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‘I was nine years old and had taken my first airplane ride with my mother. We traveled to her friend’s hometown for a long visit. That evening we drove to her friend’s cottage on a small lake in the country. After settling into bed, I had to get up for a drink of water. The cottage was dark but the moon was at or near full so [there were] no lights on at the time. I could see to get a drink from the kitchen sink. When I turned to go back to bed I noticed a bright light in the living room. It looked like a sparkler sitting on top of a lamp. The room had a large picture window and you could see outside quite clearly. Then the light moved. It moved around the room like Tinker Bell. I called out to my mother who was coming to see what was taking me so long. She saw it too. She called out to her girlfriend who came out to the kitchen. My mom said ‘don’t turn on the light, look’ and we all saw it. It was inside the living room skipping from surface to surface across the furniture. We were whispering ‘what is it?’ to each other. Then it shot out the picture window, out into the trees around the yard, skipped down the dock and flew just above the water down the lake. It was over and I asked again what it could have been. My mother called my father the next day and he said it was just St. Elmo’s fire. I thought it was a fairy. You couldn’t see anything in the light, no ‘little person’: it was like a ball of energy that knew it was being observed perhaps. It stayed for quite some time in the house interacting with things, and went through the window and interacted with the trees, went around them and up into the branches. I was nine years old and although raised with fairy tales, I had never imagined anything like this. We all told the story the next day and although there were some people who believed we saw what we saw, others brushed us off as tellers of tall tales. Other things happened in that cabin on the water that were what you might call supernatural, but nothing like the glowing orb ever appeared to any human person ever again.’ ‘It was just a ball of energy that looked like a sparkler, it wasn’t round per se, you couldn’t see through it. It was solid but well, like a sparkler.’ ‘No sound at all’. [Why do you think a fairy?] ‘Good question. As a child I was left alone a lot to do as I pleased. My Granny was a school teacher and read to me always. I knew about fairies because Granny didn’t want me to sleep with the window open for fear of the little people stealing me. Funny to remember that now. The object glowed, was playful or so it seemed. I just remember it had a consciousness. I thought it was self aware. It had a joy about it. It was having fun. To me that says fairy.’