Look, I don’t believe in God, but I will not disrespect the Good Gentlemen of the Hills. That’s just common sense.
Between this and the Icelanders with their elves I do not understand what is going on above the 50th parallel.
My general rule of thumb: you don’t have to believe in everything, but don’t fuck with it, just in case.
^^^ that part
This is truer than true. Especially the Irish part.
Let me tell you what I know about this after living here for nearly thirty years.
This is a modern European country, the home of hot net startups, of Internet giants and (in some places, some very few places) the fastest broadband on Earth. People here live in this century, HARD.
Yet they get nervous about walking up that one hill close to their home after dark, because, you know… stuff happens there.
I know this because Peter and I live next to One Of Those Hills. There are people in our locality who wouldn’t go up our tiny country road on a dark night for love or money. What they make of us being so close to it for so long without harm coming to us, I have no idea. For all I know, it’s ascribed to us being writers (i.e. sort of bards) or mad folk (also in some kind of positive relationship with the Dangerous Side: don’t forget that the root word of “silly”, which used to be English for “crazy”, is the Old English _saelig_, “holy”…) or otherwise somehow weirdly exempt.
And you know what? I’m never going to ask. Because one does not discuss such things. Lest people from outside get the wrong idea about us, about normal modern Irish people living in normal modern Ireland.
You hear about this in whispers, though, in the pub, late at night, when all the tourists have gone to bed or gone away and no one but the locals are around. That hill. That curve in the road. That cold feeling you get in that one place. There is a deep understanding that there is something here older than us, that doesn’t care about us particularly, that (when we obtrude on it) is as willing to kick us in the slats as to let us pass by unmolested.
So you greet the magpies, singly or otherwise. You let stones in the middle of fields be. You apologize to the hawthorn bush when you’re pruning it. If you see something peculiar that cannot be otherwise explained, you are polite to it and pass onward about your business without further comment. And you don’t go on about it afterwards. Because it’s… unwise. Not that you personally know any examples of people who’ve screwed it up, of course. But you don’t meddle, and you learn when to look the other way, not to see, not to hear. Some things have just been here (for various values of “here” and various values of “been”) a lot longer than you have, and will be here still after you’re gone. That’s the way of it. When you hear the story about the idiots who for a prank chainsawed the centuries-old fairy tree a couple of counties over, you say – if asked by a neighbor – exactly what they’re probably thinking: “Poor fuckers. They’re doomed.” And if asked by anybody else you shake your head and say something anodyne about Kids These Days. (While thinking DOOMED all over again, because there are some particularly self-destructive ways to increase entropy.)
Meanwhile, in Iceland: the county council that carelessly knocked a known elf rock off a hillside when repairing a road has had to go dig the rock up from where it got buried during construction, because that road has had the most impossible damn stuff happen to it since that you ever heard of. Doubtless some nice person (maybe they’ll send out for the Priest of Thor or some such) will come along and do a little propitiatory sacrifice of some kind to the alfar, belatedly begging their pardon for the inconvenience.
They’re building the alfar a new temple, too.
Atlantic islands. Faerie: we haz it.
The Southwest is like this in some ways. You don’t go traveling along the highways at night with an empty car seat. Because an empty car seat is an invitation. You stick your luggage, your laptop bag, whatever you got in that seat. Else something best left undiscussed and unnamed (because to discuss it by name is to go ‘AY WE’RE TALKING BOUT YA WE’RE HERE AND ALSO IGNORANT OF WHAT YOU’RE CAPABLE OF’ at the top of your damn lungs at them) will jump in to the car, after which you’re gonna have a bad time.
If you’re out in the woods, you keep constant, consistent count of your party and make sure you know everyone well enough that you can ID them by face alone, lest something imitating a person get at you. They like to insert themselves in the party and just observe before they strike. It’s a game to them. In general you don’t fuck with the weird, you ignore the lights in the sky (no, this isn’t a god damn night vale reference, yes I’m serious) and the woods, you lock up at night and you don’t answer the door for love or money. Whatever or whoever’s knocking ain’t your buddy.
^ So much good advice in this post right here
I live in the south and… you just… don’t go into the woods or fields at night.
Don’t go near big trees in the night
If you live on a farm, don’t look outside the windows at night
I have broken all these rules.
I’ve seen some shit.
If it sounds like your mom, but you didn’t realize your mom is home…. it’s not your mom. Promise.
One walked onto the porch once. Wasn’t fun. But they’re not super keen on guns. Typically bolt when they see one.
You think it’s the neighbor kids.
It’s not the neighbor kids.
Might sound like coyotes but you never really /see/ the coyotes but then wow that one cow was reaaaaaally fucked up this morning. The next night when you hear another one screaming you just turn the tv up a little more. Maybe fire a gun in the air but you don’t go after it. If it is coyotes then it’s probably a pack and you seriously don’t want to fuck with that and if it’s the other thing you seriously REALLY don’t want to fuck with that.
So in the south, especially near the mountains, you just go straight from your car to inside your house, draw your curtains and watch tv.
If you see lights in the fields just fucking leave it alone.
Eyes forward. Don’t be fucking stupid. Mind your own business. Call your neighbors and tell them to bring the cats in. There’s coyotes out. Some of them know. Most of them don’t.
Other than that everything’s a ghost and they died in the civil war. Literally all of everything else is just the civil war. We used to smell old perfume and pipe tobacco in the weeks leading up to the battle anniversaries.
Shit’s wild and I sound fucking crazy but I swear to god it’s true.
Every time this post comes around, it’s my favorite to open up the notes and read the stories. Probably shouldn’t have since I’m sleeping alone tonight, but you know, it’s fine. 😂
Austrian girl here who has lived in Ireland for 5+ years. This shit is LEGIT. I’ve seen it with my own two Catholic eyes.
Sure, visit during the day. That’s alright as long as you’re respectful. But you couldn’t PAY ME ENOUGH to go there at night. These are also the last places where you wanna start littering.
I grew up in southwest Pennsylvania which is a weird mixture of American cultures and environments. I was in the heavily forested mountains (northern Appalachia) but had lots and lots of corn fields and cow pastures. Like the Smoky Mountains and fields of Kansas combined. And being so cut off from a lot of the world, we had our fair share of ghost stories.
We had ‘witches’ in the mountains (more like ghost-women who will snatch you up by making you wander in a daze around the forest like the Blair Witch before killing you or letting you back out into society but you’re… different). Or devils in springs or abandoned wells (don’t look too long into one or something will follow you).
But we also had the cornfield demons. I’ve witnessed this many times. You’ll be in the passenger seat looking out the window and see red glowing eyes in the cornfield. No light shining in that direction. Just two red dots a few inches apart faintly glowing in a pitch black cornfield. They’re not the glow of deer eyes in the headlights. More like the embers of a dying fire. Sometimes, as you drive away, you’ll look out the back window or side mirror and you can see the eyes have moved to the edge of the corn field, still watching you. If you bring it up with the driver, they’ll call you paranoid, but grip the wheel a bit tighter and driver a little faster.
I was walking to a friend’s house one night. It was about 20 minutes down a dirt road with forest on one side and a cornfield on the other. I’ve walked past it many times and wasn’t really concerned. My main worry was coming across a skunk or porcupine. I didn’t have a flashlight because the moonlight was bright enough and I knew the walk really well. Then I saw the eyes. I immediately averted mine (because for some reason that’s how to not annoy it) but they kept wandering back. They were still there, watching. I heard rustling and saw the eyes come closer and I took off running. I got to my friends without a scratch, but I was terrified. I mentioned it to my friend and that’s when I found out it was A Thing. Her parents agreed and shared their stories. I brought it up more and almost everyone knew what I was talking about. It was a phenomenon a lot of folks around town experienced but never mentioned. To this day, I don’t linger around poorly light cornfields at night.
North Floridian here. When in the woods at night, only use the woods from already fallen trees and branches and never leave the fire light. For any reason, whatsoever. If you think your hear or see something in the woods by god just leave it be. If there’s a nearby source of water nearby then make sure to keep the fire between you and it. stay as far away from the water’s edge at night as possible and do not leave the fire light.
North Floridian, as well, here—but I grew up in central Florida. On a lake. In a town that had to build its roads around the lakes and springs. Also, in the part of central Florida that happens to be apart of the Bermuda Triangle, so that was fun.
There weren’t as many Civil War cemeteries as I live by now (there is one a tenth of a mile from my house currently) but most the advice I learned or decided was good to just trust my gut on still applies. Mind you, I’m studying physics, so I either learned the hard way or just decided that my instinct was better safe than sorry.
Don’t go near the lake at night. Don’t follow the fireflies toward the water’s edge because they’re not fireflies. Trust the cat. The cat always knows better than you do.
If you’re swimming in a spring and see a winking light in the Mouth, don’t go near it. They say people die because they get caught in the caves. I know that’s only half true. Whatever that light is, I’ve gotten close enough to watch it back deep into the shadows. Actually, unless you’re a strong swimmer don’t go near the mouth of a spring at all in Florida.
Touch the Great Oaks and Live Oaks with tender reverence because they are guardians but only if you show respect. Don’t look at the scrub at night, things with yellow eyes will stare back and you will want to follow them.
What I’ve learned in the Panhandle boils down to: stay out of the woods at night unless you know the Firebreak around your house. Be respectful of the dead in the Cemeteries if you must be there after dusk, because the things within the gates will leave you be—it’s what wanders outside the gates that you have to worry about.
When you leave a cemetery at night, get to your car, and get out as fast as possible. Don’t look back at the graveyard until you’ve put a couple of hundred yards between it and you if you can avoid it (don’t invite the ghost in your car, basically.)
There is always some wooden bridge that lots of people have jumped off of and died that is very much haunted that runs over a river. It’s always a pre-Civil War bridge. It might have been remade and isn’t wood anymore, but you don’t cross it at night, and you NEVER cross it at midnight or later.
In my town, there’s a spot in the river where anything built there is burned to the ground consistently, and never lasts more than seven years.
There is one statue in one of the Civil War cemeteries that no one goes near and has never been cleaned. I didn’t grow up here so no one will tell me why.
Trees forming perfectly geometrically shaped clearings are some of the safest places in the woods. Getting to them, however, is probably not, and often is done at high speed. Carry iron and silver with you in the woods if you go out at night. And on those days where the light is tinted gray, and the needles on the pines look like ash? Don’t go into the woods.
Leave the bathroom fan on because you don’t want to hear the sounds that come from the woods. When the neighbor dogs all go nuts and start barking and yelling and yowling lock your doors and windows and bring the cats in if they didn’t come in already.
Stay away from faerie rings. Especially on college campuses. I don’t know why but around here, University and College campuses seem to have much more… active… Fae. Also, don’t ever, and I mean EVER go near a kitten that is in the middle of a faerie ring. I don’t care how much you love cats. I really don’t. Trust me, it’s not fun.
Ignore the thunk against the screen door. It’s just a moth. It’s always just a moth.
Never say too long at the rest stops along I-10. They’re all liminal spaces and you don’t want something following you home. Also, there is one that has just been finished west and closes to Tallahassee… just… I don’t know what they disturbed, but get in and get out because that place feels WRONG. Don’t look into the woods/scrubs along any of the rest stops in Florida. You won’t like what you see, or what you think you see. There are things in the woods that never forgot.
At 2 am on a clear night you will hear a train’s whistle. There is no schedule for the train and only one set of tracks in town. You can be right there by the tracks and you will never see the train. It always sounds as far away whether you’re at home seven miles away from the tracks or are sitting at them.
Oh, and if you must go look for a pet at night in the woods, don’t speak a human language to call them.
Kitten in a fairy ring? Why? Is it bait?
Cait Sidhe, usually. Faerie cats. It is bait. In my case it looked like a kitten that had been around the campus. A massive storm had flooded out where the mother cat had been keeping them in her nest. I’d seen them around campus, and after the storm when I saw the one that I was most attached to, in the middle of a faerie ring. I hadn’t seen the others, including the mother, and thought they were dead.
That kitten probably became a Cait Sidhe by dying, or it took on the form of the cat I was most likely to approach/want to see. That was a really weird experience. But the kitten, once I was in the ring, was still a small kitten but it… didn’t look like a normal kitten anymore. If that makes sense?
is calling pets back home in a human language ..like a signal for whatever’s out there that you’re out and vulnerable or why is that bad exactly?
Yeah, that is generally my understanding. Less so about the Fae, and more so about the… whatever is wrong with Florida’s woods.
Florida is a wonderful place. But invariably you’ll end up running into/living by a place that just isn’t right. And calling out in non-human language kind of gives you a cover. I’ve also heard, but please don’t quote me on this, because I don’t live in the Frozen North that various things that will mimic your voice and others to lure you deeper into the woods won’t start trying to drag you off to eat you if they don’t think you’re worth it. (So probably don’t make any deer calls at night either.)
Cats around my town seem to have a supernatural free-pass. I’m not sure if that’s my town being kind to cats or if being turned into a faerie cat because you happened to get washed into the realm when they were looking for more and just that my town has too many cats. Owned cats also, who know their names, feline and human, have a very strange confidence that I’ve never seen in other indoor-out-door cats (my little ones aren’t allowed past the tree line to keep bird deaths down, etc. and are supervised when outside. They jump the fence occasionally, which is why I’ve had to go cat hunting into the wood where I’d rather be ANYWHERE else in the dead of night.)
As small as the world 