§933

‘I was staying at my brother’s place in suburban western Sydney. At the time there was a vacant block next door to his place, which was mainly grass but with a small rather stunted tree in one spot. That particular night I woke at around midnight because I heard his two dogs barking in the kind of way that where I live, in country NSW, means there’s a snake or other undesirable about. The kind of sound that tells you their hackles are rising, that something is there that shouldn’t be there. It was a bright moonlit night and when I went to the window to see what was going on (the window of the bedroom I was staying in gave onto the vacant block), I saw a man standing stock still in the block, much stiller than I had ever seen anyone stand before. He was standing with one arm akimbo, the hand on his hip, the moonlight seemed to bleach him of colour so he looked greyish-silverish with patches of dark in his hair. I could see the whites of his eyes shining in the moon but I couldn’t distinguish the colour of the pupils. He was dressed in ordinary looking clothes, a long-sleeved top and trousers and they too looked greyish. And he was standing there staring straight at me, absolutely dead still, his gaze never blinking. It was only for a few seconds or even fractions of seconds that I stood there at the window unable to break the gaze. I wasn’t scared, but my hair was rising on the back of my neck. Suddenly, my rational mind took over and I thought, there’s an intruder, I have to wake my brother, and that’s exactly what I did. The dogs were still barking and I said let’s shout at them so the man knows someone’s awake and goes away. So we did and then went back to the window to see if the man was still there – but he had gone and in the very place where he’d been standing was the tree – the tree that had always been there, the stunted tree. And the dogs had stopped barking. Still, twenty years later, I do not know precisely what it was. I wasn’t dreaming or half asleep – I was wide awake. Twenty years later I can still see him as clearly in my mind as on that day. He wasn’t malevolent. He wasn’t necessarily benevolent either. He was just there. I know this isn’t a ‘typical’ fairy encounter. But it was real and the being I saw that night was something quite outside my experience till that moment. I am a writer (a novelist) and I have written about this encounter before but I still can’t quite make up my mind about it.’ ‘Average size male, indeterminate age but looked youngish – around my age at the time, late thirties/early forties, dressed in long-sleeved top (sweatshirt type) and jeans/trousers. Hair was neither short nor long but fairly straight. I couldn’t see the ‘look’ of his face very well, except for his eyes which were very bright, at least, the whites of his eyes were shining. I couldn’t see the colour of his pupils. It was a bright moonlit night and the light seemed to bleach him of colour so everything about him – his hair, his body, his clothes – looked greyish-silverish, with patches of dark on his hair.’ ‘Just didn’t feel like the other types of things [aliens etc] – though still not sure it was a fairy as such, it is simply the only ‘label’ that seems to even approximate.’