Whatever our current, modern thought on Little People and fairies, the fact legends and stories exist of them in cultures around the world is hard to dispute. No other area is a attached to these creatures as England, Ireland, and Scotland possessing some amazing stories of these beings. Sightings of Little People and fairies continue to this day, and perhaps even some of our modern sightings of things we don't understand could be this phenomena as well. Here an example of a recent sighting from the book Fairies: Real Encounters With Little People by Janet Bord: "Quite recently, probably in the early 1990s, fifteen-year-old Brian Collins was on holiday in the Aran Islands off west Donegal. While out walking early one morning he saw two little men fishing from a bank overlooking the sea. They were about 3 and a half feet tall, dressed in green with brown boots. One had a grey beard and a flat hat. They were laughing and talking in Irish, and suddenly they jumped over the bank. When Brian went to look for them, they had gone, but they had left a pipe behind. He took it back to the house where he was staying, but while there dissappeared from a locked drawer. When Brian saw the little men again, he tried to photograph them and tape-record their conversation, but nothing came out." The point of the modern day sighting is to really show these events still happen. Fairies vary in size, shape and appearance, but when seen the person involved in the sighting is aware of what they're looking at. As the above sighting shows our movie and storybooks depicting these beings as small, sometimes bearded, and commonly dressed in green or brown may be based on sightings and reports of them. The classic book The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies by Reverend Robert Kirk details the life and culture of these beings. It was believed he got his information from local folklore and tales where he grew up in Aberfoyle, Scotland. A diary of his has since been found directly regarding this subject matter called The Secret Lives of Elves and Fairies; From The Private Journal of The Reverend Robert Kirk where, if you can believe it, he says he conversed and visited these beings where they dwell in the Fairy Realm. Kirk is not the only person who has claimed to have gone where these beings live. He called it "The Lands Beneath" and said the fairies lived inside the Earth. In the sightings and stories I've read through there seems to be at least a few where people report two different things, or call them different things, but may be the same phenomena. A common one over time is the nature spirit. In the eyes of the witnesses the beings share a lot of smilarities. But can we trust our eyes with this area of the paranormal? Both of the above books suggest that fairies, or some races of them, can shapeshift. They sometimes use what's called "glamor" to change their appearance, perhaps letting us see what we think we should be seeing. This is also a common believe in fairy lore and seems to be lending itself to modern studies and researchers trying their best to define something that may not be definable and simply look how our mind tells us it should look. Over the centuries many common threads can be found with these beings, glamor and shapeshifting are among them. People seeing them dissappear into thin air is also concurrent with lots of sightings. The very nature of these beings makes proving their existence next to impossible. Do we really have to prove if they exist or not to get the bottom of other things though? We already have mountains of information on them going back the last few hundred years. It may be time to use the fantastic to help provide clues and missing pieces to other areas of the fantastic. Other cultures besides the Scottish and Irish thought them to be fact, such as the Cherokee Indians designating a name for them. Perhaps Little People and fairies should be filed under Cryptozoology to make things a little simpler. A couple fairy beliefs and abilities seen and reported by these creatures overlap with other areas of the paranormal. I don't know what the entire picture of this is supposed to look like, but I hope I'm not the only one looking. In this area one sometimes has to stretch their beliefs and believe for a second something might be possible. Fact is often stranger than things fiction could dream up. Maybe you really did see a small being in the corner of your eye. |
