Fairies, Folklore and Forteana
CHILDHOOD’S END
Jane is 10 years old. She is a well-balanced introverted child. I’ve known her for most of her life.
From about the age of five, Jane heard a disembodied feminine voice “half creepy, half sweet”. The voice would say her name. She only heard it when she was alone. She heard it typically in the woods or in her bed. The voice has practically disappeared now. From about seven or eight she began to see what she calls “tree shadows” (her term). They are usually black (but sometimes white) and lack eyes or ears or fingers on their hands. Occasionally they take on the form of cats. They go through trees “and do not come out the other side”. She sees them maybe once or twice a month, again only when she is alone and only in the woods. She sees them less and less often.
When I asked her whether the voice and the tree shadows are the same thing, she thinks not. Both are “not nice but they are not evil. They are between, but they don’t mean any harm.” Her mother, a Catholic, who is very relaxed about these experiences, suggested to her daughter that perhaps they were the spirits of dead family members. Jane is unsure.
I make no comment, but in most of European history these experiences would
JANE IS RATHER PROUD OF HER ENCOUNTERS. THEY ARE PART OF WHO SHE IS AND WHAT SETS HER APART.
have been assimilated to fairylore, of which Jane has very little knowledge. Jane has talked about tree shadows for the past couple of years and she has slowly come to realise that these are not normal experiences.
“I used to think everyone saw them.”
The conversation is low key, but I notice, unlike the Easter before, when her mother brought up the subject, that Jane is rather proud of her encounters in the wood. They are part of who she is and what sets her apart. In two years, I doubt she’ll see them; and in five years, with lipstick on her desk, posters of boy bands on the wall, and two hours of homework a night, I wonder if she’ll even remember the figures among the trees. Puff the Magic Dragon will no longer feature in Jane’s social calendar…
Sometimes when I get persecutory supernatural accounts from adults I worry about the subject’s mental wellbeing, especially when the encounters are habitual. With the accounts I have got from children – admittedly many grown children, remembering their infancy – I almost never have that concern.
Jane seems relaxed about this fading part of her childhood. But what is it that opens certain children to these kinds of experiences and why do they fade so dramatically towards puberty?