Fairies: Helpers or Tormentors?

In the course of our research we met a number of adults who never grew to forget or disbelieve their childhood experiences of fairies, as well as some who had such experiences as adults. Jenna, Lizzie and Darryl, for instance.

Jenna
Jenna is a hairdresser who lives on the Gold Coast of Australia.

When she and her family were in England in 1995 they stayed at an old Bed and Breakfast place in York, which had its own forest.

'The day we were leaving I wasn't feeling very well. I had a hangover from drinking too much at a party the night before.' She told her two children to go for a walk, as she wanted to meditate.

'I found the biggest, oldest looking tree and sat by it. I'd been doing this around England, finding big old trees to lean against and meditate, because their energy is so lovely.

'Anyway, I sat down by this tree and asked if it would help me get rid of my headache. I had my eyes closed and I felt as if I had become part of the tree, which is what usually happens.

'Next thing, a figure about a foot high put his head around the tree beside me. He was wearing a Robin Hood outfit – except that it was bright orange. He had a hat and a little orange tunic and he was a real short, sharp, quick little guy. He was gorgeous. He talked to me for a few minutes, almost sarcastically. He was really funny, though. Unfortunately I can't remember what he said.

'Then after about 10 minutes he said, "You can go now!" and off he went, and I got up and walked away from the tree and my headache had gone.'

Lizzie

At the time we interviewed her, Lizzie was a business manager and lived in a house on a small block of land in a NSW country town. She said she had probably seen fairies since she was very young but she'd dismissed the idea. In the last two years, however, she had become aware of a 'presence'.

The presence, she said, got in touch with the child within her and she found herself having a stone wall built for her front fence, from local rocks from the river.

'A little garden evolved between my front fence and the nature strip and I was sitting there on a stump one day and I said, "This is their garden - their home. Please come and visit." And they did.'

Lizzie saw them. 'They were very delicate. Very small. There was Joy and Amber – they actually had names. They are constantly there. I don’t see them all the time but I feel them there and I take great joy in sitting on my front verandah, and adults and children walk past and they stop. My next door neighbour told me that a young boy stopped his parents and pulled them back because he wanted to have a look at the garden. The garden is nothing spectacular but I believe the fairies are actually attracting the children.'

Lizzie's small block had about 40 trees on it. She believed that was where the fairies lived and danced and that they were always there,'But they have chosen, as one of their many homes, to be around me. And I call them by name.'

She said she could feel their lightness and joy. 'I was given as a Christmas gift two fairy pictures. I was speaking with somebody about children with difficulties and she saw my fairies on the wall and she said that autistic children very often believed that they were children that the fairies had brought to the world to teach. That’s something I would like to follow up. This woman has worked for years with difficult children and that was a new enlightenment for me about fairies. I believe their love and their power is very potent.'

Darryl
Darryl recalled an experience that was rather less benevolent! He and Andrew met at a shaman workshop at Gunnebah, a residential retreat in the mountains just out of Murwillumbah in New South Wales. Darryl was a practitioner of Chinese medicine.
When he was three or four years old and living in California, Darryl went through a period of seeing little people from another dimension. It first happened one evening when he was gazing at the wall at the foot of his bed. The doors and windows were closed – and what looked like gnomes walked straight out of the wall toward him.

'They looked like they had come straight out of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,' Darryl explained. 'They were dressed exactly the same, in very colourful dress, floppy boots and big hats that hung down, belt buckles, all that, and they were so like the seven dwarfs that for years afterwards I thought, "Well maybe it's a recollection from something I'd seen before, not something that was an entity of its own".

'But my perception of them was very real. They used to walk out of the wall and walk toward me with a leer, a cheeky grin. I wouldn't say it was designed to intimidate me, but it kind of had that effect. They were clearly out to frighten, not in a nasty way but a cheeky way.

'I was terrified. I screamed out and my mother came rushing in and I said, "Little men are coming to get me!" and so she stayed with me and talked, and said it was just my imagination – a typical response, I guess. Then 15 to 20 minutes later she left the room and switched the light out, and within moments they were coming out of the wall again and I screamed again.

'This went on nearly every night. After a period of time – I can only guess the time frame now, a week or two weeks perhaps – I realised that it was futile calling my mother and I imagined it was starting to cause friction at home, so my best way of dealing with it was to pull the sheet over my head and go to sleep.'

Darryl said he didn't see the gnomes at any other time, only when he was in bed.

Then, at the workshop, the participants were asked to do a meditation and see nature spirits.

Darryl said it was very easy for him. He visualised nymphs or little fairies, and when he recalled his childhood experience he realised that there was always a leader in the front leading the charge.

'So I ended up visualising him and briefly talking to him. I stood up for the little child within me, I guess. Some of my training is to contact the child within as an adult and respond to its needs. Part of its needs was to have someone go in and defend me to the gnomes. So I spoke to them and said, "Look, you know, you were frightening and caused me some degree of anguish and despair at that age." They acknowledged that, although they didn't necessarily apologise; but it was acknowledged and that seemed to be a pretty important thing.'

Fairy Companions

Catherine, a young American woman, communicated with Andrew by email after he asked for people with experience of faeries who were willing to tell their stories. This is the record of her replies to his interview questions:

1: How old were you when you first saw a faery?
I can't remember when it *started*, but from a very early age (2? 3?) I spoke to faeries. I remember seeing them as I got older, but they're more of a glimpse in the corner of my eye. I saw them typically in secluded places.. mostly gardens. I have always had an attraction to forests and gardens.. they've always seemed magickal to me. Other places I have noticed them are in old places.. like attics.. places that seem to hold memories.

2: How old are you now [1996] and are you still seeing them or did that stop and at what age?
I am 18 now. It's sporadic. I think it depends on how much I want to "see".. when I was younger, I conversed with them on a daily basis.. I believe that gave them the energy they needed to materialize. As I got older, and more interested in things like Wicca, they began to have a large impact on my life. (I think it has something to do with re-connecting with my "younger voice".. inner child through various mental exercises.)

3: What were the faeries like that you saw? How were they dressed? Were they small or tall? Or both?
The faeries were small. Dressed.. well, I'm not too sure. I do remember conversing with an Arabian faery.. I don't remember the name he had. He was very elaborately dressed.. and carried a sword. He was small (maybe 2'). Other faeries I saw (see) are more like.. reflections of light.

4: Were they garden faeries, earth faeries, water faeries?
Funny that you should ask that. As for my research into faeries, I have none. I only know what I believe, and what I have seen.

5: Did they communicate with you or you with them?
Yes, we spoke. Sometimes, I think they might have played tricks on me when I was younger. I don't remember them always being kindly.

6: Did you tell others what you had seen and what was their reaction?
I'm a pretty private person. I'm sure I told my parents about it.. but they thought I just had a great imagination! Other than that, I have never told people about them..

7: It's our experience in the research we have done that the people who are tuned into this other realm have often had some really traumatic event in their lives or had a terrible and lonely childhood. Is that so in your case?
Well, I can't say much for my teen years.. but my childhood was "normal". My parents weren't around much, and I am an only child.. but I have attended school since I was 2.5, and have always received a lot of attention. I don't remember ever viewing them as my friends.. more like companions along the way of my "daily adventures".

7: Have you any recollection of your conversations with the faeries? What kind of things did you talk about? Did they ask you questions? Were you conscious of their concern about pollution and what it is doing to them?
Recollections you ask for, hmm? Well.. all I can tell you is the Arabian faery (if that's what he was).. I used to play games with .. (kind of like pirate-games, like we were on a ship and had to fight off the attackers). I really don't remember specifics. As I said I was always drawn to gardens.. I love flowers.. and seeing things grow/thrive (esp. when they seem as if they don't have a chance). I also have a deep concern for the horrible state of affairs the world happens to be in now.. I don't know if it was from their influence. I do, somehow remember them teaching me about compassion.. but, again, it's very vague. The contact I feel I have with them now is more along the lines of just *knowing* they're there.. not so much that I know why.

Other Lives?

Beverley's son, Nicholas, was two and a half years old when he began talking about 'when I was a daddy'.

'He always referred to himself as the man,' Beverley said. ' "I'm not Nicholas," he would say. "I'm the man."

'That was possibly the way he started off,' she said, 'But I didn't take any notice really. Then one day we were driving in Melbourne and we passed a car. He pointed and said, "I had a car like that, but mine was red." '

Great imagination, Beverley thought. So, to amuse him, she said, 'What happened to that car?'

'He said, "It got crashed."

"What happened after it got crashed?"

'He said, "I was no more."

"And what happened after you were no more?"

"Then I was Nicholas."

'That really got me thinking,' Beverley said. 'He used to say there were things in his room and that he was frightened. The floor boards creak right outside the room and sometimes they squeaked when no-one was walking on them. You could hear it in the bedroom.'

She thought that might have frightened him and could be the cause of triggering something off in his imagination, when he said that there were people in his bedroom.

One night Nicholas was going to his bedroom and he said to Beverley, 'Will you come with me, Mummy?'

'Why don't you want to go there on your own?' she asked him.

'Because it scares me.'

'Why does it scare you?'

'Because it's frightening.'

'Why is it frightening?'

'Because it just is.'

Then she asked, 'Are the people still there?'

'Yes they are.'

'What are they like?'

'I don't know. I don't want to look at them.'

Beverley said, 'We used to live in another house and I asked Nicholas if the bedroom in the previous house frightened him. And he said, "Oh no. I liked that one. That one was good." '

Later they were driving past a church in St Kilda, on the corner of Alma and Barclay Roads, and Nicholas pointed and said. 'You're buried over there, Mummy.'

Beverley by now was used to Nicholas's imaginings so she said, 'How can I be buried if I'm here?'

Nicholas said, 'Because you just can.'

'But I'm here. I'm sitting here. How can I be buried in the ground if I'm sitting here?'

'Because you just can.'

'How many times have I been buried, then?' Beverley asked, thinking she might as well pursue the conversation to its end. Nicholas thought for a moment, counted on his fingers and said, 'Six.'

'I didn't know what to say to him so I left it.'

An Indigo Child?

In the course of our research, Andrew wrote an article which was published in a national magazine. It touched one young mother so much that she wrote us this letter (as usual, we've changed the names) :

I recently picked up a copy of a local magazine and was amazed at the article in it that seemed to answer so many questions. I'd been reading it because I'm considering an alternative school for my six-year-old son as he doesn't 'fit in' at a regular school, and then I saw your article Off With the Pixies, which really freaked me! It seemed to put into perspective a possibility of why my son has always seemed 'different' and 'difficult'.

Usually, if I mentioned my feelings about him to others, I'd just get a look that said 'You're a nutter', but your article confirmed my beliefs that there's more to him than we know, or at least, could be. I felt compelled, for my own sanity, to share my story.

Jerry's behaviour became became 'difficult' at about 9 months of age. He developed glue ear,* which as he grew, impeded his speech and learning. However, he constantly showed us how smart he was by doing lots of hands-on stuff which was way beyond his age (e.g. at one year of age he removed all the locked plug guards by sticking a plug end into the key socket and turning). Then one holiday, before he was 18 months, he walked up and down a beach for over an hour doing endless perfect crosses (as in a religious cross) in the sand. It was the calmest I'd ever seen him.

As he got older, he was harder for me to handle, brutally independent and super smart. He stayed on his own rather than mixing with the other kids. He was very musical and spent hours doing art, in particular 'map drawings' – like crude Escher sketches, very detailed.

Around the age of three or four, I was showing him pictures of a holiday in Austria, full of huge mountain scenes. I'd always talked about geography and travel and cultures, but one place no-one had ever spoken of was Mt Everest. When I showed Jerry the photo of Innsbruck, he looked at one photo and said,'That looks like Mount Everest.' He said it clear as a bell, which was odd as his speech was impaired. Then when I asked him who had told him about Mt Everest, he said no-one – he'd been there. He hadn't climbed it but he'd seen it from nearby a long time ago.

A little while later he began talking about God and spirits, and then one day, unknown to me, my sister found that he'd written an ancient symbol of Christ on a painting. I'm not an artist or a great Christian and knew nothing of it until she showed me the symbol in a book.

His worldly knowledge, odd tastes (for a kid) in food and music, and his yearning to travel, paint and sing has only increased. He recently turned six and constantly freaks us out with religious comments, technological and world facts. Yesterday he told his grandfather how to make his lawn mower work better and he was spot on.

He's always trying to escape, won't go to the local school (too boring) and I can't help feeling he may have been through it all before. The weirdest thing, though, happened a few months ago. He and my brother-in-law were sitting on the beach and playing, then out of the blue Jerry went totally serious, looked at Sandy and pointing at the ocean he said, 'See that water, that's all going to freeze soon and everything is going to change.' When a shaken Sandy asked how he knew, he just said, 'I know. I knew in Mum's tummy.'

Jerry was diagnosed with ADD and allergies and I'm curious to know if there is a link between ADD and other-world experiences. Maybe ADD kids aren't just 'difficult' or 'sick', but have too much experience for one life, and a little body, to handle.** Jerry knows what you're thinking too and can anticipate your thoughts and words. I know he's special but at times it's scary and it's always exhausting.

I don't think he's special just because he's my son – we've had too many negative times to be in that sort of biased frame of mind. But he is here to teach, I'm sure of that, and I'm trying to learn from him and keep my cool when he's being awkward. I had a very normal, but open-minded, childhood and it all seems a little too weird sometimes.

Maybe you could start a network of freaked out parents!

Best wishes
Virginia K.

* Glue ear. A condition in which thick, sticky fluid collects behind the eardrum. The fluid blocks the middle part of the ear and can cause impaired hearing. It usually affects children and is also known as Chronic otitis media with effusion (OME), Secretory otitis media, or Middle-ear effusion.

** It is now thought that 'Indigo Children' may diagnosed as ADD.

Talking to the Angels

Every time Jeanie put her infant daughter, Michaela, down on the changing table, she noticed that Michaela would be looking at something, and occasionally she felt that something passed through the flat they lived in. 'Whisked past,' she said, 'A light thing.'

Jeanie continues:

One day I put her down to change her and I saw her looking over my shoulder and nodding, and apparently understanding something. She was really young. It was like she was saying, 'Aha, mmm, OK' – like that. And then it was as if she said goodbye. Then she looked at me.

After that she didn't look over my shoulder again. She didn't look past me when I was changing her nappy; she didn't do any of that. I had this feeling that she'd said goodbye to the guides who had come with her and that she had received her last instructions.

Now I don't know why, but in my mind I thought of them as angels and Michaela was talking to them – and there were two. I couldn't prove it. That's just the feeling I had. It was like: There's something here, and she's talking to it.

When she was two, she was in bed and I think she was in trouble over something. I came out of her room, then a moment later I went back in and I saw her with that listening look again. It was as if she had finished listening to somebody who was talking. Then she turned round and looked at me and I said, 'Who were you talking to?' She said, 'Somebody.' Then I said, 'Were you talking to the angels?' and she said, 'Yes.'

The she turned back in the same direction and listened again and she gave a big sigh, and I distinctly picked up a sense that she felt it really was too hard. She didn't know that she should continue on, or whether it was worth going on. It was like she was finding this particular bit of life a little bit difficult. And the advice that she was getting was something like, she would have to make allowances because I was a mere human.

Then I asked her if she was sometimes needing support with bits of life, and she said yes. And I'd have to say that since then she's been a bit different, a bit more in the world, less trying to be good.

And conversations about angels seem to happen around Michaela.

The other thing is that, in conversations, Michaela is always present. My sense of some other children is that they are off in their own little world. If you ask them to do something, they may not hear you, or choose not to hear you, or don't participate in the conversation. Michaela is always there in the conversation if you are speaking with her. I find that quite super-normal. She is also incredibly cheerful. She will turn anything into a joke.

Clairvoyant and Clairaudient Children

At first our interviews were brief and tentative. Sometimes it was the parents of psychic children, rather than the children themselves, whom we interviewed. For instance, the first of these below, Simon, was a young man at University at the time we interviewed his mother and had no recollection of the details she remembered about him.

Simon
From an interview with his mother.

Every night at 10.40 pm exactly, Simon would talk in his sleep. This, in itself, was not unusual. What was unusual was that it always happened exactly at the same time. And he didn't talk in English. This phenomenon began when Simon was six years old and continued until he was 15 or 16.

Lena, his mother, said: 'You could time it. We'd say, "Oh it must be 10.40." '

She was never able to pick the language he spoke. It wasn't a language she recognised.

Lena would ask Simon who was the little friend he was chatting with, but Simon had no recollection of who it was or that he'd even had a conversation. Lena found it fascinating. The conversations even had pauses.

'He was obviously talking with some spirit person, either living or not living,' she said.

(We were excited, as we thought immediately of Andrew's son Duncan as a baby, apparently talking to an unseen audience in an unknown but coherent language.)

As far as her other two children were concerned, Lena was aware that they certainly had added perception.

'I didn't find that surprising because I've always thought you can look into a newborn baby's eyes and know that it was an old soul. You just know. And I knew that Simon had a wisdom about him.

'He's had uncanny perceptions. In his early teens, friends' parents would seek his advice and be captivated by his philosophies. They were well beyond me and well beyond most people.'

Caroline
We interviewed Caroline in the presence of her parents, who thought her an especially blessed and gifted child to have such experiences.

Caroline was 14 when we talked to her. She told us that from age three she could see auras but she didn't know what the colours meant. She saw the auras all the time and wasn't able to switch them on and off. She saw mostly greens and purples and bright colours.

'If someone is feeling sick or is not well I get blacks and browns and greys. Sometimes they (the colours) flash and sometimes they stay there for a while. Sometimes they move.'

When Caroline was about six years old she used to have spirit children visit her. They came mostly at night and played with her. They looked just like other children.

At school there were problems.

'Sometimes it's difficult to see the board because I've got all these colours in front of me and I have to try and look past them.'

She never talked to the other children about what she saw.

Danny
From an interview with his mother, Eleanor.

Eleanor and her family were on holiday up in the mountains in Queensland when suddenly her son Danny saw this 'imaginary friend'. He called him Mollmug.

When Eleanor asked him, 'What does he do?' Danny said he hung around and helped with things and mainly gave advice. He said that Mollmug 'would do naughty things that I would love to do but can't, so I can do them through him, like sticking fingers up at people, putting skateboards into walls, jumping on electric wires'.

Eleanor said that Mollmug was around the whole time they were there. When they left, Danny said Mollmug had decided to stay and when the family go there to live they can be friends again.

'There was another time,' Eleanor said, 'When we were going through the Black Spur near Healesville. About two days later Danny told us: "I looked at your rear vision mirror and there was a nature deva there". He said she had a little pixie face and was five or six years old and she had feathers and little pixie fingers. He said she was really pretty.

'I said to him, "Why did she come?" and Danny said, "I don't know, she was just there."

'So I said, "You realise you can ask her?" and he said, "How? Go back there?"

' "No. Just sit quietly and go inside."

'He told me later: "She says her name is Sharlene and this is a beautiful planet. Please take care of it." '

Mollmug seemed to be like an aspect of Danny – probably the teenager, his mother thought. Danny said he was green and elfish and looked like a guy from Drop Dead Fred (a movie) with a green suit and red hair.

© Andrew Wade and Rosemary Nissen-Wade 1993

Helping the Nature Spirits

By Andrew

I recently rediscovered the transcript of this interesting psychic reading which Rosemary gave me on February 19, 2005. I had asked whether I should continue my University studies. I had already completed all the subjects that deeply interested me, my reasons for enrolling in the course, but I needed more to get my degree.

Rosemary's Tarot cards indicated that to continue on just for the sake of finishing my degree would be spiritually and emotionally restrictive, whereas calling it quits would free up my energy to manifest the things I really wanted.

CRYSTAL BALL
Rosemary then put her hand on her crystal ball and experienced incredible pain. She said the crystal ball was full of nature spirits leaping about and when it became clear that I didn’t need the academic writing and should quit uni – at which I yelled 'HOORAY, HOORAY, HOORAY!' – the nature spirits immediately began to dance around with joy. Rosemary saw a deep turquoise colour, indicating media communication and speaking from the heart. It’s time to get the message out there to heal the nature spirits. Jorell and Lady Faery are not the only non-fictional characters in the book. Many of the other nature spirits are also real. I was given true information in my meditations while writing Jorell.

Note: Jorell was officially launched in July, 2007


A RECENT OPINION OF "JORELL" FROM A NEW READER
As I sat and started reading the tale of Jorell I felt as though I was in the forest with Tim. If you believe in something, magical or not, the story lets you believe in your heart that anything is possible: I believe we all have a part of Jorell in our hearts.
– Kim Edwards, Pottsville (March 2008)

Living with a Fairy: a Personal Experience

By Rosemary

We thought it would be a good idea for me to write here about my own experiences of living with the fairy (nature spirit) Jorell. The details of how we made her acquaintance are towards the end of the previous post, by Andrew.

Actually we don't really know when she came to be with him. When we were interviewing Ch'kara SilverWolf and she told Andrew she saw a fairy on his shoulder, we assumed it was one of those who were in her home. But in hindsight it's possible Jorell had been with Andrew all along, and it was just that we didn't know about her until Ch'kara saw her and told us. When she agreed that she would go home with us, it may be that she had already been living with us and was simply confirming the fact.

Be that as it may, we were certainly aware of her after that.

Andrew longed to see her but has never, to his conscious knowledge, seen her or any other fairy. He began to talk to her telepathically, though, and to experience thoughts coming into his head which seemed to be her responses. She often gave him wise advice about problems and dilemmas. Yet there was always the niggling doubt – was he really just kidding himself, was it all in his imagination?

One day he set out to catch the bus to work, leaving me in bed with a heavy cold. On impulse he asked Jorell to stay behind and look after me instead of going with him to work as usual. I knew nothing of this, but at some point I heard something bumping lightly against the ceiling skirting boards from time to time. I thought it must be a large moth, but when I had a look there was nothing to be seen. Yet the noises continued. It came to me that it must be Jorell. Perhaps she was choosing this way of letting me know she was there.

So it was no great surprise when Andrew came home that evening and asked if she had returned as requested. We were both pretty thrilled at this confirmation of her reality.

I have not seen her, either, with my physical eyes. But I am able to tune in and do psychic drawings of people's energy fields, in which I am guided as to the colours and their placement on the page. I did one of Jorell in 1993. It's one of the prettiest I've ever done, in bright, soft rainbow colours. It's quite abstract, but the sweep of the colours does suggest fairy wings.

My drawing of Jorell's energy, or aura. © Rosemary Nissen-Wade 1993

We think of her as a nature spirit, but it's clear that she is not associated with any particular plant. She is free to roam where she will, accompanying Andrew to work before he retired, then moving with us from Victoria to New South Wales.

In 1992 I became involved in planetary healing and the creation of flower essences, with two other women and in co-creation with the devic kindgom. Our guides wanted us to go and do some energy work in a particular part of the country. I arranged to visit a friend who lived there. She knew nothing of what we were up to, but she did have the ability to see and communicate with nature spirits. When I phoned to ask if I could come and stay, she told me she'd been expecting the call, and she asked if anyone else was coming with me. When I asked why, she told me that one morning she walked out into her garden and heard all the nature spirits whispering excitedly: 'They're coming! The ones who talk to fairies!' She said, 'That fairy of Andrew's, Jorell, came up here to tell them.'

So then we understood that either Jorell was able to travel great distances in the blink of an eye, or she could be in more than one place at a time.

© Andrew Wade and Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2008

Getting Acquainted with Fairies

By Andrew:
This story begins with my youngest son, Duncan. I was living in Ringwood, Victoria, Australia with my first wife, Diana, on a three-quarter acre block on which we had built a modern weatherboard house with no carpets, just polished floors. I was standing in the loungeroom and could hear Diana approaching from the bedroom, her shoes clicking on the boards.

When she appeared she had our ten month old son, Duncan, slung over her left shoulder. He was looking back towards the bedroom while standing on Diana's hands as she held his legs tightly. He was waving his arms about as he passionately regaled an invisible audience in a language that I couldn't understand. It was like when someone goes past you and you overhear a couple of words. I couldn't tell you what Duncan said but I detected a kind of structure. It wasn't just gobbledegook and Duncan appeared to have full command of it because he was talking fast as if his life depended on it. As he passed me by, he didn't acknowledge me at all.

That image is still deeply embedded in my brain and the question still arises: who was he talking to? As you would expect, Duncan himself has no memory of the incident. The interesting thing is, surprising as that image was, I forgot it almost immediately. Roughly thirty-two years later, when I took my second wife, Rosemary, to meet my daughter Cecilia, the memory of it came back strongly across the years. Cecilia had ten months previously given birth to her son Jonathan, and as we entered her house Jonathan was sitting in his high chair, his eyes darting about as if he was watching something flying around the room. At the same time he was laughing and giggling and was completely oblivious of our presence.

Rosemary and I were intrigued by the question: was Jonathan seeing something we couldn't? And what about other children?'We should write a book about psychic kids,' I said, 'But where would we find them?' Rosemary laughed.

'Half my friends have got psychic kids,' she said.

There was one even closer to home. When Jonathan got older, Cecilia told us that he started reading her thoughts.

'Once, when I was driving the car, I had the song Frere Jacques running through my head. Jonathan had never heard it to my knowledge, yet out of nowhere he started singing it, with words and everything. I was stunned.'

Another time she was driving and wondering whether there were any foxes living in the bush beside the freeway.

'Then Jonathan piped up, asking me if there were any foxes living in the bush, and he pointed to an area I had just been thinking about.'
In 1992 we began openly discussing the subject wherever we went and there was always someone who had a story to tell. Some parents were willing to allow their children to be interviewed as long as they themselves were present. In the case of very young children we interviewed the parents. As word spread we found ourselves with a lot of material about both adults and children. The parents often turned out to be quite aware, themselves, of things beyond the mundane. We encountered other adults who vividly remembered being psychic as children and some who still had such experiences. We wondered if there was more than one book.

At this point the investigation didn't have a high priority as I was working full time and Rosemary was busy as a Reiki Master and Tarot reader. But the tapes kept piling up.

We were living in a small flat in Brighton, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. It was early in our investigations, and didn't strike us as relevant, when Rosemary said to me one day, 'Let's write a fairy story!'

I'll let Rosemary continue.

By Rosemary:

We were visiting my Mum in Tasmania, and something on her TV triggered the idea. I was a poet, Andrew was a journalist; neither of us had attempted a fairytale before, but I'd always wanted to. As it turned out, I wasn't the one who did.

'Sure,' Andrew said to my suggestion, and that night he sat down and wrote four pages in his notebook before getting stuck and handing the notebook to me. I added a bit and passed it back. We went on like that for a few weeks, in our spare time, and then our story got seriously stuck. Somehow we couldn't find time to try and pick up the thread.

Almost at once two books fell into our hands written by people who believed they'd had real experiences of seeing fairies: The Real World of Fairies by Dora van Gelder and The Boy Who Saw True by Cyril Scott. These authors were children who retained the ability to see fairies all their lives. Their accounts matched and so did others which we happened across about this time. We were also continuing our interviews with mothers of apparently psychic and telepathic infants, and with older children themselves. Some of these children, too, reported adventures with fairies in this and other lifetimes. Again the descriptions tallied.

It was all pretty mind-boggling, but gradually we came to accept the idea that fairies might be real, rather than the objects of fantasy we had believed them to be. And we began to realize that the Universe was tapping us on the shoulder, saying: 'Hey, forget about making stuff up. There's a real story to tell and it's time you did your research.'

So we began, and it was easy. We were guided all the way. The right books appeared. Often people who heard of what we were doing offered to lend us books that were just what we needed. The right people turned up, agreed to be interviewed, and spoke to us with remarkable candour. Surely the angels were with us!

I did already believe in angels. For a few years I'd had occasional experiences of seeing them, or other people mentioned seeing angels around me. Fairies? Well, OK. When I thought about it, I could remember seeing them myself when I was a child – only I was soon taught that they were my 'vivid imagination', not real. But dragons? I was always fascinated by dragons – not repelled nor afraid; almost in love with them – yet it never occurred to me to regard them as real. Then we met a whole family who had no doubt about this.

The unseen world expanded a little further.

Now, back to Andrew.

By Andrew:
One of the most fascinating leads took us to a family farm house in central Victoria. I was able to record two hours of a mind-boggling conversation in which the two boys and their mother told of encounters with dragons and fairies, and how one of the boys learned to protect himself by using an imaginary silver shield. Their father was a polite observer who didn't share in their experiences, in fact this was the first time they had openly discussed the whole subject. (This whole incredible interview will be a later post here – along with all the others.)

A particularly memorable interview was with Ch'kara SilverWolf, an adult who never lost her capacity to see fairies and angels. When we entered her loungeroom, the first thing we noticed were two or three large pumpkin-shaped soup tureens which Ch'kara told us were there for the fairies to play in. Ch'kara has inherited a rare gift. Her father was an American Cherokee Indian from whom she acquired her psychic gifts and her ability to see and communicate with nature spirits. She learned to work with fairies and angels in her healing work.

Toward the end of the interview Ch'kara told me I had a fairy on my right shoulder. My first reaction was complete scepticism. Then, as Ch'kara described her, I started feeling excited and asked what her name was and if she would be willing to come home with me. Ch'kara said the fairy's name was Jorell (pronounced Juh-RELL) and that she wanted to go home with me. That was the beginning of my telepathic communications with Jorell. I learned to value the advice of this wise little being on all sorts of subjects. [There are some details about living with Jorell in the next post, by Rosemary.]

In the ensuing years we moved to northern New South Wales, where I began writing an environmental fairy story while we continued to gather material on psychic children. In total this went on for about six years during which time we found out about Findhorn in Northern Scotland and Perelandra in Virginia in the United States, places where people grew plants in conscious partnership with nature spirits (fairies).
I wondered, when we moved to New South Wales, if Jorell would still come to be with me. I was retiring with the aim of writing fiction. We settled in a house overlooking the Border Ranges. We could see down the valley for about twenty miles. It was awesome. Our house looked up to The Pinnacle, a sizeable rock which jutted out from the range. It was a very powerful location. I could feel its power as I sat in the garden each day and meditated, calling on Jorell for inspiration. Then after 20-30 minutes I'd go into my room to my computer and type in what had come through. What came was the continuation – or evolution – of the story Rosemary and I began at her mother's place so long ago. It became the environmental fairy story for children mentioned above, a work of fiction with some real characters in it such as Jorell herself. Rosemary, by her own choice, was no longer involved; it was a collaboration between me and Jorell. By then I already knew a lot more about fairies from all those interviews.

This continued for many months until eventually we had an ending. I first posted the manuscript to Eileen Caddy, co-founder of The Findhorn Foundation in northern Scotland, who said, 'I received your delightful fairy story and I read it and was delighted with it, it is charming with a real message in it, and it also links up with what we did here at Findhorn when Peter, ROC, Dorothy and I were starting.'

I also sent it to major publishing houses. It was sometimes nine to twelve months before I received an answer. But basically it was a big THANKS, BUT NO THANKS! It was a very frustrating time.

I decided to put the book on a shelf and I told the Universe, 'It's up to you now!' At the end of 2003 the Australian Society of Authors had an item in their newsletter which said that the Australian Booksellers Association was looking for manuscripts to assist unpublished authors to get across that first hurdle. Well, I wasn't unpublished but I hadn't been successful with a book yet. So I sent Jorell off and on 26th January 2004 flew to Perth after learning that a close friend had died unexpectedly. When we returned nine weeks later there was an email from the ABA telling me I had been successful. They appointed an editor and away we went.

I sent Barbara Cullen at ABA a copy of the front cover which I had commissioned a local artist to do, but she told me it wasn't good enough. We would have to provide another illustration. I was mad at first because I hadn't yet seen what Tom Giffin would produce. After I had I was grateful that the original cover was knocked back. Barbara told me to go to the internet and look for illustrations that were free of copyright. I did that but found nothing. Then Roger Carr, a writer friend in Melbourne, whom I had known for many years, told me to go through the same procedure but when I reached the section of illustrations not covered by copyright, to click on Fairy. I did that, and blow me down, an illustration came up that literally hit me between the eyes. It was one of many by American artist Tom Giffin. His use of colour was extraordinary and startling. I emailed him straight away and asked if he would paint a cover for my book. He agreed and I went off to Mount Warning, about an hour from where I live, armed with a camera and took photos of the forest vegetation and the mountain which dominates the surrounding landscape.

I followed up the photos with the manuscript of the book. Tom had told me earlier that the cover would cost $US600, at that time about $AUD1200. I agreed, not knowing how I was going to pay it. Nevertheless I sent him $AUD400 as a starter.

It was not all that long afterwards that Tom emailed me. He wrote:
You have created something that should be out in the world and I would like to support you in that. I would really like you to accept this painting and not worry about paying me any more money for it. From my heart I mean it.

Holy Moses! What a gift! I emailed back:
Oh my God! I'm dumbstruck. That is the most incredible gift which has come at a time of great financial stress. A miracle which will change everything!

And it did!

© Andrew Wade and Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2008

Tom's painting for the cover of Jorell © Tom Giffin 2007