words were corroborated. This experience intrigued Miss Richardson so much that she asked her guides during a period of meditation if they could offer any more information regarding the remarks at the healing circle, and they said “Oh yes, this little one was caught up in the wrong stream of life. Doctors could never have been able to affect a cure.”
Fairies in Dreams
Nerys Dee says in her book Your Dreams and What They Mean (Aquarian Press, Northants., 1984) that physiologists refer to the non-dreaming sleep state as NREM (non-rapid eye-movement), and the dreaming sleep state as REM (rapid eye-movement). The NREM sleep decreases nearer morning, and the REM sleep increases. It is in this latter state that many of us have psychic dreams that we remember on waking—dreams that are real experiences on the astral plane, which is the fairies’ true home. Through all the years up to the time I started work on this book, I had frequent vivid dreams about fairies. I would be with them in fields, woods and gardens, and sometimes my sister, or an unknown companion, was with me.
I started collecting cuttings of true experiences in 1936, and several people tried to persuade me to compile a book of them. One day in the 1940s, I was thinking seriously about doing so, but was a bit apprehensive as to whether the fairies themselves would like it, and I wished I could obtain their consent. That night I went to bed thinking about it, and early the next morning I had a wonderful true dream. Standing in front of me was one of the higher devas, or “Shining Ones,” and I had never before seen such a vision of loveliness. She glowed with light; her hair was long and golden; her gown was flowing and opalescent; and the aura, which surrounded her, coruscated with all the colours of the rainbow, I christened her “Iris,” and felt she was a Guardian of the Fairy Borderland. She was standing on front of a symbolic filmy curtain of gauze, which she drew aside and beckoned me through, so I knew I had been accepted. She was showing me some interesting things when something—perhaps a sudden noise—made me waken, but not before she had impressed on me that whenever I saw the rainbow-flash of her aura I was to ask the person who might be next to me in a street, shop, or other building, etc., if he or she had, or knew someone who’d had, any fairy experiences.
I know that must sound incredible, and I had to take the risk of being thought crazy, but I wanted to collect as many accounts as I could, so I plucked up my courage to do it, knowing that the lovely deva was guiding me. Fortunately, on each occasion I received a serious answer and had a long and interesting conversation about fairies with the person concerned. One was a man in a printer’s shop; another a lady concert-pianist; another a clairvoyant housewife; another I met at a meeting, who invited me to her house; and another a tourist in the porch of Coventry Cathedral, etc! When, in 1955, Alasdair Alpin MacGregor, the Scottish author and folklorist, started collaborating with me in collecting more accounts, I stopped seeing the rainbow-flash, but I know that subsequently the deva often led me into certain interesting experiences (such as when I was pixielated in a cemetery!) in order to give me more insight into the ways of the fairy folk.
I like to call this next experience “The Fairy’s Gift,” and it came about in the following way.
On Sunday morning, 21 October 1956, I had a vivid dream in which I was in the garden and it was rather dark. Then I saw a light glowing on a plant, and as I looked at it, it became a tiny, silvery fairy about one and a half inches high, with silver wings. When she knew I had seen her, she cried in a clear, tinkling voice: “Help! Oh, please help!” I was just walking towards the plant when I was awakened by my mother, who was calling to me from her bedroom. I had not had time to recognize the plant in my dream, so I silently asked the fairy to lead me to it, and when I went downstairs and into the garden I was led straight to an antirrhinum (commonly known as “snapdragon”) plant. The night had been stormy, with gale-force winds, and although it was a dark morning I could see that a stake, which my sister must have put there some days earlier, had come loose, and the plant and its flowers were lying dejectedly on the ground. After I had replaced the stake and raised and re-tied the drooping stems, the plant looked much happier and I felt the fairy was pleased.
On the following morning I went to the solicitors’ office, where I worked as a shorthand typist, and a few minutes later my colleague arrived and presented me with a large bunch of linaria flowers, which she felt I would like. They were in lovely rainbow colours, and as gardeners well know, they are similar to snapdragons but in a miniature form, and are of the same family (Scrophulariaceae). Hilda M. Coley, in her delightful book The Romance of Garden Flowers (W.H. & L. Collingridge Ltd., London, 1948), wrote that “Our garden snapdragons are related to the wild Linarias and the yellow toadflax.” My friend tossed me the empty seed-packet to show me the variety in case I wanted to grow some, and I saw that the seed merchants called that mixture of seeds FAIRY BOUQUET!
There was a surprising sequel in eight days’ time. My sister was standing near the snapdragon plant in our garden when she saw a movement on it, and a tiny fairy flew out and settled on her arm for an instant, perhaps trying to show her gratitude to my sister for putting the stake there in the first place. When I asked for a description, my sister said she didn’t look more than one and a half inches high and was “silvery, with small silver wings”—just like the fairy in my so-called dreams! Was it a mere coincidence that I received those dainty antirrhinum–like flowers the day after I’d had the dream? Or was it the snapdragon fairy’s way of thanking me by sending, through my friend, a Fairy Bouquet?
The great antivivisectionist and mystic Anna Kingsford said her fairy experiences took place on the fairies’ own plane during sleep, and she considered the nature spirits her kith and kin because she knew she had come from their kingdom.
In the early part of the morning, when Mrs. Clara Reed, of Coventry, was half-awake and half-asleep, she could feel a gentle pulling at her nightdress and heard the sound of merriment. This went on for quite a while, and then she found herself being lifted and carried away, and knew, from the delighted voices, that she was with the fairies. She felt a rush of air as she was taken out of the house to a strange little garden where there were beautiful rainbow-coloured stones. On one of these sat a “fairy king” under some lovely trees, surrounded by many of the little peo
ple. This was all Mrs. Reed could tell me, but eventually she must have found herself safely back in her own bed.
“I am interested in Nature and in all things spiritual and mystical,” said Mrs. Winifred Kirby, a contributor of several other accounts. “In my dream I seemed to be standing with an unseen companion, in front of a small hill at the bottom of which was a tiny door. Then, somehow, I was through the door and standing at the top of a flight of six steps, which led down into a charming little sitting room. I can see the tiny room now, and I remember I felt just like Alice in Wonderland and wondered how I could get into such a small space. The room was beautiful. On my left I could see a tiny window, and by the side of the hearth was an easy chair covered with a material that looked like flowered cretonne. Poised in mid-air, and looking towards us with a welcoming smile, was a lovely little fairy. I can’t remember if she had a wand, but I certainly saw her wings.”
Mrs. Kirby mentions an unseen companion, and several other contributors have mentioned unseen or unknown companions in their experiences. It is probable these are spirit guides, or fairy or angelic-guardians.
Miss Helen Fraser Morrison, of Rome, had an experience that is not exactly in the “dream” category, but she says she went to sleep. One hot afternoon between the two world wars, she was sitting peacefully reading under a tree in a wood on a hillside in Tuscany, when a strange sound distracted her, and it seemed to come from a tree facing her, a very ancient one with a hollow trunk. “There was one straight branch that stretched out higher up, above the hollow,” she said. “I thought the sound was made by some small animal, for it did not sound exactly like a bird, a kind of tapping and squeaking was the only way I would describe it. It went on and on while I was wide awake and alert and interested. Then suddenly I became drowsy and must have slept, but the sound continued, and on the straight branch three little objects about a foot high appeared and looked down on me. Two were like little humans, the other half-animal and slightly smaller. They continued the strange ‘chant’ and looked friendly. I felt friendly, too, and no longer surprised. It all seemed so natural, but when I awoke realised it had not been a dream. I had been on another dimension, though not actually on the astral, as I have sometimes been. This was different, a most pleasant and enlightening experience. I knew something first-hand, which I had not known before.”
Chapter 14: Fairies’ Attachment to Certain Objects
Mr. Wm. C. Gall, M.P.S., of Emsworth, Hants., sent me the following uncanny account of some kind of elemental, which could not be seen but that certainly made its presence known. “The first event happened in June, four years ago. I was typing out some notes for a lecture; my wife Eve, who had been crippled by a stroke and had only very recently returned home from hospital, was resting in an easy chair; her sister was in another chair near her; and Rufus, the dark grey Archangel cat, was lying on another chair near the fireplace. Suddenly he roused himself, started sniffing the air, and then, in a state of nervous excitement, began to stalk something invisible to us across the floor. Whatever it was, he followed it about the room for a while, watched it apparently climb up the side of the chair on which my wife was sitting, cross over her lap, and climb down the other side of the chair. By then I had left the table—which was at the other side of the room where I had been working—in order to watch the queer behaviour of Rufus. The cat continued to stalk the thing across the floor (from the direction of the cat’s gaze we judged its height to be about twelve inches), then round behind the dining table where it was concealed from his sight owing to the unusual construction of the table legs. Rufus appeared to be using his sense of smell as well as that of sight, and was continually sniffing the air. He began to creep out to a position from which he could see behind the table legs, and then refused to approach nearer. I went up to him, speaking gently, as he was very disturbed. He was a picture of nervousness and curiosity, fascinated by what he saw and afraid of it at the same time. Then I tried to coax him nearer to where the creature seemed to be, but he resisted strongly, and as I thrust him closer he suddenly spat and struck out with his paws at something just in front of his face. At the same time, his fur stood up on end, his tail bushed out, and his whole body tensed for action. This was most unusual, for a gentler and less belligerent cat never existed. Nothing would induce him to go nearer, so we left him alone. After a while, the creature appeared to cross back down the room, followed by Rufus at a respectful distance, to a position under a low coffee table at the far end of the lounge. When I tried once again to get Rufus nearer the creature, he spat as before, leapt high into the air right across the coffee table, and rushed out of the room, which we could not get him to enter again that evening. Of course, we discussed this strange happening between ourselves, but, being unable to account for it, we christened the little creature ‘our gnome’ and left it at that.
“For a long time afterwards, Rufus was reluctant to use the room. In fact, he refused to go in for a week and never entered it without a preliminary survey. He would stand in the doorway, sniffing the air and peering cautiously in all directions until he was satisfied that the creature was not present before he would come into the room. However, no further happenings took place, and with the passing of time he seemed to forget all about it; but very recently there have been similar episodes. My wife is now confined to bed with severe paralysis caused by a second stroke, which occurred shortly after the events of which I have just written. In the circumstances, I naturally spend nearly all my spare time in her bedroom, doing all my work there whenever possible, and I decided to use again my very much-neglected typewriter. As well as Rufus, we now have another cat—a little snow-white one rejoicing in the name of ‘Pinkie’ because of the pink tips to her ears and nose. Both cats are fond of sleeping on the carpet at the foot of my wife’s bed, enjoying the warmth of the electric fire, and they were there when I commenced typing. After a while, Rufus began to sniff the air and, with the same mixture of nervous excitement and curiosity as before, watched something go across the room close to the table where I was working, rise into the air to the top of the dressing table, and then float across the intervening space on to the bed where my wife was lying. I went to pick Rufus up and place him on the bed, but at the touch of my hand he leapt into the air and ran out of the open door on to the landing, where he hid behind a chair. Here he stayed, sniffing the air and watching the open doorway most intently. Presently the creature apparently moved out of the room and towards Rufus. He watched it approaching slowly closer and closer and then he spat out and gave a prodigious leap, which carried him over the chair and landed him about four steps down from the head of the stairs, from where he looked apprehensively about him. I went out, picked him up and tried to soothe him. He quietened down, so I carried him into the room and put him on the bed beside Eve so that she could continue to stroke and soothe him. He remained quiet for a little while, and then he became alert and appeared to be looking at something climbing up over the end of the divan bed. It approached nearer and nearer to him when, without warning, he gave a great leap into the air right over my wife, to land on the floor on the far side of the bed, from where he watched the creature pass across the room to a waste-paper basket beside the dressing table. I tried to get him to approach the basket but he resisted strongly and, when forced near it, he again struck out wildly with his claws at something apparently just in front of him, at which he was spitting and growling in an obvious state of fear. My sister-in-law came in just then, and she also tried to coax him to go nearer the waste-paper basket, but without success. Violently he attacked something there that was quite invisible to us, and he seemed only too glad to get out of the room. Pinkie, the white cat, who in all her ways is quite a common little thing compared with the aristocratic and lordly Rufus, looked on in amazement at these strange goings-on and did not appear to be able to see the creature causing the trouble. However, a parrot, Polyanthus by name, who lives in a cage in the bedroom (she is an African Grey, an intelligent bird and grea
t company for my wife), was an interested spectator of the incident. She obviously saw the creature, watched its comings and goings, and showed fear when it approached the neighbourhood of her cage.
“It was the best part of a week before Rufus would come into the room and settle down. He was in the room in his usual place when I next brought the typewriter upstairs. At the time he was fast asleep, but after I had been working for some time, he suddenly woke up and evinced all the signs of fear and excitement once again. This time there seemed to be something under the table at which I was working, and at the first opportunity Rufus made his escape from the room. It was only at this third episode that I realised that, whatever the creature was, it seemed to be connected with the typewriter. I do not use it very often, and it is only when the machine is in use that the creature seems to move abroad and disturb the cat. The origin and history of the typewriter I do not know. I purchased it second-hand about ten or eleven years ago from some acquaintances of a friend.”
Mr. Gall’s supposition is quite feasible, for his machine was not the only one that attracted the attention of a small creature. Many years ago a reporter in Bournemouth said that several times he had seen a little fellow dressed in shades of brown and green, perched on the top of his typewriter. Sewing machines and stoves also seem to hold some fascination for nature spirits, as the following accounts will show.
Seeing Fairies Page 38