Have you ever noticed similarities between folkloric tales of fairies and the more modern reports of alien encounters? The two have quite a bit in common - let's take a look at...
- Alien Encounters
- Fairy Encounters
- UFOs and Visions in the Sky
- Going in Circles
- Cumulative Cultural Evolution
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| UFOs captured the public's imagination - but are they an offshoot of earlier fairy lore? (Dieter K) |
Alien Encounters
One of the earliest modern alien sightings was reported by George Adamski in 1952 America. He'd actually been claiming to have seen UFOs by the dozen for some time, even purporting to have captured a shot of several spacecraft rising from the Moon.
The 1952 encounter began when he and his companions (he claims) saw a large cylindrical craft hovering in the skies above Desert Center in the Colorado Desert. Coming to the conclusion that aliens had arrived to meet him, Adamski had his secretary drive him out into the desert, then ordered his companions to back off so that they didn't scare away any extraterrestrial visitors.
After witnessing a smaller craft descend and return, Adamski claimed to have spotted a humanoid figure (slightly smaller than he was) around a quarter of a mile away, dressed in odd clothing (similar to a ski suit) and sporting a very high forehead on a mildly-brown round face surrounded by long sandy hair. Adamski related that he and "Orthon" (the alien, whom he claimed was from Venus) exchanged pleasantries and had a discussion about the dangers of nuclear weaponry via rudimentary telepathy and gesture. He also showed Adamski the soles of his boots, designed to leave imprints containing information about interplanetary travel.
It should be pointed out that Adamski's story bears a more than passing resemblance to "The Day the Earth Stood Still" - a 1951 film in which an alien turns up on Earth to warn us about the dangers of nuclear devices. That little observation aside, it's also interesting how well "Orthon" fits in with Celtic fairy depictions.
A slightly more sinister encounter comes from the 1957 story of Antônio Villas Boas. Boas claimed that he had been out plowing the fields in his tractor when he was grabbed by a group of humanoid figures, each roughly 5ft in height. They took him aboard a spacecraft, dosed him with some kind of nauseating gas and then left him with a female who had platinum blond hair, cat-like blue eyes and red pubic hair - he knew this because she a) was naked and b) wanted to conceive an alien-human hybrid.
Then there's the 1961 case of Barney and Betty Hill. The two were diving home through rural New Hampshire when they claim to have seen strange lights overhead - and when observing the lights through a set of binoculars, Barney claimed to have seen humanoid figures behind the windows of a flying saucer. When it became apparent that the saucer's occupants were pursuing them, the Hill's attempted to drive away... only to feel a buzzing sensation and hear an electronic beeping that seemed to daze them. When their heads finally cleared, they were around 35 miles down the road and were missing two hours.
Under hypnosis, the Hills claimed that the aliens had possessed large foreheads and pointed chins, along with long slanted eyes that allowed them to communicate telepathically. Betty Hill also remembered being shown a star map, though she couldn't make much of it.
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| Aliens and fairies are often described as being almost human... (Leo_Visions) |
Fairy Encounters
Mysterious encounters with otherworldly beings can be found in myths and legends dating back thousands of years. In Scottish tradition, one such set of visitors were the sith (pronounced "she") or fairies. These were not the diminutive colorful creatures of modern fairytales - many were considered to be similar to a human in size and outline, though others (the soul-snatching cat-sith, for example) took non-human forms.
Fairies had a reputation for taking things that were not theirs, though often leaving something behind as well. This could vary from stealing the best milk from cattle (often while the liquid was still inside the beast) and leaving only a thin, watery substance to be milked... to taking a human child and leaving an aged or deformed changeling fairy in its place. This idea of fairies replacing humans was pretty widespread and could have dire consequences - in 1895 Ireland, Bridget Cleary was tortured to death by her family who believed that she had been replaced by a sick changeling. Her killers believed that by hurting the impostor, they would convince the fairies to mount a rescue mission and return the "real" Bridget.
There was also an ambiguity about whether many (though not all - creatures like the murderous redcap had few redeeming qualities) fairies were good or bad, harmful or helpful... or somewhere in between. For example, some tales claimed that the fairies would only kidnap children who were being neglected by their parents - though what the fairies defined as neglect could be rather different than any human standard.
There's also the domestic fairies found in mythology all throughout Europe. Many were quite willing to help with household chores, but break any one of their strange rules (for example, the Anglo-Scottish brownie would be highly insulted if you left it a gift of clothing or blankets) and you could incur their displeasure. A particularly offended fairy could even start to sabotage a household, doing everything it could to ruin the lives of those it deemed to have insulted it.
Folklore often claimed that "fairyland" ran on a different timescale than the human world, which made things particularly awkward for those who found themselves stolen away by the fairies. A single day could equate to a year, and some stories even have those returning from fairyland crumbling to dust as the real world catches up to them.
Interestingly, many of those who'd been taken by the fairies and found a way to return did so with strange abilities and powers. The story of Thomas the Rhymer is one such example - after being abducted by the Queen of the Fairies and compelled to serve her in Fairyland for seven years, she rewarded him with an apple. That may sound like a poor payment, but consuming it gave him a tongue that could not lie and the gift of prophecy!
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| Both fairies and aliens have been accused of tampering with livestock! (Bruce Warrington) |
UFOs and Visions in the Sky
The 1947 Kenneth Arnold encounter is often considered the earliest modern UFO sighting, and gets the credit for spreading the term "flying saucer" - though that description actually seems to have emerged from the press rather than him.
An experienced private pilot, Arnold was flying near Mt. Rainier while attempting to spot a downed a U.S. Marine Corps Curtiss C-46 Commando transport (a bounty was being offered for locating the plane) when he saw a group of nine circular craft (each around 100ft across) flying in formation... while going much faster than any human plane in production at the time.
Tales of UFOs go back much, much further - though the people of the time didn't attribute them to extraterrestrial tourists. One such dramatic episode is the UFO Battle of Stralsund in 1665, in which a group of six herring fishermen observed what looked like flocks of seagulls transform into flying warships and engage each other in battle. These ships were really quite detailed, with ghostly figures visible on the decks and booming sounds carrying across the waves. The whole affair cumulated in a plate-like disk appearing over the St. Nicholas Church.
You can even point to older beliefs like the Sluagh of Scotland and Ireland. An encounter with the Sluagh could begin with the appearance of a crescent of shadowy shapes in the dim sky, the half formed outlines of birds, beasts or humans moving like an undulating cloud. Those unable to escape the Sluagh (and if they chose you, there was little hope but to barricade yourself in a building and wait for dawn) might find themselves carried through the air and dropped off far from their starting point, quite possibly in a precarious position. They were the lucky ones - other victims might find themselves forced to join the Sluagh... or simply eaten alive!
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| You can see why people might view some clouds with suspicion... (Florian Cordier) |
Going in Circles
Another interesting cross-over is fairy rings and crop circles. Crop circles are generally depicted as areas of flattened crops, often portrayed as the work of passing aliens (though at least in some cases, they are the work of human hoaxers) trying to tell us Earthlings something. Fairy rings are a much more ancient tale - circles of mushrooms or blighted grass that denote where fairies have been dancing or at play.
There is a difference to be fair - entering a fairy ring was said to carry serious risks, possibly resulting in the incautious wanderer being trapped in fairyland for hours or years.
There's actually an example of an early crop circle from 1678 Hertfordshire in England. Supposedly a large area of oats was cut down in the night after a wage dispute between a farmer and mower - the area of harvest is depicted as a circle in a contemporary pamphlet. Neither fairies or aliens get the blame for this one - supposedly it was the work of the Devil!
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| No matter who made it, this is impressive art! (Agent J) |
Cumulative Cultural Evolution
So even with this limited selection of stories, you can probably see striking similarities between tales of the alien and the otherworldly.
There's a theory in psychology called cumulative cultural evolution. I'm not going to go into too much detail here, but the basic idea is that rather than having to "reinvent the wheel" humans build on the knowledge of those who came before us. Think about the device you're reading this on right now - it's a box of metals, glass and plastics, running complicated logical tasks in a programming language, all powered by electricity that we've found ways to generate. Could any one person have invented all those things by themselves, or is it only possible thanks to the cumulative knowledge built up by humans over thousands of years?
Cumulative cultural evolution has also been to explain the evolution of art and entertainment, as creatives see useful techniques and find ways to incorporate them into new projects. Take "The Matrix" from 1999, a film that popularized the "bullet time" filming technique. Since then, the technique has even made its way into videogames such as Skyrim and potentially Grand Theft Auto VI.
So could this apply to folklore? I think it's possible. Many share the same core elements - encounters frequently have a "lost time" component and humanoid (but not quite human) figures, often with knowledge or abilities that they might pass to humans... that is, if they're not indulging a habit of theft or abduction. Clouds of damned spirits could become flying saucers, fairy rings could become crop circles and so on. There's also the fact that belief in fairies has waned somewhat... but extra-terrestrials? That's the kind of thing that could be (at least partially) supported by modern science!
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