Balloons of the Fairies?

       In 2017 the new fairy census was published containing 500 alleged encounters with these remarkable entities. Five years have passed, and now a second fairy census is available, also containing 500 entries, starting from number 501. Although I haven't performed a statistical analysis, my impression is that the second census contains more dubious material. It seems that the site has been brought to the attention of more people who are uncritical, who see things out of the corner of their eyes, or in the penumbra surrounding sleep, or in altered states of awareness, or who have strange, visionary, New Age type ideas. And I am still puzzled that so many adults remember encounters when they were children as genuine. I'm not saying that children may not be more psychically aware than adults. It is just that, if I had seen a real fairy when I was a little boy, I'm sure that by now I would have convinced myself that I had been mistaken, or had imagined it.

      Unless, of course, the experience was as vivid as these.

     This case is No. 80 in the First Census. The lady herself is talking about an experience she had one morning in her back yard in London when she was less than ten years old in the 1950s.

This has haunted me for always. I swear it was not a dream. I was in the back garden.  My mother was hanging clothes on the washing line, and a sort of wicker-basket affair with a balloon on top came down by my side, but not landing on the garden path.  I was rather frightened but stood there with one eye on my mother, who had not seen it. Inside were some small people, but one older man dressed in grey trousers, I remember, a grey top hat and black jacket.  He had silver hair and it was curly and long, and the gist of it was that I was to ‘go away with them’.  I refused of course, but gosh, he was so persistent.  But the whole contraption flew off.  I ran to my mother and told her what had happened, and she took it for what most people would take it for, childish excess.  It has bothered me all my life, because this was no dream, it took place, and everything was solid. English was spoken, and I consider it a really strange episode indeed.’ I can’t say this was a fairy experience at all, but the size of this being seems to make me feel it might be classed in this particular category.  It was no angel.  I felt it wanted to do mischief.  This was not a friendly experience at all.’ I believe anything is possible in this world. Our daily vision is a tunnel-vision one.  But I’m afraid I cannot give you an answer, in truth, as to what fairies are.’ ‘I really know this happened, and I remember telling my mother immediately.  She was about twenty feet away from me, and did not see anything, but she did take notice of my state of fear.’ ‘I would swear that this truly happened and was not a dream or any sort of imagination.  I cannot recollect reading anything before or after with any illustration of such a strangeness in it either.  A wonderful mystery!  I wonder what would have happened then, had I said ‘Yes’…

     Perhaps we can find the answer to that by looking at case No. 525 in the Second Census. This allegedly happened in Dorset, England in the 1980s, and again a girl was involved.

‘It was sunset, and the sun was coming down. The sunset was spectacular. I was up the farm ‘doing the jobs’ (feeding the birds, checking the enclosures, driving birds in and shutting them up for the night) on my own. I would have been nine, ten, eleven – that sort of age. Late primary. I was unhappy, which wasn’t unusual. The sunset looked like a bright world hanging in the sky and I looked at it and wished for escape. And instead of looking away I carried on looking until a bright light came from the sky and turned into a sort of elaborate hot air balloon full of tall, elegant, bejewelled beings with peacock blue skin and shimmering golden hair. I was a well-read child, I’d read my Nesbit and Farjeon, so I knew exactly the risks I was taking when I spoke to them, went into their ship, and read a book they gave me, and ate their food, and I didn’t care. At the same time I had an awareness, like a shadow, of myself standing still in the field as the sun went down. The quality of the experience was not like a daydream, more like a really loud noise, coming from somewhere else, that drowned out everything else. There was music, but it was like a single chord playing continuously. I remember being offered some sort of choice, suggesting they came in response to my original wish, of a single, proper escape, or the ability to escape whenever I wanted, but always having to come back. I took the second choice, and although they said they had given me something – the ability to escape – it felt more like something had been taken from me. I was returned to the field via a pretty rope ladder, and the craft flew back into the last threads of the sunset, becoming a light, then nothing. I did see/hear/feel other things as I grew up, and even as an adult, but  nothing with the absolute elaborate beauty, grandeur and narrative compulsion of this experience. I felt the compulsion both to share the story and to keep it a secret so I wrote up a slightly elaborated version for a free writing exercise at school. While I was writing it the same sense of harmonious compulsion came over me and I was unable to stop writing until the end of the story, writing through my break and part of another lesson.’ ‘Tall, slender. Hair shades of gold, clothing long robes in dense bright colours with an iridescent sheen, scattered with pearly jewels, small gems and sparkle. Very, very beautiful. Peacock blue skin, with an iridescent sheen to it. They kept their expressions quite muted, and spoke without moving their eyes. They looked amused/aloof/interested/speculative. They moved with a sort of painful grace.’ ‘A single glorious chord playing really loudly and continuously, which made it hard to think, and kept you focussed on the experience. The memory of that noise itself is weirdly compelling.’ ‘People spoke of strange things happening in the village certainly – the field I was in was called *** Field and was a bit weird.’ Why do you think your experience was a fairy experience, as opposed to a ghost or an alien or an angel or some other type of anomalous experience? ‘Good question. Later, in my teens, when I read the right books (!) I noticed the similarity of my experience to alien abduction accounts. But I think it is essentially a Fairy experience. It happens in response to a wish. It involves a transaction. The experience is one of joyful compulsion. It is marked with music, beauty and wonder. It answers a need.’ What are fairies? ‘I genuinely don’t know.’ ‘I think that part of what came out of my experience was the ability to believe/experience something, and at the same time not believe/experience.   I think this was both important to me developmentally, and helped me manage things in my life and about my own sensory experience which might otherwise have been much more difficult.’

      So there you have it. Is this story true? We have only one person's word, and my mind rebels against it. On the other hand, it is unwise to throw out some item of evidence just because it sounds bizarre. Perhaps something to confirm it will come along later. In the meantime, all I can say is that, if any such offer were made to you, I would advise against taking it. Tradition is clear that the Fair Folk are dangerous. Even if they are not specifically malevolent, they still march to a different drum. If nothing else, you may find that a year or so has passed by when you return home.

     Dr Beachcomber has written an interesting post on another subject: people wandering the woods in different parts of the world and meeting a beautiful human sized fairy woman.