§630

‘While crossing a gate, a ‘thunder’-like noise was heard coming from the top of the wall to which the gate was attached. The noise was like stone dragged along stone, or something very strong being torn or ruptured – the sound was coming from an identifiable place outside oneself, but very unlike ordinary sounds, with a much greater effect on ones’ ‘interiority’. Two friends present ran when they heard it, myself unable to move (maybe from shock?), except perhaps my eyes: I could look and see my friends run back away from the gate when the noise was heard, and could look in the other direction beyond the gate, but didn’t see anything there (or on the wall above, maybe seven foot high, where the noise came from). Thought I saw something that looked like little stones or pebbles ‘flung’ through the air from beyond the wall, but they didn’t hit the ground on our side, seemed to vanish before they reached the ground. After some moments I was able to move again – I had been completely unable to move my arms, torso or feet for between perhaps six and ten seconds from the point we first heard the rumbling noise. One friend claimed he saw a small figure on the other side of the gate, about two-feet high, not sure whether I believe this.’ ‘Friend claimed the figure he saw was between one and two feet high with an abnormally large head ‘teardrop-shaped’ as he put it. This visual component was not part of my own experience, and I am doubtful of its veracity as he only added this to his account when we spoke about the whole experience in the following days, at which point the talk about what happened was being joked about by us. When it happened, both friends present were extremely afraid, and tried to run away, and immediately afterwards would not talk about it but just said ‘get out of here’. Their fear was very real at the time, and it was only after we had left the area that we spoke about it. But both would not allow me to go over in any detail what had happened but seemed to be trying to push the experience away. Only in the days following was it really spoken about, and then in a jokey kind of way, still some uneasiness.’ ‘I don’t necessarily think it a ‘fairy’ experience, but it is possible to be seen as perhaps related to those type of experiences.’ ‘Believe in fairies because of the matter-of-fact way they were (and to some extent still are) accepted by ordinary people and experienced here, something that was consistently experienced regardless of explanations/beliefs in the same way that unusual experiences cluster around family deaths and similar. Personally dubious of all ‘wicca’, ‘new-age’-type faeriana, and think a lot of experiences that describe that sort of thing [represent] deliberate fantasising on the part of those who give those accounts.’