I know this is a mainly US based site, but I thought you may like to hear about fairy activity.

How many of you believe in fairies?

Are the 'fairy-folk' of yester-year the alien abductors of today?

Why do people in remote parts of the British Isles and Ireland still believe in, and live in a mixture of fear and respect for these creatures? Even today in this high-tec age, certain roads will be diverted, and housing plans scrapped if the plans interfere with 'fairy forts' or 'fairy roads'.

The 'Old Ones' are not the creatures portrayed by Walt Disney - with gossamer wings and ballet dresses. They have been described as small, dark, earthy-looking creatures. They mainly keep themselves to themselves - but there are millions of accounts from sensible, down-to-earth people who believe that they have encountered these creatures....and some have been terrified by them.
A woman recalled that as a child she had been playing in a local woodland. She heard soft voices singing, and was astounded to see a group of small creatures dancing and singing in a strange language. Spell-bound she watched - until suddenly, one of the creatures turned and saw her. The look on it's face turned from one of surprise, to one of complete malice. One by one, all of them turned and started at the child....who was now becoming very uneasy. Then they began to advance towards her. Terrified, the girl ran home to tell her mother. Of course, her mother laughed and dismissed the story. But for days afterwards, the house was plagued by poltergeist-type activity. Glasses smashed, food spoiled, and strange scratching came from the walls.....had they followed her home?

I found another totally bizarre story and would like to share it with you all. It's from Toms site;

"The following tale allegedly took place in Liverpool in the late summer of 1996, and even seasoned paranormal investigators think the incident smacks of a Disney fairy tale, but unlike a fairy tale, there is physical evidence and the testimony from solicitors and a doctor to back this astounding story up.
In the August of 1996, a solicitor named Joanne and her estate agent husband Brian, bought a splendid-looking Victorian house situated in Belvedere Road, a mere stone's throw from Sefton Park. The professional couple fell in love with the house and its beautiful back garden, and Joanne and Brian both noticed the warm welcoming atmosphere in that garden, and found it difficult to explain. The couple hired a gang of decorators and they transformed the house into a trendy comfortable home. Then came the problem of what to do with garden. Brian and Joanne used their computer to design the layout of their new garden. Joanne wanted an S-shaped path and a greenhouse and a little hut done up like a miniature black and white Tudor cottage, but Brian laughed at the idea and said he preferred the garden to be practical with an organic herb section. Joanne said the garden would look like an allotment. The couple just couldn't agree. One warm August evening the couple strolled about the garden, and for the first time they noticed there was a moss-covered stone situated in the middle of the garden. It was shaped like an upside down ice-cream cone. Joanne and Brian took a closer look at the stone and saw that there were tiny intricate carvings on it of spirals and little stars. There were also small holes in the stone just big enough to put your finger in, but the couple were baffled at the presence of the stone. Joanne thought it was unsightly, but Brian was intrigued by it. Being from Yorkshire originally, Brian recalled seeing similar stones with identical carvings on the bleak moors to the south of Ilkley. Brian's grandfather had called the stones 'fairy stones', and said they were the homes of the little folk who used to have magical battles with the Druids.
"It's got to go." Joanne said to Brian. "We can't have a stone in the middle of the garden. It looks like a bollard."
"It looks very heavy," Brian said, and he tried unsuccessfully to rock the stone, saying, "It'll take some force to uproot it."
"Oh I'm not having it in the middle of my garden; it looks ridiculous." Joanne said, and walked back into the house. A few days later, while Brian was at work, Joanne phoned up several friends and relatives and told them to bring spades. Two of Joanne's cousins and two old college friends turned up and they dug around the stone. The stone went down into the clay and soil much deeper than Joanne expected, and the shafts of three of the spades snapped as the diggers tried to lever the stone up with them. After two hours, the stone finally keeled over at a 45-degree angle, but it just couldn't be uprooted. Joanne congratulated the friends and relatives at their attempts and they all went inside to have a drink and a much deserved rest. Then something bizarre happened. Joanne and her four guests started to sneeze. And they never stopped for almost fifteen minutes. At one point Joanne's cousin started crying as blood poured from her nose. A doctor who was a friend of Brian happened to call at the house with a bottle of wine and flowers for the couple. The doctor was intrigued by the outbreak of sneezing and suggested that it was an allergic reaction to prolonged exposure to the plants in the back garden. Then Joanne's cat bolted into the living room in a terrible nervous state. The cat seemed to be running from something in the garden and was so terrified, it cried out and clawed its way up the new curtains and perched itself on the curtain rail, trembling. When Joanne finally coaxed her cat down, she stroked it and felt the animal's fur. They were tiny little arrows about two inches in length with tiny feathers at the end. Joanne took the cat to the vet and he extracted six of the tiny arrows and said kids were probably behind the cruel act. The cat was then given a mild sedative to combat its nerves. When Joanne returned home, Brian showed her a tiny note he had found on the dislodged stone. The note was hardly bigger than a postage stamp, and under a magnifying glass, there was a tiny message scrawled. The message said, "Put stone back or die." Joanne thought Brian had written the little note, and told him to grow up, but Brian said he hadn't written it and thought she had.
Later that evening, Brian and Joanne got into their new Vauxhall Corsa to go to a friend's house, but the car refused to start. Joanne got out the car and said, "Someone's put the evil eye on us." and she walked back to the front door of the house, intending to go in to phone for a taxi. Something hit her on the head. It was an egg, but it wasn't from some pigeon's nest. It was a free range egg that had gone missing from the fridge. That really spooked Joanne and Brian. The couple cancelled the visit to their friend's home and walked into the garden to survey the dislodged stone. "If I wasn't a level-headed person, I'd say this thing is the source of all these weird incidents." Brian said.
"You're giving me the creeps. Shut up." said Joanne, and she turned and pulled her husband up the path, back to the house. Then she cried out, startling Brian. Joanne clutched at her right ear and ran into the house crying with pain. When the couple were inside the house, Brian looked at Joanne's ear - and saw a tiny little arrow in it. The tip of the sinister little missile seemed to be stuck inside the ear near the eardrum. Brian got a pair of tweezers out the first aid kit and plucked out the arrow. It was identical to the little arrows that had apparently been shot into Joanne's cat. To make matters worse, throughout the remainder of that night, things kept hitting the couple's bedroom window every few minutes. Joanne got Brian to draw the curtains and the couple embraced each other in an anxious state all night long without getting a wink of sleep. Joanne's cat also kept screeching all night as if something was tormenting it. On the next day, Brian got as many friends as he could muster, and without telling them why, he got them to put the dislodged stone in the garden back into its upright position. After that was done, an uneasy silence descended on the house in Belvedere Road for three days. Then Brian found another tiny note on the step of the back door. The tiny word on it simply said, "Thanks."
The garden is now an abandoned wilderness with weeds running rampant and shabby-looking thistles flourishing were roses should be in bloom, because Brian and Joanne won't even venture into the garden in case the phantom archers take aim again. Even the many paranormal investigators who have looked into the case don't want to be associated with it because the incident seems so unreal. But long ago, the first Anglo-Saxon settlers in our region mentioned being fired upon with so-called 'elf shot', which was tiny little arrows aimed at them by the little spirit folk who were said to be the true inhabitants of the British Isles."

So, what were they? Elementals? Fairies? Poltergiests?

Hammy x x x

that was an interesting read..
it sounds like fairies, but, honestly i don't know whether to believe it's real or not.

Ditto.
Have heard a bit about this, especially in the U.K.
But other continents have their own "elemental" takes on this phenomenom.

If you review the description of fairies, leprechans(sp?), elfs, trolls etc. they are very similar to the descriptions of today's "little grays" and similar (taking into account the mass of uneducated and supersticious people of medievil times and earlier).

Most myths do have some basis in fact.

Ouch!!! An arrow in the ear! I remember reading a forum about someone seeing little people before. Gosh I wonder what I would do if I saw a lil fairy or an elf. Would they grant me wishes or do I need to roll up a newspaper and chase them??? Ehhh...or would they chase me?

The belief of the small people come from pre-cristian times. When pagans (not modern wiccans but ancient celts, greeks, romans, egyptians ect) used to worship the gods and semi-gods. All over the world, not only in the British isles or ireland, the small people are known though with other names and shapes.

The ancient pantheon was filled with numberless of gods and deities, beside the usual traditional major gods (usually they were 12, but the number could change) there were hundreds of small gods, with clear or less clear abilities, like the god of the mountain, or the god/goddess of the lake/river and so on, there were even the protectors of the house (the romans, they belive in the Lari dei, who were the spirits of the ancestors who protected both the house and the family).

In the past, before the inauguration of a house or a ship (the tradition still live to day, with the famous bottle to be be crushed on the ship) they used to do sacrifices, usually sacrificing a small animal to the spirit of the place. The action was more in fear than devotion, to avoid some possible revenge from the spirits. Then after the sacrifice, it was important to keep the spirits quite with offering, done periodically at specific holydays (in denmark in rural areas, it is tradition at christmas to put in the attic a dish full of traditional danish cooked rice (the risengrød). To appease the local spirits (the Nisserne, similar to the gnomes).

Who were the so called "small people"? well there are a possible explanation: they were a cultural effort to explain the reality that surround us through the cultural knowledge at that time, a world filled with ghost and spirits who for the must were unfriendly or even antagonist to human beings. They could be befriend by rituals and offerings/sacrifices (superstition and magick).

Is that possible the fayries exist, well yes it is possible, but IMO not in the way Disney use us to show. I do belive that perhaps the ancient tales of fairies was a traditional explanation toward phenomena know to day as poltergeist's, UFO, demons ect.
It is interesting to test, if somebody is involved to a form of violent haunting to perform some ancient ritual to appease the spirits, and see what happen..

ciao

Thanks Hammy

Interesting read as always.

I'm from the Midlands where you can't imagine these things to be real, however, we spend several months a year in Cornwall - now there's a place that you can imagine magic happening and piskies running about for sure.

Nice one!

Reg

Hi Reggie

Absolutely! Cornwall is an amazing place, and old beliefs die hard there! It's the same here in Dorset, and in Devon, and up in Lancashire where I'm originally from.
It's as if the countryside there makes you much more aware of these things - whereas the city smothers your senses....

Hammy x x x

We got Maori stories of Fairies down here in New Zealand to, Patupaiarehe is the name given to the range of fairies down here, most of the descriptions of them are human like, but of fair skin and lite hair, their homes where made in the mists usually deep and high in the rugged mountains. they were expert flute players and the music would attract human women, which sometimes they had relations with and sometimes producing albino babies. They were usually only seen by sensitive people.

Knowledge was also said to have been passed on from them, usually by humans tricking them.

Seems pretty similar, and I guess you liken them to aliens as well.

I envision what that girl describes, pretty cool, though frightening .

Thank you Smoodiver!

So many cultures all over the world have their own 'fairies', so I believe that it's much more than an inherited 'folk memory'...there must be something in it!