Fairy Beguilement
www.open-sesame.com

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   "This happened to me over ten years ago. I don't make a habit of telling it to people because they would probably think I'm crazy and I really couldn't blame them. My experience occured in Platteville, Wisconsin. A small town near the Iowa border. At the time, I was attending their university. I've always had an interest in folklore but it was never anything that I would take seriously. Although I would sometimes wonder how someone could have actually believed in "the little people".
    It was a Friday morning and I was doing some research in the Library when I ran into my friend Jon. I didn't really feel like studying anymore so I started to chat with him.  There happens to be a small town in that area of the state named Mt. Horeb. Whenever I would make the commute from my own home town, I would see a billboard sign that said "Mt. Horeb, Troll capitol of the world". I would later learn that this refers to a local who actually makes troll statues, but at the time I didn't know that. I mentioned the sign to my friend and we both wondered why they would make a claim like that. As it turns out, Jon was also interested in folklore. So once we got on the troll subject, we started talking about belief in the little people in general. As I stated earlier, Platteville was a small town and there really wasn't a lot to do. We came up with a fun, but goofy idea.
    We had both read Katherine Briggs Encyclopedia of Fairies and how it would explain what a person would have to do to actually see a a fairy. Just for the hell of it, we decided to conduct our own "fairy hunt".  We remembered that if a person wants to see a fairy, they need to be a "little sleepy". In other words, relaxed. After we had our dinner, we walked out of town and ended up at a cemetery not too far away. It had a lot of trees and was a pretty spot. We arrived around dusk because that was supposed to be one of the best times to see one of the wee folk. We remembered reading that if you see a fairy, it can't move as long as you have your eyes on it. If you blink or look away it will disappear. By staying together, we figured that if we saw anything it wouldn't be able to leave with both of us looking at it. There was a sign posted that said no one was allowed  in the cemetery after dark. We figured we would stay anyway. It might have been illegal but we had no plans of damaging anything.
    Platteville is a very hilly region and so was the cemetery. Right next to it was a ditch that contained quite a few shrubs, bushes and small trees. It was a fairly steep ditch and we made our way down carefully. Once we were in the bottom, we worked out way back to its edge, where it met the road. This was just a precaution, if a police car came by we didn't want to be spotted too far up in the area. We both found spaces to sit down and we tried to relax as best we could under the circumstances. We both made sure that we didn't consume any caffeine that day just to be safe. Now understand, that neither one of us really expected to see anything. We did this just so we could say that we HAD done it.
    After awhile, I thought I saw something. It looked not so much like a person, but like the shadow of one. It was a human figure, about 5 inches tall. It was shaped like a person- and it was in a constant state of motion. It looked as if it was dancing. Twirling in a small circle and moving more gracefully than anything I had ever seen. I whispered to Jon to look in that general direction to see if he could see anything strange. He saw the same small figure that I did. We both watched it for about 5 minutes. During that time it never stopped moving.  After awhile, neither of us could watch anymore, it was getting darker and it became too much of a strain. The figure disappeared. We got up and climbed out of the ditch back into the cemetery. Now remember, when we went into the ditch, we made sure that we had our backs to the road as close as we could. We climbed out through the cemetery becaus it wasn't quite as steep there.
    As soon as we stepped out, we became bewildered, we didn't recognize the area and didn't know where we were. We discovered we were at the other side of the cemtery..the far side....away from the road. Somehow, we had been moved through space into a different location. Jon started running to the road and I was right behind him. Running as fast as we could, it took a good ten minutes to get back
to where we started. My heart was beating really fast. It felt like it would explode and Jon kept running to the road and back to where we were. Neither of us could figure out how we had got to that particular location. We ran back into the town and spent the rest of the night talking about what had happened. Neither of us even bothered trying to go to sleep. I would have been willing to admit that the dancing shadowy figure that we saw could have been our imagination but nothing could explain how we were moeved through space like that. Perhaps we DID see something after all. I swear on my grandparent's grave that this story is true." - Mark
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    "I was in third grade when we moved from Bellevue to Idaho.  The move was drastic, for our new property rested in the nook of a mountainous hill--woods on all sides, very different from the rich suburbs of Bellevue and the buzz of city life that I was so used to. However, since my father was going to build our house, we obviously couldn't enjoy it yet.  So we moved downtown in a rented little run-down house. The house was so small, my brother and I had to share a room. Our surrounding yard, however, was huge and wild. In the front we had an omnious looking plum tree and in the back a wild overgrown garden.  All around, too, were broken structures and nailed boards that were obviously the remnants of half-hearted ambitious building projects. It all looked very romantic and interesting, I thought.
    Well, one night soon after we moved there, I found myself unable to sleep.  I was a shy person and a new school was a struggle to deal with, so I laid there for a while just thinking.  For some reason, though, I suddenly had an urge to get up and go outside.  There was no reason for it, I just felt that I should go out into the back yard. So I got up--unusual for me, being so shy and introverted--and crept out the back way.  Once outside I was overcome with exhaustion, and I laid down in the grass almost against my will.  (In lieu of what ensued after that I'm not sure whether I dreamt or not, but I seem to have evidence otherwise)
    The moment I laid down the blades of tall grass around me grew bigger--or I shrunk--and a number of persons approached me. People with bright eyes and high cheekbones and wide mouthes and who were dressed in envying robes of beauty.  In fact, everything about them seemed benevolent.  They began speaking at me, all of them, all at once. Talking and smiling and offering hands and circling around.  One actually plucked a large blade of grass and laid it across my palm, covering my hand completely, then she smiled and nodded at me as if we now shared a secret.  Then they left as suddenly as they appeared, starting as if something had startled them and scattering quickly away. The world rushed into it's proper perspective and I was my size again, fully aware and awake.  I sat up, confused, and realized I was holding something tightly in my dominant left hand...it was a small blade of grass.
    Later I learned that my leaving had woken my brother and he was watching from the bedroom window--he had seen them and they had seen him."
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    "dont' know if this belongs here bc it wasn't a visual sight, but oh well. i have always strongly believed in earthen lore and magick, and at school (i lived at high school, 250 miles from home,) i was visiting a mountain.  i was feeling wonderful, and had a strong love for nature, always have, and still do to this day. a friend of mine, (who acts like a fae sometimes ;) lol) was with me and had his flute.  he's strongly psychic in some areas, and said that we were surrounded by fae on this night.  he began to play his flute, and i was guided into a very very strong clairivoyant (sp??) episode of dancing faster and faster in a circle, and got very dizzy (almost sick.) then i began to get somewhat frightened because i couldn't stop the vision, which i have always been able to do before.  i couldn't ground out, or refocus, and it was faster and faster.  he eventually stopped playing, and said that they had wanted to keep me, that's why he stopped.  i was very light headed the rest of the time, and had to go back to my bed.  i dont' see often in my visions, i "knew" or "felt" flashing colors in my mind and body, and felt a "small" presence, multiplied many times over.  that's about it."  thanx :D
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      "it was june 28, 1989 it was my birthday, i was turning 12 and me and my friends were out by my pool. it was starting to get dark so we decided to go in but while we was walking through this big patch of tall grass we felt this overwelming feeling and had to stop and enjoy it . i know this might sound quite weird but we felt and it looked like we was in a hole other dimension or something. it was beautiful until we started to here voices , yes it was my mom calling us. then all of a sudden we was in that tall patch of grass. we all ran in and tried to explain it to my mom but she didnt believe us . so the people that was spending the night with me snuck out and went back to the patch of grass. at about 2:00 at night nothing happend and again we decided to go in then the unexplainible happend we were surrounded by little things with wings. we didnt know if they were fireflys or what but i think that they were faries. and from then on i've always kept that patch of grass."  *biounica
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    "A long time ago when I was in 4th grade my friend and I decided to make some use of her woods in her backyard. So, we went out there with every intent to make ourselves the best fort ever known to man, and we did too! It took us all day from about 8 in the morning to whenever it got too dark to see.  We made paths and rooms and knocked down young trees (not big huge tree but the kind you could bend and break) and we made walls out of sticks and branches and just had a good ol' time and in doing that we had hoped to see faeries.
    We always believed in them even though we had never seen them, and so we brought out our radio and was listening to music when I heard what sounded like other people in the woods, which was possible and pretty much what I thought, but a really weird feeling came over me, and then my friend told me to turn off the radio because she heard a horse, and I was like what are you talking about (her woods was very small nothing at all that a horse could be in and live, plus it was in the suburbs) so I went over and turned off the radio and listened for a while and sure enough I heard a whinny of a horse. I didn't believe it at first because I was scared and I didn't want to think about it and then we started to hear voices and more horses then a very VERY strange music started to play.  I can't even explain what it sounded like but it was like a metallic sound or high pitch bells or voices or something but we didn't wait to find out because that scared us, we didn't know what it was and we didn't want to find out.  So we ran out of the woods and waited for a while to go back.
    A few days later I found out that I was moving so I moved to Florida and then 3 years later I moved back to my hometown and was absolutely overjoyed to be back with my best friend.  My first night back I spent the night at her house and during the day we decided to clean up our fort and clear the paths just like in 4th grade (by now being in 7th grade) So we were clearing it out when I looked up and saw this beautiful just gorgeous clearing of grass and these little white and yellow wild flowers with the sun just shining down on it and it creating this feeling that I just wanted to go to it and play in it and then my friend noticed it and she felt the same thing so we dropped our things and started to walk to it and we both started to hear snickers and little giggles and once again we heard those horses and those voices and that music and soon the nice pretty place turned very scary and very ominous and we just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible so we turned to run but everything was clogged. Our paths were completely gone and her house was farther away than we had walked! We didn't know what to do and with our backs turned to that spot we felt as if something was coming and it was mad, so we just ran screaming through the woods and up to her house. I had never been so scared in my entire life.
     It was like something had drawn us out there, but as it was drawing us it didn't seem bad at all we felt very welcomed and very happy until all that weird stuff started happening. It seemed like it wanted to trap us in there and we felt extremely threatened and so scared, so what I have come to is that, we shouldn't have knocked down trees and cut down vines and cleared out the grass because that made whatever was out there very angry and it did not like us and to this very day, we never ever set foot out in those woods.  I don't know if that could be called a faery encounter, I'm not even quite sure what kind of an encounter it could even be classified as but all I know is that happened and it is very true and that I have a very deep respect for the woods and nature to this day."  ~§ Sar §~
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