‘The second event occurred in about 1997 soon after my partner and I, together with our three-year-old daughter, moved into a very old house in *** Street, ***. Ours was the first house in the street to be a domestic domicile. *** Street is a comparatively steep hill and below our house the street was occupied by commercial and industrial properties, all concrete and brick with no gardens or greenery of any kind. One night, not too long after moving there, I went into the fenced back yard to look at the lights of *** below. Very quickly my attention was taken by a large tree to my left. I thought that I had seen small lights ‘popping’ in among the branches. I did not see them by direct frontal vision but rather by peripheral vision, ‘out-of-the-corner-of-my-eye’, so-to-speak. It seemed as if dozens of small snowflakes were darting through the branches. It so arrested me that I called my partner out to see if she could see the phenomenon. But by then whatever was happening appeared to have ceased because she could not see what I thought I may have. We speculated upon the possibility that if there were such entities as nature spirits perhaps they had migrated to our back yard in large numbers because it was the first oasis of greenery in an urban jungle of brick and mortar. Further up the street there were more houses with verdant back yards and I imagined that these may have formed an unbroken island of vegetation in the sea of urban cement providing a protective habitation for local nature spirits. The two streets bordering this area were home to more concrete and brick with no gardens. Some months later a postcard arrived addressed to the former tenants of the rented house. It had been sent from the Findhorn community in Scotland. It appeared that the earlier occupants had some ‘New Age’ leanings. Sometime after the arrival of the postcard the former tenants came by to collect their mail. We got talking and it transpired that they were involved in the preparation and publication of a very ‘New Age’ journal (the title of which I can no longer recall) from the very premises we were now occupying. Suffice it to say they were the very epitome of the person that would be welcoming hosts to dislocated nature spirits looking for a hospitable environment in which to continue their work. Judika Illes in Encyclopedia of Spirits states that Flower Fairies suffer from habitat loss. She says ‘Give them a home and they will come.’ (Illes, 2009, p.404) She maintains that ‘regular fairies’ compare in size to humans whereas Flower Fairies are a distinct species of spirit flitting from flower to flower (Illes, 2009, 404).’ ‘The very distinctive flitting from branch to branch of these tiny lights bear some resemblance to descriptions I have read of the behaviour of nature spirits, etc.’ ‘Nature Spirits
§463
Queensland, Australia
1990s
Male: Age 41-50
occasional supernatural experiences
in a garden
9 pm-12 am
one to two minutes
with one other person who did not share my experience
No special state reported
aloof
profound silence before the experience, a sense that the experience was a display put on specially for you, a sense that the experience marked a turning point in your life