A survey of modern fairy experiences by Dr Simon Young

§532

Hampshire, England 1990s
Female: Age 0-10 occasional supernatural experiences
in woodland, in open land (fields etc), on a country road 6 pm-9 pm one to two minutes with one other person who shared my experience
no special state reported
terrible
hair prickling or tingling before or during the experience, unusually vivid memories of the experience

‘My friend (male) and I were sitting at the edge of a field on the outskirts of our village, chatting. It was evening, fairly dark. We could see across the field to a footpath which connected our village to another hamlet a couple of miles away. We both saw movement amongst the scrubby trees lining the footpath. I felt pure terror come over me as I realised that what was walking along the footpath towards our village was no dog walker but as tall as the trees on either side of the path! We both saw it quite plainly – a black figure with very long arms, slightly stooped at the shoulder. It turned towards us, and even from that distance we saw that its eyes were red. I don’t know how we could see it so clearly from across a field, but we did. Its presence felt so malevolent – we looked at each other once, as if to confirm that we both could see this monster – and then we ran down the lane to our separate homes as fast as I ever ran in my life. Even as an adult, I do not walk on that path after dark. Perhaps what I saw was not a fairy, but it certainly wasn’t something I could categorise as anything else but simply ‘monster’.’ ‘It had nothing human about it which for me would mark it as a ghost. It didn’t seem like a spirit but a very tangible, physical thing. Unlike an alien it was not out of place in the Hampshire countryside but it belonged there – if anything, we were intruding on its privacy.’ ‘Eighteen to twenty feet tall, a humanoid figure, dark as shadow but solid. Arms reaching to its knees, stooped at the shoulder. Red eyes.’ Fairies are ‘A very old race of beings, part of the land’.