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‘In the summer of 1996 I was meditating in the end chamber of *** Long Barrow (a Neolithic barrow, excavated in the 1950s and now open to the public). The light of the day was fading and after about ten minutes of meditation a figure appeared at the entrance to the chamber. It was about a foot high and appeared as a gnarled humanoid, dressed in archaic clothes. It walked towards me until it was about four feet away. I could tell it was male. It stared at me for maybe twenty seconds before backing off and disappearing in to one of the barrow’s side chambers. The whole experience lasted about one minute. After about another minute I checked out the side chambers and outside the barrow but there was nothing to be seen.’ ‘The faerie looked very much like one of Brian Froud’s representations – small, gnarled and not quite human. I was well aware of Froud’s work before the experience and have often wondered whether that predisposed me to see this type of entity.’ ‘There was no audial during the experience. In fact, there was an absolute silence.’ ‘As with many Prehistoric sites, *** does have several faerie encounter anecdotes attached to it. But I was unaware of this at the time of the experience.’ ‘The entity fitted firmly into the pantheon of folkloric faerie-types.’ Fairies are ‘elements of human collective consciousness, which are able to interact with us when certain conditions are met’.