It Happened to Me...

A Cumbrian elf resort

I’m not in the habit of hearing voices in my head, let alone striking up a dialogue with them; but if someone is trying to strike up a conversation, surely it’s only courteous to at least bend an ear before walking away. That’s what I told myself in a coffee shop in Cumbria in 1998, anyway.

There is of course a preamble. I had taken a friend and her two children to visit the Manjushri Kadampa Buddhist Centre near Ulverston, as she had made several retreats there and claimed to have experienced astral travel while camping in the grounds. So the place had some significant memories for her, and when we arrived, I left them to wander around while I went into the café.

The main building at that time was a 19th century Gothic mansion built on the site of a mediaeval Augustinian house founded in the 12th century as a hospital for the poor; the priory didn’t survive the Reformation, and the buildings didn’t survive the subsequent owners. The current building has had a chequered history involving owner bankruptcies, and has taken on roles such as a miners’ convalescent home and a spa hotel (when it even had a railway station on its grounds). The Manjushri Kadampa Buddhist sect took it over in 1976 and in the late 1990s built the Kadampa Temple for World Peace alongside the existing buildings.

I passed into the centre’s entrance lobby, where stood a Buddha statue that caught my attention – it seemed an ‘animated’ statue, in a sense, and the face was unusual, I thought, for a Buddha, quite thin and leathery-looking despite the gold. Or at least that’s how I saw it. It made quite a good impression on me, even though I wasn’t a Buddhist.

I passed into the café and ordered a coffee, and sat down with a book to wait for my friend. That was when the sub-vocalisation that’s always running around my brain seemed to take on a different character and made me take notice. As I say, I’ve not much experience in hearing voices, but I am, I hope, ready should a bona fide discarnate entity want to set up an avenue of communication, if only for character assessment. After all, in the Middle Ages Oberon was said to be broadly friendly and ready to communicate with human travellers – but the friendliness evaporated if he was ignored or treated with disrespect, and he would then engineer storms and befuddlement for the arrogant human. Chatty discarnate entities aren’t exactly a frequent or regular occurrence for me, either, although my sometimes-inspired sometimes-bonkers friend was very much into such experiences; anyway, I wasn’t going to take a chance as we were miles from home.

The opening gambit was quite direct: “Oh, you noticed me then!” My response, understandably, to myself more than the voice, was “Eh?” And the voice – unheard, but expressing itself in osmotic sentences, as it were, responded something like, “The statue – that’s of me, quite a good likeness actually”. My response was “Ummm… and you might be?” And then I was hooked into an exchange I could, and still can, barely credit.

The gist of it was that this being was a kind of genius loci of the old priory site who’d been there for ages, living in a big old tree in the grounds – he (definitely he) told me our idea of ‘elf’ would near enough describe him. He liked these Buddhists, he said, they were a bit different from a lot of the tenants before them and they respected him. They’d left a patch of wild garden for him, and he liked that, and he liked the people who came visiting and camping, and he liked the way his features had been slipped into the statue (and at that point an image flashed into my head of a thin brown leathery face, indeed similar to the statue). Anyway, he said, come out and see me while you’re here, and went quiet. I was left mulling over this conversation and jotting notes as I finished my coffee. I wished I’d asked him for his name…

I went outside to look around, and round a corner of the house was a patch of garden that had been left minimally tended, evidently the ‘elf’s’ wild garden, and just beyond it was a big old tree in a clearing. As I approached it, the ‘voice’ came back – “Hello, you’ve found me then!” My friend and kids were on the edge of the clearing; we stood together under the tree, which had apparently been for her the trigger for the astral travels of previous visits, and talked generally, including about the many coins that had been pressed into the soft bark. I was aware as we talked of my discarnate contact listening in, and then of the two kids pulling coins out of the bark. For the tree’s own health I wouldn’t perhaps have objected to this, but suddenly and simultaneously in unison, without any eye contact, both my friend and I shouted “Leave those coins alone!” The kids were rather taken aback, looked at each of us wide-eyed – and started putting the coins back into the bark! Afterwards, the three of them moved off to the path through the woods to the shore.

I lingered for a few moments to express a thought to the ‘elf’ about how he seemed to rather like this coin-tree custom. The reply came back and changed the timbre of our communications. It explained that they were offerings to him, and shouldn’t be abstracted, and added “The little girl still has some of the money, it’s in her left coat pocket, about 13p. If she doesn’t bring it back, she’ll have an accident”. I expressed surprise, and he repeated his point: “They’ve got to learn respect, they’ve been given to my tree”. “I’ll have a word,” I thought, and moved after them. I caught up with little R, and casually asked her if she still had some coins from the tree; she looked at me, ready to shake her head, and I said “in your left pocket, about 13p?”. Her eyes widened, she said nothing, but put her hand into her left pocket and pulled out thirteen pennies. I told her that the tree spirit was a bit upset that she’d taken them and would like them back, and she promised to do so. And I wandered off on my own again.

Later, I was sitting by the wild garden and looking towards the tree when they came back from the shore, and I was pleased to see the little girl come straight into the clearing and head for the tree, obviously to put the coins back as she’d promised. But when she got near the tree, she tripped over a root and went sprawling. Nothing unpleasant and no harm done, but my impression was that the elf was making its point, issuing an advisory.

As we left, I brought my friend up to date on what had been going on. She was in no way surprised, and reckoned that the elf spirit must have seen a kindred spirit in me, as an animist.

Maybe, but for me the main thing was that this was an episode that could not be shrugged off easily; I had (and still have) no medical history that might contribute to it, and I knew it had to be written up while fresh

This being was a kind of genius loci of the old priory site who had been there for ages

and taken seriously. I felt that I could no longer be quite as intellectually ambivalent about the possibility of “other species” as I had been previously. I also noted how the atmosphere around the big tree was strong, and seemed to have attracted visitors to make offerings as well as fuel my friend’s psychic journeying. And the third takeaway was that these beings may be amoral in our terms, but are not necessarily without principles – if you contravene their value system they have no compunction about getting back at you, even if you are a fiveyear-old girl, in order to maintain their prerogative.

A few years later I was talking with someone who had lived in a Kadampa centre for about five years, and I told him my story. I knew there had long been friction with the Mahayana tradition, whom I understood had accused Kadampa of worshipping demons. Not quite, said my friend (note this is only my friend’s comment; I know very little of Kadampa and hope it does not do an injustice to their tradition). They are prepared to work with beings of lesser spiritual planes, which can be mischievous and can cause imbalance; and for that reason he had moved on. He guessed that the Coniston Priory entity may have been such a lower-order spirit being given too much energy by the centre and by the people who were meditating under it, and suggested the energy might not be very good for actual magical or spiritual progress. Interesting point, particularly for a Buddhist. Nonetheless I valued my bizarre experience, and it certainly taught me something impossible to forget.

In 2016, finding myself in the area, I dropped in again. The statue in the lobby seemed very ordinary this time, and no voices interrupted my coffee. The big tree in the clearing was very obviously in poor health, and there was no longer an atmosphere. My elf informant was clearly no longer in residence.

John Billingsley

Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire