Science, Neurology and Being Misled by Fairies May 23, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern , trackback
All European fairy traditions have two features: kidnapped children (the changeling tradition) and misled travellers (the pixy-led tradition). Being pixy-led (a Cornish or Devon term originally but one that has come to apply to a much wider area) varies in different parts of the continent. But typically, it unwinds as follows. A man or a woman is travelling over some familiar ground, very often at night: sometimes they are misled by night lights or will-o’-the-wisp, at other times the prompt is mysterious. They, in any case, lose sense of direction and find themselves wandering through countryside that they’ve never seen before or a countryside that they know and yet don’t know (e.g. a familiar field though without any gates) and sometime they end up stuck; for example, they walk into a marsh or they realise they are going around and around in circles. Eventually they manage to escape: in Britain and Ireland one way to break ‘the spell’ is to turn an item of clothing inside out or even to strip naked. (One thing that is intriguing is that it often takes the victims a long time to realise that the solution is at hand: not sure what to make of that). Frequently at the moment of escape – despite commonplace ideas of Will-O’-the-Wisps trying to kill victims in drowning incidents, tradition is rather more jocular – the victims hear laughter of the fairies/pixies/swamp gas that has been misleading them. A moment of triumph?
There are literally dozen of nineteenth- and twentieth-century accounts of this happening to people not as folk tales but as lived experiences. There are just too many to discard out of hand. My question is why do these experiences take place? Is there any way of explaining these events in terms of perception or neurology more generally? Can our sense of space be short-circuited temporarily under certain conditions? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com Perhaps particularly in some plases? Victorian accounts often make fun of those who have experienced these things with reference to excessive alcohol consumption and the experience of alcohol is probably the closest that most of us have come to being pixy-led. Senses are dulled/heightened and the normal balance between the senses lost. In that case it is easy to enter into – a very alcoholic experience – a dead, repetitive loop be it in thought or movement. However, many reports have nothing to do with alcohol. Again what is going on? And what if anything does the turning of clothes mean? Is the victim becoming a new person, or is just a statement to self that ‘I have a problem’, and one that presses reset on our senses? Another thought: typically there is a solitary walker, but sometimes there are groups.
I am more than usually ignorant about this but also more than usually curious. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for any insights.
24 May 2014: Rebis writes: ‘The beginning of your piece reads very much like my artist’s statement on www.wonderled.com As I state most of the images for my work come from personal Immrama dream journeys to the other world. The state you speculate about sounds very much like the familiar but not quite right state of the other worldly experience of the semi-lucid dream state. The practice of turning one’s clothes inside out to break the fairie spell reminds me of a tip from Don Juan: that to become lucid in a dream one should look at their hands. Sort of like pinching yourself, to trigger the shift from one frequency of brain function to another. Your point of a solitary walker or a group: There was a now long gone Canadian newspaper reporter Gordon Sinclair, who told a strange story about an experience he had while posted in India during WW2. He said he was walking down a road when a fakir offered to burn himself alive for a few rupees. He gave him the money and the fakir sat in the road, dowsed himself with gas, and set himself on fire. Sinclair reacted in horror as the fakir turned to a black cinder and began to fall over. At that moment a mosquito bit Sinclair on the back of the neck. He reflexively swatted it, which inadvertently broke the hypnotic spell to reveal the unharmed fakir standing in front of him laughing. If I have learned one thing, it is that life is hypnosis. As for how this might happen in a waking state, it puts me in mind of certain ghost encounters. Some locations that have a long history of hauntings are found be on areas of geological / hydrological movement . It is usually found that megalithic structures are built on these types of sights.This is also common in major earth quake zones where the quake is proceeded by earth lights. These displays are caused by the piezoelectric effect of the geological movement compressing crystals under ground, creating an electrical/magnetic discharge that rises above ground, in the form of ball lightening, or aurora. In the case of hauntings, there is sometimes found to be either this piezoelectric discharge or a hydrological situation that can also create a discharge of earth energies. For sensitive individuals these fields can cause visions, sounds etc. There is a lot of research ( Dr. Persinger in Canada ) showing the effect of small magnetic currents on brain function. These currents can cause other worldly effects on perception. Do these tiny magnetic fields create hallucinations or do they briefly open up a door to the other world? Just to be safe, one should not eat the fairie food. Lol.’ Next is LH: nteresting post, it reminded me of something similar in Philippines folklore where there is a similar remedy for ‘lostness’ when night travelers are mislead by a vampiric creature called a tianak. Tianak victims are warned to stop and turn their clothes inside out once they realize they are being mislead. Was there some cross cultural seeding here or did different people groups come up with the same ‘anti spell’ for whatever ‘lostness’ spell they fell under? Very odd. This is just a guess but maybe turning clothes inside out is a mental way to retrace or undo one’s ‘lost’ steps? As in, “I came into this right side out so to escape this situation I need to turn inside out/backwards”. It would be interesting to know the mental state of the individuals who were lost and claimed to be mislead by fairies since they weren’t drunk. Maybe anger, confusion about a situation or anxiety about traveling on foot at night on an open moor would be enough to create a mental state similar to a fugue state, without the amnesia, yet where familiar things seem unfamiliar. I remember driving home from university one spring break when I became convinced I was on the wrong rural road even though I had driven that road several times before. I chalked it up to fatigue and anxiety about coursework, perhaps I should have blamed the Texas faefolk.’ Finally Chris from Haunted Ohio Books: I’ve actually experienced being what I call “Pixy-led,” and, perhaps significantly, it almost always happened in the same location: Clinton County and Blanchester, Ohio. Normally I have a very good sense of direction, can read maps, navigate by landmarks, and can wander off on strange terrain and find my way back with ease. But I get lost every single time I try to get to or from Blanchester. It should be straightforward: down route A to town B to route C to town D. I have been trapped circling the town for hours. I have been trapped trying to leave the town for hours. I have been trapped trying to get into town when the only road into town from the direction I was coming was blocked by a freak accident. On that occasion I ended up way out in the country with a map which, suddenly, I could not see to read. My eyes would not focus (and I have microscopic close-up vision) I had no landmarks except a radio tower and the people at the library where I was supposed to be speaking thought I was crazy when I said I didn’t know where I was. I can’t remember exactly how I got there that night, but I was at least an hour late with a full house waiting for me. Most embarrassing. I didn’t hear any laughter though. When these things happen, you keep thinking that any minute now you’ll find the right turn or you KNOW there was a gas station where you turned the last time, but it isn’t there now. The brain seems to get into a loop in which it is flummoxed by not recognizing the road or landmark it used to navigate the last time. I also find that ambiguous street signs can trigger it. A sign to go straight for Rt. 42 at a three-angled intersection, for example. Which straight? None of them are straight! Pixy-led ensues. Clinton County used to be prime malaria country and there is an overarching weird feel to the area, which I’m at a loss to account for. As I head south to Blanchester from where I live, it is almost as if there is a certain invisible line you cross into what I think of, fancifully, as a Zone of Influence. Once when I spoke at a Blanchester school I was told about a glowing tombstone in a local cemetery. I was given directions to it, but ended up somewhere else–by a very weird home-made cenotaph to a local man named Moon. Seeing a stranger, the local sheriff stopped and told me there was an identical monument in another cemetery not far away. He gave me directions. I never found that cemetery, but, following his directions, found another one where there were 15 fresh graves, all with 1970s-1980s tombstones with different dates (so not a common disaster/epidemic) Possibly all moved at once from another cemetery, but rather unnerving. At that point I found a road, headed north and finally got out of the county and recognized where I was. I have not gone back since. I actually have taken to turning a pocket inside out. Perhaps it does “reboot” the mind. All I know is that it works, but one doesn’t think of it immediately. I suppose I ought to look at a map of magnetic fields in the Blanchester/Clinton County area and see if there is something influencing the brain’s interior compass. The Colour Out of Clinton… Thanks to Chris, Rebis and LH
Bruce T. 30 Apri 2017: Growing up in a rural area, I have many personal experiences that could fall into the “pixie-led” category. Most involve poor weather, low light, and optical illusions that fall into place as normal when you go back to check the place out in better weather or you get closer. I’ll stick with a reputed story by the great frontiersman and long hunter Daniel Boone. When Boone was elected to the Virginia Legislature in the 1790’s to represent my home county, he was invited to a party at a socialite’s house in Richmond so the elite could meet the legend. The hostess asked, “Col. Boone, have you ever been lost?” Boone replied, “No ma’am, never lost, but I was perplexed once for about three weeks.” Boone was living at the time he was elected in a cabin one of my great-grandfathers had given him. The story has been in my family for two plus centuries and I’ve seen versions of it in print. I’ve got a humdinger about a cow disappearing before a friend and mine’s eye’s as we drove past a pasture on a bright sunny afternoon, but it may be too much for your readers. Think of Waterloo and how Wellington was able hide his ranks in what appeared to to be flat open terrain. Things often aren’t what they seem to be until you get a close look at the real lay of the land. One last thing, when people get spooked in woods about feeling they’re being watched? It’s because they are. Every wild animal in the area that didn’t hightail out of the are when they heard you coming is hunkered down watching you. As the apex predator, you’re a threat to the all. People seem to be able to pick up on it and the feeling of being watched will often send them into a panic trying to get away from the area and end up in one where they really are lost. My guess is it’s a survival mechanism from the days when we were on the menu for nearly everything over 75 lbs. with sharp teeth and claws? It was better to be wrong about the panther in the bushes and run than it was to ignore the feeling and become dinner.
