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As Above So Below
Assorted Bizarre Tales of People Abducted by Fairies
For centuries there have been legends and lore about mysterious spiritual entities commonly referred to as Fairies. Also known as Faeries, the Fae, and numerous other names, they permeate countless stories and legends since time unremembered, with appearances and origins as varied as the different cultures and people who believe in them.
Most commonly depicted in popular culture as shimmering little flying forest spirit nymphs with wings, they are also mostly seen by the mainstream as benevolent and playful creatures. Yet, looking into the lore of fairies they are not always so, and stories abound of the darker side of these creatures, including mischief, murder, and kidnappings. One frequent theme in fairy lore is that they have a well-known reputation for abducting human beings, and far from mere legend and lore, this has reportedly happened for real many times over the centuries.
In some traditions of fairy abductions, the little folk were said to leave behind an entity called a “changeling,” which was a fairy imposter who merely looked like the person who was abducted to act like a placeholder and take the abductee’s place. In one such case from March of 1895, a young woman by the name of Bridget Cleary disappeared in Ireland, and after an extensive search for the woman her body was finally found not far from her home. Police would finger husband Michael Cleary, her father Patrick Boland, her aunt Mary Kennedy, her cousins Patrick, William, James and Michael Kennedy, and John Dunne as the killers, but under questioning they would weave a very strange tale indeed. According to them, the real Bridgette had in fact been abducted by fairies, who had then left behind a changeling in her place, a fact they uncovered when the creature became very ill for no reason. They then tied up the changeling and tortured it in order to find out where the real Bridgette had been taken to, but it died from its injuries. According to them, the police had found the changeling’s body and not that of the real Bridgette. It was a colorful story, but the police weren’t buying it and they were charged with murder.
In most cases the person is just sort of whisked away, and this often happens to the very young. Another case concerns a young woman by the name of Annie McIntire, also from Ireland. According to an account in a 1909 edition of the Preston Herald:
This does not seem to always work, though, and in another account we have a case from the site Irish Central from a witness called “Grace.” She writes:
When morning came, Rhys was nowhere to be seen, and so Llewellyn told his boss what had happened the previous night. The area was searched, and they even searched the nearby alehouse, but there was no sign of Rhys, and suspicion began to fall on Llewellyn that he had done something to him. This would continue for a full year, before the story found its way to a local farmer who thought it might have to do with fairies. He asked Llewellyn to take him and some friends to the exact spot where Rhys had disappeared, and the farmer claimed that it was a fairy circle and that Rhys had been snatched away within it. At that moment Llewellyn could allegedly hear harp music that no one else could, and the farmer noticed that the servant’s foot was partly within the circle. When all present placed their feet within the circle, they found that they too could hear the music, and they could also see little child-sized figures dancing about along with the missing Rhys.
Llewellyn then grabbed his friend and pulled him out of the circle, after which Rhys said he wanted to dance a little more, as he had just gotten there. When asked what he meant, Rhys claimed to have been there for scarcely 5 minutes, despite the fact that a whole year had passed. Indeed, he had no inkling at all that he had been gone so long, and he also found himself unable to clearly remember his time with the little people in that circle. The next morning the circle was checked to find that it was trodden down and filled with tiny footprints the size of a person’s thumb. Oddly, after leaving the circle Rhys’ health would rapidly deteriorate, and he would die not long after. What happened here? Some of these cases can be quite harrowing, such as an account written of in the 1910 book The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, by W.Y. Evans-Wentz. The case revolves around a witness who says that when he was a boy he was out with his brother and cousin when they were almost abducted by a group of fairies. He says of the bizarre experience:
From the same book is the story of a man who tells of his frightening encounter with what he calls the “gentry,” another word for fairy. One day as he was out near a place called Ben Bulbin he had a curious encounter with a fairy that seemed about to abduct him. He says of the rather odd series of events:
Similarly we have a case from Ancient Origins, which relates the bizarre ordeal of a woman who disappeared near what is called a “Fairy Fort,” usually a mound, cairn of rocks or boulder that draws in fairies and has great significance for them. The report reads:
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For centuries there have been legends and lore about mysterious spiritual entities commonly referred to as Fairies. Also known as Faeries, the Fae, and numerous other names, they permeate countless stories and legends since time unremembered, with appearances and origins as varied as the different cultures and people who believe in them.
Most commonly depicted in popular culture as shimmering little flying forest spirit nymphs with wings, they are also mostly seen by the mainstream as benevolent and playful creatures. Yet, looking into the lore of fairies they are not always so, and stories abound of the darker side of these creatures, including mischief, murder, and kidnappings. One frequent theme in fairy lore is that they have a well-known reputation for abducting human beings, and far from mere legend and lore, this has reportedly happened for real many times over the centuries.
In some traditions of fairy abductions, the little folk were said to leave behind an entity called a “changeling,” which was a fairy imposter who merely looked like the person who was abducted to act like a placeholder and take the abductee’s place. In one such case from March of 1895, a young woman by the name of Bridget Cleary disappeared in Ireland, and after an extensive search for the woman her body was finally found not far from her home. Police would finger husband Michael Cleary, her father Patrick Boland, her aunt Mary Kennedy, her cousins Patrick, William, James and Michael Kennedy, and John Dunne as the killers, but under questioning they would weave a very strange tale indeed. According to them, the real Bridgette had in fact been abducted by fairies, who had then left behind a changeling in her place, a fact they uncovered when the creature became very ill for no reason. They then tied up the changeling and tortured it in order to find out where the real Bridgette had been taken to, but it died from its injuries. According to them, the police had found the changeling’s body and not that of the real Bridgette. It was a colorful story, but the police weren’t buying it and they were charged with murder.
In most cases the person is just sort of whisked away, and this often happens to the very young. Another case concerns a young woman by the name of Annie McIntire, also from Ireland. According to an account in a 1909 edition of the Preston Herald:
Indeed babies are traditionally prime targets for fairies, and in order to protect their infants people would often sprinkle them with holy water or hang bars or rods of iron over their cribs, as iron was said to ward fairies off, with even adults often carrying around iron when venturing into a fairy’s territory. This was among many precautions mothers would take to protect both themselves and their babies from fairies. 20th century fairy researcher W.Y. Evans-Wentz said of this:
This does not seem to always work, though, and in another account we have a case from the site Irish Central from a witness called “Grace.” She writes:
Not all such abductions are of babies, but the victims are typically young, and some of the strangest reports of fairy abductions come from who have managed to come back to tell the tale. A very weird earlier report also has to do with what is called a “Fairy Circle,” a sort of portal between the land of the Fae and our reality, which in this account supposedly existed near the farm of Llwyn y Ffynon, near the Vale of Neath in South Wales. In 1755, two servants on the farm, a Rhys ap Morgan, and Llewellyn Walter, were walking towards the farm one evening when Rhys stopped and told his companion he could hear music playing, although Llewellyn could hear nothing. Rhys told the Llewellyn to continue back home while he went to go search for who was playing the music and talk to them. It was all very odd, since only Rhys could hear the alleged music, and Llewellyn suspected that he was just trying to get out of work, finally just leaving his friend to head home.
When morning came, Rhys was nowhere to be seen, and so Llewellyn told his boss what had happened the previous night. The area was searched, and they even searched the nearby alehouse, but there was no sign of Rhys, and suspicion began to fall on Llewellyn that he had done something to him. This would continue for a full year, before the story found its way to a local farmer who thought it might have to do with fairies. He asked Llewellyn to take him and some friends to the exact spot where Rhys had disappeared, and the farmer claimed that it was a fairy circle and that Rhys had been snatched away within it. At that moment Llewellyn could allegedly hear harp music that no one else could, and the farmer noticed that the servant’s foot was partly within the circle. When all present placed their feet within the circle, they found that they too could hear the music, and they could also see little child-sized figures dancing about along with the missing Rhys.
Llewellyn then grabbed his friend and pulled him out of the circle, after which Rhys said he wanted to dance a little more, as he had just gotten there. When asked what he meant, Rhys claimed to have been there for scarcely 5 minutes, despite the fact that a whole year had passed. Indeed, he had no inkling at all that he had been gone so long, and he also found himself unable to clearly remember his time with the little people in that circle. The next morning the circle was checked to find that it was trodden down and filled with tiny footprints the size of a person’s thumb. Oddly, after leaving the circle Rhys’ health would rapidly deteriorate, and he would die not long after. What happened here? Some of these cases can be quite harrowing, such as an account written of in the 1910 book The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, by W.Y. Evans-Wentz. The case revolves around a witness who says that when he was a boy he was out with his brother and cousin when they were almost abducted by a group of fairies. He says of the bizarre experience:
From the same book is the story of a man who tells of his frightening encounter with what he calls the “gentry,” another word for fairy. One day as he was out near a place called Ben Bulbin he had a curious encounter with a fairy that seemed about to abduct him. He says of the rather odd series of events:
In some cases people have been reported as being gone for a length of time, only to somehow find their way back, usually dazed, confused, and with no clear memory of what has happened to them. One report from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries speaks of this, and explains how something about what it calls “Fairyland” as being a place in which time runs differently, and which has a way of preventing the abductee from being able to speak of it. It explains:
Similarly we have a case from Ancient Origins, which relates the bizarre ordeal of a woman who disappeared near what is called a “Fairy Fort,” usually a mound, cairn of rocks or boulder that draws in fairies and has great significance for them. The report reads:
There are countless other reports along these lines, and it all goes to show that the Fae are not always the harmless little forest spirits they are so often depicted as in popular culture. Indeed, in the traditional tales and lore they are generally described as quite powerful beings to be respected, and they are certainly not always friendly by our definition. Such tales as we have looked at here serve to show us a different angle of the fairy phenomenon, and they certainly fire up the imagination whether real or not.
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