Away With the Fairies

Submitted by Liz M. on November 29, 2002.

This happened when I was a kid, probably aged 8 to 10. At the time, we lived in a small, friendly farming town in the PNW. I'm talking a no neighbors for half a mile sort of place. We had this creek running through our backyard, and some thick woods behind that. My older siblings would sometimes swim across, but I was always too scared. Scared that the water would sweep me away, but more scared of what might be in the woods. There was this huge willow tree right on the other side that had a knot in it shaped sort of like a face, and every time I went out back, it felt like it was watching me.

So, I had a REALLY bad fever this one time (weird, cos we almost never got sick back then), and was stuck in bed for a week. I was in and out of sleep every few hours, and the days all bled into one another. A while in, I woke up to this buzzing sound coming from outside, suddenly feeling totally fine. It was 3 AM. I'd never been awake at that time before. I remember how quiet the house was, how still it felt, and it still gives me the chills.

So, I decided to go out and check out the sound. I got out back, and there was the tree, still staring, but it didn't scare me. It was smiling. Inviting. Then I noticed what was behind it. In the forest, there were a bunch of colored lights just hanging there. I got closer, and I heard laughter.

You know how "street parties" seem when you're a kid? Just a bunch of dads hanging out under a streetlight, and a few of them are drinking beer, and maybe there's a boombox, and they're talking casually about stuff you don't understand. It's nothing special, but when you're a kid, it seems like the height of life. It's what grownups do, and you feel privileged just to be there. Anyway, that's what those lights and laughter made me feel.

Just then, I started to feel sick again and decided to go back to bed.

You'd probably think from that that I was just dreaming. I thought that too, until it happened again a few months later. I woke up in the middle of the night to that same buzzing, went outside, got a headache, and went back to bed. It happened a few more times until I had a dream about the willow. The face once belonged to an old woman who lived in the woods. One day, she found a magic pine cone--who knows how I knew it was magic?--and stared into it. Hard. She stared until everything else around her went out of focus. There was nothing in the world but her and that pine cone. Suddenly, she snapped back to reality, looked around, and--

I woke up. It was 2:30. The buzzing was louder than ever before. Finally certain of what I had to do, I went out back. The face in the tree was definitely that of the old woman in my dream. Her smile was more friendly and inviting than ever before. After a minute of steeling myself, I swam across the creek for the first time. If I wasn't already awake, the shock of the cold water made me as alert as ever. I could still hear the laughter and see the lights, but they suddenly seemed even further away.

I searched around the ground at the base of the willow. There it was: a single, tiny pine cone. I didn't question why it was under a tree that wasn't a pine. Knowing exactly what to do, I stared intently at the cone. Just staring, for what felt like hours. Then, I just knew, I was done.

I was somewhere else in the forest. I hadn't taken a single step, and my house had been clearly in view, but somehow I had moved. And I wasn't alone.

There were 4 or 5 other children, all about my age. They were dressed in what I thought of as "British" clothes--plain, medieval style dresses and tunics. They were short, with pinched looking faces and huge smiles. They thanked me for coming, said that they loved to make new friends. I know I should have been scared, and at the time I definitely picked up something odd about them--and not just that they were hanging out in the woods at night. It's like I knew intellectually that I was in danger, but emotionally I couldn't care less.

We talked and played for hours, until one of them said it was time for me to go. She led me through the trees for a mile or so, until we were back at the willow. I turned back to thank her, but she had already run off. The sky was just turning light when I got back into bed.

For the skeptics, I swear to God that the next day my pajamas were still soaked and dirty. I got in trouble for it, which my dad still remembers to this day. He always thought I had been playing outside on my own.

This continued for over a year. I would wake up to the buzzing, go into the woods and stare at a pine cone, and meet these creepy kids. There were a few of them who returned occasionally, but for the most part there was a totally different group every time. Sometimes it would only be a few days between incidents, sometimes months.

As it got colder, I started preparing for the journeys by bundling up. My brother helped me make a bridge across the creek, but he didn't understand why. In the daytime, the tree still scared me, and I was afraid that if I told him what was really happening, he'd tell our parents and they'd stop me from going out.

One of the nights they called, I didn't feel like going. I ignored the buzzing, hoping it would go away. Instead, it grew louder. It became a dangerous sound, like a cross between a chainsaw and a hissing cat, and all I could think was that it would wake up the rest of my family any second. Instead, it suddenly stopped. There was nothing... then, a soft tapping at my window. One of the forest children, knocking at the glass. He stared at me with a soul piercing gaze, grinning madly, and beckoned me closer.

All at once, all the fear I should have been feeling this whole time struck. I screamed. The boy grew angry, bent down, and threw a rock through the window. I screamed again.

My parents rushed in. When they saw the broken glass, they called the police. I told them about the boy, not mentioning my trips into the woods in case they thought I was crazy. Unfortunately, there wasn't much they could do but tell us to keep an eye out for anything suspicious. I never got called by the forest children again, not that I would want to.

That's the only paranormal experience I've ever had. I've never seen a ghost or anything like that, and I'm generally pretty skeptical as an adult. One thing's for sure, though: I do believe in fairies.

Oh, and one other strange thing. A few years ago, I found some old photos from that house, and one of them showed the old willow tree. The face in the knot looked strangely like my own.

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