TWH – An Irish woman has reported her experience of becoming ‘fairy led’ in the Irish press recently.
The woman, who remains anonymous, says that she was walking through local woodland near her home in County Meath to “get her steps up” in response to a challenge at work, when she became lost and disoriented after passing through two trees, one of which felt hot to the touch and one of which felt cold.
She found herself in dense undergrowth, so after struggling through this for a few minutes, decided to return to the two trees, but then became hopelessly lost.
This modern fairy tale has a number of contemporary twists: the woman attempted to relocate herself by means of Google, but the signal on her phone was too weak. She then tried different paths, but failed to make her way out of the woodland. The experience became significantly creepier when she heard a woman’s voice calling “Over here” followed by an eerie laugh. This call was then repeated, but came from the other side of the woodland.
According to an article on DublinLive, the woman posted on Twitter that, “I have never felt such fear in my life, the backs of my legs tingling and the hair standing on the back of my neck.”
She also said that she, “got this really bad feeling that things were not going to end well for me if I didn’t do something.”
In Irish fairy lore, one of the ways to get yourself out of this situation is to turn a garment inside out, which is what the woman did, albeit feeling it was a bit “mental.” This worked: she found her way back to the two trees and thence into familiar woodland. She found, however, that she had worked up 10,000 steps on her Fitbit.
This phenomenon is known in folklore as becoming “fairy led,” also as “stray sod” (you tread on an enchanted sod of turf which leads you astray). It is a well-reported phenomenon in older times, but it seems that it still happens.
Magical path – Image credit: Christopher Michel – CC BY 2.0
We asked readers whether they’d had similar experiences and received a generous amount of responses. What follows is just a portion of the responses received.
Janet Farrar, Wiccan, told TWH, “Some years ago myself and two friends were returning home from an evening walk. We could see our cottage but could not reach it, dusk fell and we found ourselves on a road we did not know, we were five miles from home. It should have been a five minute walk to our cottage – as it was we had walked for over four hours. Exhausted we knocked at a farm house, when the farmer heard our plight he asked if we had crossed a certain field, we had, we told him. He then explained his father had had the same experience in that very field. He said we had stepped on a “stray sod,” a fairy trap. Loading us in his car he drove us home. (Bless him). We were so tired from our adventure we slept for hours afterwards.”
* * *
Lesley Harris, who identifies as Pagan related a past experience in while in Greece, “We were in Crete many years ago and often walked up a path near our apartment during the morning. One evening we decided to walk up the path – the guy at the bar gave us a strange look as we left, but we thought nothing about it On the way back we met the biggest, scariest fairy we’d ever encountered. We got back and had to have a ginormous glass of brandy. The barman had a good laugh at our expense and told us that people who walked there in the evening often returned in the same state.”
* * *
Karen Kay, who identifies herself as a fairy whisperer, shared the somewhat spooky and odd experience she had while traveling in France. “Michael and I were travelling around France and following the leylines and visiting various stone monuments along the way. We’d heard about the Dolmen de la Grotte aux Fees and so decided to visit. After driving for what felt like forever, we found ourselves in the aura of the stones.
Dolmen de la Grotte aux Fees – Image credit: Joecoolandcharlie – CC BY-SA 3.0
“I assumed that because I travelled all the way from England I would be warmly welcomed by the fae of the land! However that was not quite the case! It felt very spooky, and as we approached the Dolmen I could see lots of eyes looking at us from inside the stones. Then I heard a very loud clear and strong – NO!
“It shocked me, mainly because I’ve been working with fairies since I was a young child, so just assumed that I would be welcomed. Because the NO was very clear, I was not planning on approaching the stones any time soon! So we decided to drive somewhere else and park up for the evening. We were following the map and it felt like we were driving for ages, but then I started recognising the roads. It was starting to feel a little bit spooky! So we continue driving into the night, only to find that we were going round in circles.
“It didn’t make any sense at all. We were still in the Aura of The Dolmen, and it felt like there was no escape! Eventually after driving round for ages, we decided to stop and park up for the evening. The next morning, well it was actually about 4 or 5 am in the morning, I was woken abruptly as I heard a voice saying, ‘you can come now!’
“I was still very sleepy, and thought I could go back to sleep, but I knew that was my invitation to visit the stones. So I woke Michael up and told him the mystical message I received! And that we needed to go to the stones right away. As we approached the stones in the dawn light, it felt a lot friendlier, and we both felt welcomed.”
* * *
Pagan Jo Bialan’s story shines a light on the fact that odd experiences can happen even in the most mundane of situations, “When my son was about 6 or 7, I worked nights. A neighbour would babysit him, fall asleep at mine [house], and I’d wake her up when I got home. One night I left work just after 1 a.m, as usual, and drove home. 10 – 12 minutes away. Nothing seemed out of place during the drive, tootling down country lanes, as I did 4 nights a week. When I walked through the door it was almost half past 6, but as far as I was aware, I’d just driven home, as normal.
“I did have regression but that missing chunk of time was blank. Sadly, or thankfully, I didn’t win the lottery afterwards, have sudden knowledge/wisdom/insight, become imbued with good/bad luck, or anything else!”
* * *
Wiccan Marc Wolf shared a past wild experience while in the woods, “I don’t know if this counts as being fairy led, many years ago in a woodland north of Corby I was walking at dusk in the woods alone when the urge to run overtook me, being me, I got naked and went with it, running through the woods with not a care and no damage to my body. I still feel today that I was running with someone/thing who like I did sported a full set of antlers. I can feel the weight of the antlers if I set my mind to it – a very treasured memory for me. Probably scared the hell out of anyone who saw me running skyclad in the woods, this was at a time before my introduction to Wicca and sadly not repeated since (probably for the best).”
Circles of fungi are often referred to as “Fairy Rings” and in folklore are often said to magical – Image credit: Aviddoghug at English Wikipedia(Original text: David Gough) – Public Domain
* * *
Pagan Nancy Hanger told TWH her story of a magical experience in her youth in U.S., “I think I [told you] about my fairy encounters in the woods behind where I lived in Pennsylvania. Unused path led from the meadow behind our house, which led to one of those two-tree-doorways (one fully mature tree was a sassafras [which do not grow in eastern Pennsylvania!], the other tree a fully grown alder [also not native]). When I first walked this path I paused at that “doorway” — it FELT like a door, it needed a pause. I thought quite a while about if I should continue, felt compelled to, so I did.
“The doorway from ‘outside’ looked like there was more woods beyond. When you stepped through (at least for me), it opened to meadowland, ringed by mature trees. The woods from the ‘outside’ appeared to be all scrub pine and immature trees, as if they’d grown on farmland. Through the door, it was meadow and a mature wood that had clearly been there a long time. I spent most of my time in the meadow when I visited there, aware of presence in the trees. I spent quite a bit of my late teens writing in that meadow, on a large fallen tree.
“Once, I went into that mature wood, and felt the presences very strongly. On that occasion I met a young man who clearly wasn’t a hunter, a farmer, any of the locals. Dressed in clothes that could have been from anywhere from the 19th century through old clothes found in a thrift store, but they looked new. He asked why I was there and how I found the woods. I’m surprised even now that I could talk to him; he wasn’t scary per se, but definitely set my hackles up.
“I told him how I found the woods; he seemed satisfied. Told me that I probably shouldn’t leave the meadow where I wrote. I hadn’t told him that I wrote while in the meadow. At this, I politely told him goodbye (even I had read faerie stories and knew better) and practically ran out of the woods, through the meadow, through the doorway, and home. I subsequently tried to take my mother through the doorway and to the woods. When we went past the doorway trees, we were still in a young wood, as it appears from outside. She never did believe me, though she’s the one who taught me the craft as her mother had, and clearly believed in fairies.”
* * *
Jack Wolf, Druid and writer shared their experience in Ireland, “[I] was on the Beara peninsula in West Cork, back in the early 90s. I was there with an ex and we were cycling round Cork. We’d been to a stone circle earlier in the day and I’d felt a weird energy but being very young and inexperienced just tried to ignore it.
“We got to a small town/village (can’t remember the name now!) and went into a ‘cafe’ (i.e. a front room in someone’s house) for a tea. The house was full of grim Catholic iconography and the woman running it was a hunchback. She overheard me and my ex talking about werewolves and crossed herself before shaking her head and moving quickly out of sight.
“We came out of the ‘cafe’ and [my] ex went to get some bread from the shop while I waited at the local garage/mechanic/petrol station. This was when it got really weird. I was standing on the garage forecourt when I saw my ex come out of the shop, leave, and start cycling down the road without me. Almost. The fact is I suddenly remembered seeing him leave (easier to mess with memory than sight, evidently) and fell into a complete panic. I was a kid, didn’t know where I was, etc. So I started frantically pedalling off after him.
“Of course you can guess how this all ended up. A few hours later we caught up with each other on the other side of the peninsula and of course [my] ex had never left the shop – when he came out I had gone and he had no idea where. We then spent the night in a creepy cottage full of damp whose last inhabitant had died – I kid you not – and I practically had a breakdown from the HORROR of it all.
“Of course this is one of the reasons I ended up getting seriously into occultism. Haven’t been back to the Beara since but if and when I go I will be taking a sharp stick (metaphysically speaking).”
The Wild Hunt is not responsible for links to external content.
To join a conversation on this post:
Visit our The Wild Hunt subreddit! Point your favorite browser to https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Wild_Hunt_News/, then click “JOIN”. Make sure to click the bell, too, to be notified of new articles posted to our subreddit.