‘It was close to midnight, likely during a weeknight. I and a friend were waiting for the last bus from Maynooth to Celbridge. My friend has no recollection of what I will now detail. My mother, who subsequently collected both of us (when the last bus failed to show, a common occurrence with that service at the time) can recall both of us detailing the event to her in the car, but not the details of the event. The bus stop was on a slope. It was half a roundabout where the bus route would terminate then start anew by completing the half circuit. Behind the bus stop was a wall, a hedgerow/shrubbery and then a slope down towards a field, canal and rail station. The road was illuminated by orange streetlights on either side of the road. I remember staring at the streetlights that were opposite the bus stop (on the hill, opposite ***). I thought I saw a thin gossamer spider thread connecting streetlamps opposite one another on either side of the road, then thinking that couldn’t be right because that was a hell of a distance for a spider thread to connect. As I focused on the filament that was connecting the streetlights the thread narrowed in width/length and got thicker in girth, so it started to resemble this orange golden rectangular thing. The rectangular golden thing then started to hover over us, this is the point where I remember my friend becoming startled asking me what that thing was. This is also the point in my memory where I realised something was legitimately happening. I recall the golden orange thing landing behind the wall that the bus stop was on, and I can remember being able to put my hands into this golden gossamer stuff that was sort of spread out in the shrubbery behind the bus stop. My recollection of the memory is that the golden blob hovered away in a manner similar to how it arrived. But I don’t know how to square the memory of being able to immerse my hands in golden gossamer with the gossamer then reforming and departing in that fashion. I’ve had this memory for a while and had assumed that maybe it was angel hair. I encountered your survey on the DailyGrail, and the account of fairies quoted therein made me consider that maybe this anomalous experience I had exists within a broader category of phenomena. I haven’t had an experience such as this before or since. I’d be greatly interested in understanding the golden coalescence category of fairy phenomena. How can I keep in touch with this/will you publish something on this aspect?’ ‘I highly doubt [the place] had a reputation for fairies’. ‘If I have an opinion it’s probably related to whichever ontology that Grant Morrison used to account for how fairies/spirits manifest to humans. I would also be comfortable considering these events as informative as to what the nature of consciousness and perception is.’ ‘They/golden blob of light landed next to me and I was able to put my hands into the golden blob of gossamer. I didn’t register this experience as a fairy/group of fairies – so I didn’t anthropomorphise the encounter’. ‘Up until I heard about this survey, I had bracketed this an anomalous experience’.
§629
Co. Kildare, Ireland
2000s
Male: Age 11-20
never or almost never has supernatural experiences
‘on a suburban road’
9 pm-12 am
two to ten minutes
‘with one other person who cannot confirm any recollection of the experience’
you had taken alcohol or a medicine or drug (‘I had had a glass of wine, I remember not being inebriated relative to the other person present for the experience’)
no fairy mood reported
loss of sense of time, unusually vivid memories of the experience