From the Celts.

Imagine that you are in the country walking along the road. Its night and dark, but there is more than enough moonlight for you to see as you make your way home. Then out of the corner of your eye, something moves. Quickly you turn and there in a field, right near the crest of a hill, you see a light. It’s small and waving about, reminding you of a flashlight’s beacon. Someone could be out there in trouble or hurt needing your help. Concerned, you leave the path and head toward the light. After walking a ways you quicken your pace, as the light is a bit further off than you first imagined.

Then it hits you- how far have you traveled to the middle of nowhere? It seems as if you are no closer to the sources of the light than when you were on the road. Come to think about it, which way was the road? You don’t remember making any turns, or at least not many, but now you realize that you have no idea where the heck you are. Disoriented, with fear beginning to creep in you decide it’s time to give up the whole misadventure. Forget whoever has the light; it’s time to try and get your-self home.

Suddenly it happens-there is a blinding flash of light. It’s not hot but all the same it seers into you. It comes out of nowhere, like someone using a big knife that slices through the air letting in the piercing white light. Or maybe it’s coming from that large stone. It’s hard to tell. Squinting and trying to figure out what’s going on you manage to see a human shaped form, its size hard to guess: maybe it’s a foot tall or perhaps it’s so far away it just looks small. Either way, it’s definitely moving in your direction.

Foggy headed, your eyes flutter open as the ache of cold causes you to shutter awake. You realize you’re lying on your back in your own front yard covered with the morning dew. Mysterious odd-shaped bruises cover your arms and legs. You have no idea how you got there or how much time has passed. The only thing you are absolutely certain about is that you have no idea what occurred last night.

What did happen?

Well, I imagine about half the folks out there reading this would guess you were the victim of an alien visitation. Makes sense, bright lights off in the distance that you followed; a blast of bright, heatless light; a feeling of disorientation followed by waking up somewhere different. There is a block of missing time you cannot account for. Your memory of the whole event is foggy at best; you feel like you almost recall everything but something is blocking you from remembering.

Then there is the other half of folks who are reading this who would say you were caught up in a game being played by the Children of the Green, that you were lured onto a fairy path and experienced a night in the Otherworld, becoming the plaything of the Fay.

Either way, a good time was had by all except, of course, for you.

For hundreds of years the ancient Celts spoke of fairies, otherworldly beings that from time to time intermingle with humans. Run-ins with their kind were seldom pleasant experiences; more often than not they were downright terrifying. Celtic folklore is full of cautionary tales regarding the fay. Tales of how fairies abducted women, or the occasional man, physically carrying them off to Fairyland. Once there humans lived as a guest or slave for a specified period of time before being released back to the mortal realm-if they were very lucky. Of the few who did return they never spoke of what happened to them or where they were, claiming to have no memory of it.

In these old folktales, individuals lucky enough to avoid fairy abduction oftentimes described the fay as wearing gossamer clothing, fabric that shined and shimmied in the light. Irish mythology tells the tale of the Tuatha de Danann, the ancestral people of Ireland, arriving in airships that descended from the sky in a great cloud of steam that roiled for four days and nights, landing atop a mountain. These self-described invaders, for that is what they were as well as how they initially referred to themselves, had innovative weaponry giving them the edge they needed in defeating the current occupants, thereby laying claim to the Emerald Isle. I am not suggesting that the Irish are descendants of extra terrestrials or of alien beings; I am just recanting well established mythology. Google it.

Now a days people no longer claim to have been abducted by the fay, especially here in America; they do not report seeing will-o’-the-wisps in boggy fields or forests. It seems as if folks no longer believe in the fay, or if they do, they tend to think of them more as the way Walt Disney Production Company has portrayed them: small, sparkling, and ready to lend a hand to those in need while singing a repetitive and cruelly memorable song laced with themes of morality. Instead what I have noticed, based on my television watching and panel participation at conventions, is that people are more likely to say they have seen lights in the sky and report a UFO sighting. They will say that an alien visited them while they were in a state of sleep paralysis. What once would have been called a fairy ring is now said to be where the aliens landed their craft.

What is also neat, and not reflected in the title of this blog, is that a haunted house of modern America back in the days of the ancient Celts would have been labeled as being the home of a bogart, a species of fairy that makes knocking sounds, moves furniture, speaks in a wispy voice, and causes general mischief in the home. Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters International four hundred years ago would have been known as Bogart Busters, or the like. Admittedly, there is as much evidence proving the existence of ghosts as there is proof bogarts are real.

But I digress.

As far as I can tell, all we have done is slap a modern explanation on stuff that has been happening for a long, long time. Maybe all those hundreds of years ago the ancient Celts of Europe were having alien encounters and without the words or experience to describe it in any other way they inadvertently invented the fairy mythology as we now know it. It’s as likely a reason as saying the fairies of yester year no longer break the mystical veil they live behind to come to the world of the mortals. Either way, be it E.T.s, fairies, or ghosts, it’s still all kind of neat.