Otherworld - Episode 67: The Fairy House Pt 2

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

In part 2 of this series, Aidan's mother and father tell their side of the story in the Virginia home. Then, we speak to Irish storyteller and historian, or “Seanchaí" Eddie Lenihan to get his perspective on the events in the house and tell us what he knows about fairies. Subscribe to Otherworld on Patreon for exclusive content and bonus interviews Check out our Merch Follow us on: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your story at [e-mail] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. In the last episode, The Fairy House Part 1, I spoke to Aden and his sisters, Eileen and Allie, about very strange things that were happening in their Virginia home. This family constantly saw shadow figures darting out of view, playing hide-and-seek, essentially. They saw cloaked, hunched over beings, walking between rooms. They heard strange sounds.

The list goes on and on. And it seemed to have started, or at least been amplified, around the time Eileen began building fairy houses in their backyard. Essentially, building little homes out of sticks and moss and things like that, making offerings, and then begging the fairies to come in. Now, normally this is a very innocent little kid thing, but it does sound like Eileen maybe crossed over into the abnormal territory when she was really, really begging the fairies to come into this home. And then one night, after building one of these fairy houses, the entire family saw strange lights appear and then a full body apparition of a man sitting on their back porch. Every time I spoke to another member of this

family, I would find out something new. So in this episode, I speak to the mom and the dad about their experiences. And then I'm going to do my best to find out if this has anything to do with fairies at all. Like I said in part one, I really do not know much about actual belief in fairies. So when this came up, I thought this might be a great excuse to try to learn more. This is episode 67, The Fairy House, Part 2, and you're listening to Otherworld. Is it Bobby? Yes, it is. The science, you can't argue.

I'm worried about all the science. Up in the sky. It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm going to die. It's limbs were just like wrong. Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a minute. My name's Madeline McGrath-Stewart, and I'm the mother of Aden, Alice, Eileen, and Emily. Well, we've moved all over the place, you know, throughout our, you know, life with the kids.

And this particular place was very interesting. just lots of, I don't know. I mean, I've grown up my whole life feeling a lot of energy, so I don't know, you know, what if I want to say it because I just feel a lot of things? But that house had a lot of interesting things happen. And then later, as the kids got older, I realized that they had their own stories. And I didn't know that, actually. You know, I knew their dad and I had our own feelings and things that happened.

but it was as they grew up, it became adults that they started sharing things with us that I didn't even know. So that was actually made it even more profound, I think. I had feelings in that house where I don't know if you get that feeling where you're alone, but you feel like someone's there. There's kind of a, you can't really put your finger on it, but it's like someone just passes you or just like a brush of something. and I never felt afraid. Well, actually, I did, but I feel afraid, but I never felt, you know, real terrified.

But I had a routine that was funny is that when I would go to the market or I'd be teaching or something and I'd come home, we had, the garage was attached to the house. And I'd come in. And if I didn't see my cat sitting there comfortably, I would just, something would maybe just go back in the car and leave. Like I just had something, a feeling about uncomfortableness. I don't know how to explain it with their dad and I, because we had similar experiences,

you know, like I had a strange encounter where one night we were, just the two of us were sitting up and the kids were asleep. It was kind of like your date night over there where your kids are home and you're just kind of like, you know, just sitting together. And I had a Ouija board. I mean, I like to do stuff like that. It was my idea to get it out. And I can't remember why, because we haven't, we hadn't done that.

But I remember specifically in our dining room, and we sat on the floor, which our kitchen was to the right of us. And we were both sitting on the floor dining room table right there. And we both put our hands on it. And we, I remember asking it. like tell me something or, you know, specifically like that. And we did hold it together and it did start moving. I mean, that's how we, it would move to the letters, which kind of freaked me out too because I hadn't done that since I was a kid.

But, and it was these names that I kind of obsessed with for like probably a couple of years while we lived there. The letter G. G. G. G. G. I. L.S. I kept spelling it in my head. George, G-E-O-R-G-E, George Rawlins, but G-I-L-E-L-A-S, and I would just, sometimes I couldn't sleep and I would write it down. When we were done, what really freaked us out was time had passed that we had no idea. I mean, it literally felt like we were doing something for a few minutes. But when we looked at the clock, I'm not kidding you, it was like two hours passed.

It seemed like minutes, just it was hours. And literally both of us, it scared us. Like we were like, what the heck just like, where did that time go? Because we literally felt like we were just doing the Ouija board for moments. And yeah, so I don't understand that. We both looked at each other and we both panted like, what the heck just happened? And so at that point, I didn't ever want to do a Ouija boarding. I can't explain it, but time passed, like that long.

It was so strange. What to us felt like just moments was ours. And then, I mean, I don't know if it's connected, but later their dad found out that there's some family on his side with the same name. And there's actually names in the community we lived in way back. like I've started the community and stuff. So I have no idea. But the way my brain works, when I get something in my head,

I do like to look it up. Because I've, you know, I've been told throughout my life that I do pick up on things. I don't know why. I don't, I'll tell people ahead of time something, you know, have a dream or something. And it's strange how things. So anyways, that was definitely. The letter G, Giles, George Rawls, it was just like, and it went on, I would say, for a couple of years,

where I was almost drawn to this information. We lived in this house where there was a big hill and you'd go up this, it was called the, we lived in this compound and there were only two entrances. One was the main entrance and then one we had an emergency exit, which we lived directly across from. And I remember sitting at my desk because my window from my bedroom faced it. Just feeling drawn to go up the hill and look at this tree. And when I did, there was like an etching of like a name on there.

It wasn't Giles or anything, but it was a G name. And it was, there was like a heart on it. And that freaked me out. Like, what was I doing? So lots of strange things. I know that the area is very heavily steeped in, obviously, Civil War. We lived along the Potomac, the Quiet Creek, which was a very active area for the wounded during the Civil War. So I started looking up into things like that because we used to find all kinds of artifacts and things.

And this night with the Ouija incident, when did this happen in comparison? Harrison to the fairy house situation? Oh, right at the same time. I'd say it all was around the same time. Yeah. That was so strange because Eileen loved fairies and her dad always wanted to surprise, you know, make it special for her because she, you know, she'd make little houses and stuff.

And so he planned that with like a little tea light. And of course you don't want to tell your kids that because that was like a surprise, you So we all made a big deal. We had another window in our bedroom that overlooked the back patio. And so my big kids are in on it, of course, and they were all supporting. And so we're getting all excited because she has this little fairy house. And he had gone and put a tea light down there to make it like, look, they're really there. And she's just, but then as we're there, we're seeing all this up.

It was the strangest thing, but there was like this more of light coming out, like from another area. I would say it was like more to the right side of it, not from the tea light. And her dad and I were, I mean, it was like, wait a minute. And then I kid you not. And I swear to God, I can't. But there was like this figure of a man sitting in one of our patio chairs, literally. But it wasn't like a solid human being. it was like you could put your hand through it.

It was like a, I don't know how you'd describe it, like a silhouette or something, but it was, to me, it was definitely a man in uniform, just sitting there completely, just sitting there. I don't. And all of us noticed it. And that's what freaked me out. Like everyone was saying, what the heck? And their dad and I were looking at each other like,

because, you know, he put the candle there. This is supposed to be like this little moment. Like, what the heck is going on? And then I've, you know, the kids talk to you. I think we were saying maybe they like we invoked something. I don't know. Could it possibly be? I have no idea.

My kids were thinking this is connected. And then my son didn't even know I had this happen to me. I was telling them last night. But we were slowly moving to the other house. And that was just a few blocks away. And the first night in that house, kids were all dispersed everywhere because we still hadn't gotten all our stuff put away. And we went to bed and I had the worst nightmare of my entire life.

And I woke up completely terrified and I was talking in my sleep. He said you were literally talking like a different language. I don't even know what you were saying, but you were wailing like this terrifying sound. And I remember waking up and feeling absolutely terrified, but I don't remember what it was or anything. It's never happened since, never happened before, but it was very distinct. And it freaked him out, obviously. It scared me that it scared him.

But that never happened again. I don't understand what that was, but it was definitely the first night in the new house, which was just a few blocks away. My name is Paul Stewart, and in 2008, our family moved from Michigan to Acquia Harbor, Virginia. We did this because the company I was working for in Michigan was going bankrupt like a lot of other people, a lot of other companies during the financial crisis of 2008.

The one thing that's really interesting about Acquia Harbor is that about 50% of the houses are built on a slope, and you have a main street that runs through, but as you're driving down this main street, 50% of the houses, you know, the houses on one side would have a very, very steep driveway leading up to the house, and then a lot of them would have the opposite. They would have a very steep driving leading down to the house. And the house we were renting was one of the latter.

It was a steep driving leading down to the house. The house is actually below grade as far as the street goes, but it would extend down the hillside. So it might look like a one or two-story house from the front as you entered, but as you got in, the house actually descended down the hillside. It almost felt like you're in a tree house because when you went out into the back of this house where all these lights, lighted windows are, you'd be in the tree canopy. It was just beautiful.

And we fell on love with it and moved right in. We didn't know that things were happening to eat any of us until one encounter happened to all of us. And after that, we got together and sort of related to our experiences. And that was what the most amazing thing was, is that we had all seen things and we had all felt things. and what would be a very average-looking house. And what's strange about this is that at no point was I really scared of anything that occurred in that house. It was more like an energy. That's a better way to describe it.

There was an energy about this house that I can't describe. It doesn't feel scary. It didn't feel threatening. It just existed. So the first person in our family that started to, getting an inkling that something was different was my wife. At the time, she, she was sort of prepossessed by names and she was drawn up from our, the street that we lived on, the house that lived on, she was drawn up to the, what we call the emergency exit up to Decatur Road,

that ridgeline that I spoke about, and was drawn up to that by a name like Giles. Jiles was something that really pre-possessed her to go and sort of search to the point where she was searching in graveyards and small family gravers, looking for that name. She believed that there were trees on the ridgeline that had names and initials carved into them, and she would search those trees for them. And we didn't know, kind of know what to make of that, but it all makes way more sense in the context of what happens later. So although I never felt anything strange in the new house, my wife apparently did,

And I cannot remember the details clearly, but it got to the point where she wanted to see if she could communicate with any spirits in this house. And I'm not a real fan of the Ouija board, but we had one. I'm not a fan, not because I don't believe in it, but I've never been able to make the planchette move. It's just not moved for me. I've never done anything. And so I've never been a real fan of it because simply haven't gotten any results at all. So whatever reason we decided to do it one late, one night, I don't. don't remember getting anything, but the weird part about this was, but we're sitting there,

I think about three or four hours at least passed, and I didn't even realize it. And it was just like we were in a state of like a stupor or a suspended animation. And that really freaked me out because it was like time loss. So although I didn't make anything move, I didn't get any names, I didn't get anything. from the board at all, it had somehow managed to freeze me in a suspended animation for about three to four hours. As I mentioned in the beginning, what I loved about this house is that when you open up the front door, you have this clear open area in the back where the homeowner, where the

builder had opted to basically do without a lot of square footage in lieu of having this beautiful light come in, so you felt like you're in a tree house. So when you walked in from the front door and you walked to the back, of the house toward the backyard and you open up the glass windows, glass doors to go outside. Instead of being in the first floor, you're up in the tree canopy and you had to walk out on a patio, a deck essentially. This deck basically wrapped around the whole back of the house and it was just huge and beautiful and loved it because, again, you felt like you were in the trees. But when you went in from the, when you're on the first floor and you would come into the house,

there was also a stair leading up, there was a stairway leading down. And when you went down, this was clearly an unfinished basement at some point that a homeowner, who knows when, decided to finish it. So you came down a very tight stairway. It did two turns, and there was a door down there. You opened it up into a fairly large family room, again with windows. And those windows were below that patio that I was talking about, that deck. And that room was finished. You'd go in through, if you just kept going, there was another room, about almost the same size,

but be half the width. And then a small room behind it. And the only room that wasn't finished in the whole house was the central room that was in between all these rooms. And it was where the water heater and the, you know, the air conditioning unit, and we kept a lot of our junk down there, basically. But it was a great place for my son Aidan to play drums because it was kind of a room within a room and in the basement. So if he was going to make some noise, this is the perfect place to put it.

So we put his drum set down there and kind of decorate it with Christmas lights and had it pretty festive down there. And he used to say that he would see when he was playing like a furry-looking creature looking at him from behind some of the boxes and things that were down there, just the top of his head or it was described it as about two or three feet tall. And he would always catch it out of the corner of his eye, never get a really clear shot of it. And I always just chalked that up to, you know, to, I've seen things like that where you think you're seeing things, but you're not, you know, it's just a sort of a trick of the eye where you're catching something out of the corner of your eye, but it's just movement or a shadow or something. I just chalked it up to that until I had a very weird experience in the middle of the night.

So my experience with this is I was upstairs asleep. It was probably 2, 3 a.m. in the morning, completely. dark, completely quiet, and I was awoken by a huge clatter. I mean, really, really big clatter. And I knew exactly what it was when it occurred, because that night earlier, my wife had made a big meal. There was a large cookie pan, and there were large sauce pans, a large pan, all these kinds of pans that were too big for the dishwasher.

So we had put a towel out on the counter and basically let these things air dry, I sort of piled them up in a, you know, kind of a typical pile. And I could tell from the sound or the noise immediately when I woke up. And I'm one of these people who doesn't wake up when I sleep, but I woke up immediately like that. And because I knew it was those pots and pans that had dropped, right? And it was just, but it was so weird because it wasn't just like one kind of moving. One pan wouldn't have woken me up.

But this was like the whole, the whole thing had got shattered or kind of come apart on the countertop. And so it was loud and I was awake. And so I opened the door. and again because of the floor plan, I can look, when I open my door, I can look down into the area because the area is open below me because of the way this house is built. I can look down under that living room and I can see kind of into the kitchen. And to my surprise, I didn't see anything except I saw something furry or hairy kind of rushing underneath the stairs below me. Again, we have a bridge that would connect and go across,

cross from my bedroom to the other bedrooms and then there's a, if I look down to my left, that stairway would continue down to that basement. And what I saw running, I saw a hairy thing running down downstairs silently, no noise. And it wasn't something where I could see, I could see a couple of the stairs, you know, from the top of my view,

but I could tell that this wasn't running tight to the stairs like a squirrel would have done or a raccoon. It was big. I mean, at least two to three feet tall. And it had run sort of noiselessly down the stairs. And so I descended the stairs pretty quickly. And, you know, there was only one way in and one way out of that basement. Unless a back door was left open, there was only one way in, and I'm down it.

So I descended the stairs. The door down there was open. So I flicked the light on as soon as I got to the bottom and I closed the door so they couldn't get out. And the first room, the room I described earlier, it's just this big room. And we had basically an open couch that you could see under. and there was a furniture, a cabinet, and one of our TVs there. And that was kind of it in the main of furniture.

There wasn't much down there. This was actually a house was too big of a house for our family, and it was nice, but we had nothing in there. So this animal, whatever it was, was not there. And then I checked the other room, which even had less furniture, and there was nothing in those rooms. So the only room that this thing could be in was the thing where the room where my son, Aden, had his drums, and we had our stuff. And that's... So I went to that room and closed that. the door behind me in that room. And there's no possible way that this thing can get out. There's no

place for it to go because it's again, it's just water heaters, air conditioning unit, drum set, and some packing blankets and some junk down there. But there's no place for something that large to hide. And it was gone. It was completely gone. It was not in that house. And it was big. And it was hairy. And so at that point, I put a lot more credence into what Aidan said he saw down there. So another encounter that I had by myself occurred while I was laying down on a couch that was about 2 o'clock in the morning, and I'm a bit of an insomniac, and so this wasn't unusual for me.

But we had a couch in the family room, again, and that family room being the same room that I described before with the tall windows that let the light in. But this is 2 o'clock in the morning, and I was watching a very small TV, which is technically not a TV was a computer monitor that was kind of fit the area perfect. Any large TV would have been too, would have taken over the room basically because of the way of the layout of this house. And so we had this computer monitor on a small A-frame. And I was basically laying down on the couch. I had the sound down very, very low.

And I'm laying down and out of the blue, and I'm talking, it's dead silent outside. There's no noise outside. I started hearing kids playing at a play. You know, that distant sound of kids laughing and playing and hearing that squeak of swings and just the laughter of children playing. And it was right behind me in the couch, right behind me. So the sound was not emanating from outside. It was reminating from about less than a foot away on the other side of the couch, which

was, again, the couch is in the middle of the room. So it wasn't against the back wall. It was out in the middle of the room. And so, you know, I peeked up and looked over there. and it went away. So I laid back down, down with the sound completely off, because the sound was very low to begin with,

and I heard it again. Clear as day. It sounded exactly like you can imagine some late summer day with kids playing in a playground and that squeak of swings and the laughter and the joy of kids playing at 2 o'clock at night. And it eventually faded away,

and that's just something I've... Again, I didn't ever felt scared in this house. were just odd events, but the one event that was really kicked it off for all of us was the one that we all shared. You know, one of the weird things about all of these sightings is that there's no premonition, there's no lead up to it, there's no kind of prior warning, there's no that spooky music you hear in the movies, it just happens. And, you know, one day you're living your life, you're doing normal things, and then all of a

sudden you're confronted with a very odd encounter. It's just the way, best way to describe it, there's, there's a way to describe it. There's no, you're not pre-warned, it just happens. And so the day of our mutual encounter, when the whole family saw the same thing, and I knew something was odd about this place, was actually on Valentine's Day. It was a Saturday. It was February 14th and 2009. That morning, my daughter, Eileen, who was eight at the time, wanted to build a fairy house. And so Virginia is a perfect place to do that, had all the ingredients. And so we went and got some beach buckets that you typically get sand and shells and things like that.

And we used those and went down to the back, past the backyard into the common ravine that all the houses shared that basically collected rain runoff when it got too hard. And we found everything we needed, mushrooms and moss and twigs and stones. We brought all this back and built this fairy house against one of the large trees in the backyard. And it was very cute. I have a picture of it. And we decided at that point to just relax all day. And she would periodically peer out the windows

to see if she could see any activity of the fairies that arrived and I liked her house and wanted to move in. And I told you, I might have to wait until nighttime to be able to really see anything. And so later on that night, as it got completely black, I was upstairs in the master bedroom, And again, I'm describing this house, it's high raked because we're on a hillside. So even though you're on the second floor, you can see down.

You're seeing down a fair amount of distance. You're not seeing a cross. It's seeing down. I can see that tree as clear as day, but it was probably about 50 feet away and down, and down below me. I can see a light on in a house. And so I told Eileen and the rest of the kids, hey, come on, come on, look, the fairies are here. So all the kids of my wife, and so all four kids of my wife, we're all looking at this, at this, you know, distant light in the fairy house.

And all of a sudden, Alice, my eldest daughter, who was about 13 at the time, points down to the patio, the deck right below us. And again, this is that deck on the first floor that's actually about 14 or 15 feet off the ground. It's very, very tall. But it's right below us at this level. We had a lot of patio furniture all over this. We had, you know, tables and chairs, typical patio furniture. And in one of those chairs, we're looking at it.

I was looking at a seated man. And he's exactly what you would expect if you were to describe a ghost. It has the shape and the outline of a person, and yet it has no real discernible features. And he was sitting cross-legged in this chair, kind of very relaxed, almost slouched. He was wearing, what looked to me as to be like cowboy boots, and he had what seemed to be like bell-bottomed jeans.

I wouldn't be say the pointy hill type of cowboy, He'd put the flat tip cowboy boot. And you could see through this guy. That was the strangest thing. He was white, but not white. And he didn't emanate any light necessarily. He was just a cloud figure almost. He wore an overcoat, like a larger coat, almost, you know, like a, you could imagine

a cowboy on the range wearing. And he had a slouch hat. I wouldn't call it a cowboy hat, but it had that shape. But it was really kind of battered up and, you know, kind of bent. And he had his hands crossed and folded, and he was sitting cross-legged in our chair. And we were all just looking at this guy. And he didn't move at all. And it's weird.

I don't think anybody felt frightened or not. I didn't feel frightened. And Aiden didn't seem to be frightened because he goes, hey, let's go down there. And so I agreed. So he and I ran down the stairs. And we kind of wanted to go to the back door and get onto the deck where this thing was sitting. And as we did this and got to the door, the girls upstairs was saying, he's disappearing. And so he apparently dissolved.

And we couldn't see anything from the downstairs windows because all the lights were on. And the lights were reflecting us and not letting us see outside. So he was gone. But all six of us saw the same thing. And that was an amazing experience. And that was the experience that queued all of us to start talking about our experiences

that a lot of us had individually. Eventually, we moved to a different house. the night we moved in we had basically you can be to imagine just a house full of boxes I had the kids bedroom and the furniture set up and they were sleeping bed

and we had our bed set up in our master bedroom and my wife who is extremely a light sleeper I mean she could wake up you know from you could open you drop a pin in a different room and she'd be up

she was out like a light she was completely out and the weird thing about it I came into the room at about 11 o'clock at night. She's out like a light. But her neck is really tight in her head. She's lying on her back, and her neck is, her head's pulled back and up,

so she's like her eyes almost looking back at the wall above behind her. And she is just muttering this weird whimpering cry of like, I couldn't even explain. I couldn't even duplicate it. It was just as, whoa, whoa. about the best thing I could do it. I don't know if she remembers because she was asleep and it was happening.

But it was the strangest thing. She's never done that before and never did it afterwards. And it was only the night, the very, very first night, we moved in. So maybe she was channeling something. Maybe she was exercising the bad feelings in that house. But it was strange, and I'll never forget it.

As to what it was that we were experiencing exactly, it's hard for me to really put a name to it because, as I mentioned earlier, I've never felt scared in that house. I never felt frightened. I felt kind of blown away at times, just how weird some of the things were. But I never felt scared. It was more of an energy than a presence. There was just this energy about the house that you just felt. He felt that the second you came in that door, but I don't think it was confined to that house. I kind of felt it around.

the whole area of the house, the backyard, the front yard, even up across the street and above the hill to us and onto the street above, there was just this energy, this, it felt old and it felt buried to me and it made itself known. So if I had to describe it, I guess you would say it was more like a gateway perhaps, this portal that allowed things to come through

and manifest themselves in a variety of ways. All right, we'll be right back after this quick break. So after speaking to both of the parents, what strikes me about this house is that every member of the family seems to be having their own unique experience in there. The kids are seeing things. The mom is finding herself drawn out to wander graveyards in the woods in search for these names. The dad sees this mysterious large furry thing running around the house, chases it into the basement, and he's also hearing the sound.

of distant voices. And then there's this missing time that the parents experience together while playing with a Ouija board. And of course, they all see this one apparition together the night of the fairy house. I don't know if this situation

has anything to do with fairies, but it's the first time this has come up on the show and I thought it would be a good opportunity to begin covering this topic. After all, Otherworld is the name of the supernatural realm in Irish folklore,

where fairies are said to reside. And I know that the real Celtic version of fairies is a lot different than what most people are used to. Researching fairies, it turns out, is kind of difficult. If you hop online and start searching, you will find no shortage of information about fairies. You'll even find teenagers on YouTube that claim to be fairies themselves.

But so much of this information is wrapped up in my modern fiction and pop culture that is just really not helpful. The belief in fairies is ancient, and many cultures have some form of fairies. In this episode, I'm focusing mostly on Ireland and the Celtic origins. Ireland is very, very old. There's evidence of human activity in Ireland 33,000 years ago. Some of the oldest buildings in the world are in Ireland. people have been living there long before recorded history.

If you are born in Ireland, there's a good chance that your family has been living there since the Stone Age, which is wild to think about. In the stories and beliefs go back very, very far, long before recorded history. But lots of these stories, including stories about the fairies, have been passed down and kept throughout the years. I began speaking to a man named Eddie Lanahan, who is one of the people that studies these stories. He's an oral historian of sorts in Ireland who collects and passes down these very, very ancient stories and beliefs. Eddie knows a lot about fairies. In fact, it's kind of crazy, but it turns out Eddie is actually in the documentary that Eileen saw as a kid,

the one that inspired her to get into fairies in the first place. he is one of the main people in that documentary speaking about the history of the fairies. So I'm very lucky to have spoken to this man and met him. He is probably one of the biggest experts on Irish fairies in the world and one of the last oral historians of his kind in Ireland. I'm very grateful he was willing to speak to me. I spoke to him over the phone

in hopes of learning more about the fairies and this is our conversation. All right, I'm joined right now by Eddie Lennahan. He is an Irish author, storyteller, oral historian of sorts. You wear many hats. Why don't you introduce yourself, if you don't mind, Eddie? I'm an idiot.

I must be an idiot because I do all this thing and have been doing it for so long out of my own pocket. and I have never got a grant for any of this kind of work and my wife says you must be stupid to be doing this for so long for no reason, for no appreciable reason but no I my name is Eddie Lennon and I live in County Clear in Ireland

the west of Ireland, the mid-West of Ireland and I have been collecting stories about the seven years and telling more stories. And Eddie, I know there's a name for what you do collecting these stories, but I do not know how to pronounce this. I do not want to try.

Can you help me out here? Shanah Chihirt. Shan in Irish means old. And Shanakirut is the practice of old things, the telling of old things. When did you start doing this? and what exactly does this job entail? For the last 47 years, I started in 1975.

Well, I suppose you have to have the knowledge of history and geography and what I was saying to you earlier, the background in listening to the ghost stories, historical stories, sometimes the murderous stories, you know, the stories of the landlords and what Ireland went through at the hands of these landlords. And the history of Ireland, God almighty, why are so many Irish people in America? If people really appreciated the famine of 1845, 1848, when a million and a half people died in Ireland, it's shocking.

It's shocking. But people, even young people in Ireland today, don't appreciate that at all. We're all used to the old film stuff where nowadays anything can be seen. can be seen to be realistic in films because it's, you know, the science fiction and all this gibberish on television. It's a different thing entirely when you meet people who are down to earth, there's no science fiction effects or anything else. It's just plain, ordinary telling of what a person saw and experienced. They're not out for any dramatic effects. Take it as it is. and listen. And that can be frightening. You don't have to have any monsters or anything like this gibberish kind of stuff. No, no. And I'll tell you, the darkness, the quiet darkness can sometimes be more frightening than anything, any special effects. If you have to walk, and sometimes I have done it, to walk a quiet road after listening to some of these people, it would frighten the living life out of you.

to have to even go the short distance back to your car. I tell you, you'll be looking back over your shoulder to see what's following you. Eddie, I relate to that probably more than you realize. In fact, I think what we do is not all that different, honestly. So I wanted to talk to you about today are fairies. I know almost nothing about this topic. How many of these stories that you have collected and archived over the years involve fairies? I have collected

only knows well old people in Ireland tended not to call them the fairies. They had many different names of them, the other crowd. The boys, them, because of respect. Respect. Medina Ushla, the noble people.

Bonnerchwik, the people of the hills, they had many different names for the fairies because there were real people. And to many people today to many people today they won't interfere with

fairy places. You don't build a house for example on a fairy path if you do you're going to have trouble in that house you may have to abandon the house. You don't interfere with a fairy fort. There's over 45,000 fairy forts in Ireland. There are those big

circular enclosures with white thorn bushes growing up out of them. You don't interfere with a lone white thorn bush, a hawthorn. There's plenty evidence for people who did and who have suffered for it. Other family, it could cost you your life. Irish fairies aren't the little Walt Disney fairies

with the little sparkly wings and the pointy ears. That's a lot of rubbish. The Irish fairies are quite, quite different. Eddie, you actually, you bring up a really good point because I personally never really knew anything about fairies outside of what you just described. because in the United States, you know, you really only encounter fairies in fairy tales, right?

I mean, or Disney movies, things like that. So I know almost nothing. Perhaps we should back up a little bit. What are fairies in the ancient traditional sense? What are the beliefs? What's the backstory of the fairies? There is a couple of different versions of it. One of the versions, I have it there in the book,

it is the story that people used to tell around the fire at night before television or radio or electricity look people had to be amused at night in the long winter nights between October and March half of the year is dark here, you know, very, very much so and there was room for fun, fun and humour naturally and one of the stories they used to tell about how the fairies came to be was

they were the angels thrown out of heaven All right, that was one. But there was the mythological story about they were one of the races that invaded Ireland. And they were the ones that were conquered by another race that came in after them. And as a result of the great battle of Ventry, they had to withdraw under the ground into the dark places. and they only come up at various times such as Halloween and May Day you know the turning points of the year

and that's the time of the year that if you happen to meet them then you might get into trouble and people talk about the other world and where they're talking about hopefully the dead person is going to happiness blah blah blah now the fairies

belong to the same world except, except, except they're not going to heaven because there's a big chunk of Irish folklore that deals with their attempts back into heaven. Remember, they're the angels that are thrown out of heaven according to the story I was talking about and that's what makes them dangerous because they try constantly to take human beings

to get that little bit of blood that you'll get them back. into heaven because it's only human beings that can get into heaven. People who have blood in their veins. Now, the fairies have no blood and they are always trying to get human blood. A little drop of it even would hopefully fool St. Peter or whoever is in charge of the gates of heaven that they could prove that they are human and get into heaven again. Now, of course, it will never happen. It's a forlorned hope. and there are many Irish fairy stories proving that that very thing makes them so vicious

that they know they can never get into heaven again. Now, how you can save yourself from them? You need a crucifix or iron? Steel, because there are certain things that the fairies are afraid of. Something holy, something dirty, they're very clean, something red, the color of blood.

Iron or steel. They said that the thing that will protect your best of all from the fairies is a black-handed knife. If you have a black-handed knife with you, you're safe. Not to use it, but just to have it. And they'll know and they'll keep away from you. Salt, fire, or if you have none of those six things and you meet them, run. But you'll never be able to outrun them. But if you can get as far as a stream, flowing water, they can't cross flowing water.

If you can get across a stream, you're safe. Those seven things. So, I mean, this is a long way from the nonsensical stuff to children go on about the fairies. These are dangerous, dangerous things. Wow. This is a lot different than I expected. This is a lot more frightening than I expected it would be, if I'm being quite honest with you. Well, after 47 years of collecting stories and listening to the old people,

now, not all of the old people, naturally, but I have met some extraordinary, interesting old people who absolutely believed in the fairies, some of them who told me they met the fairies, and I believed them, because I knew these people very, very well. And the most frightening answer I ever got from an old man, He only died three years ago at the age of 100, with all his senses intact. I think I have 100 and something hours of him recorded an amazing man.

A little bit of a philosopher, if I might say, in the best sense of that word. And he met the paris, he said. And my first question to him naturally was, Mickey, I said, what did they look like? and I can still remember the way he looked into the fire place and then he turned around to me and he said person sitting beside you he said or standing beside you could be one of them that's a frightening answer

they're shapeshifters could take an animal shape they could take a human shape but they'll do you no harm if you mind your own business if you provoke them you're on a loser because how can you win against people who can like that, if they wish. You can't. So people who believe in fairies, like, how does this take form in their lives? Like, what do they do or not do in terms of superstitions, like, to protect themselves from this?

It does. You leave them alone. You don't interfere, and they won't bother you if you don't bother them. But you hear a lot of this nonsense. What can I do to bring the fairies into my life? You can't. They are their own people. You can't do anything to bring them into your life, except if you anger them, then you'll bring them into your life,

but you will regret it. You will regret it, and you don't want to do that because it could cost you your life. It will certainly cost you your health. You don't want to do that. Let them be. Let them be. keep, keep away from them, because there are a separate race of people entirely. And there are so many

stories to prove that of people who interfered with them and had no look for it. That is the Irish belief all the way through. Okay. Actually, you really, you kind of answered a question that I was meaning to ask you. The reason I'm calling you in the first place is this story I'm working on, this family. I emailed you a lot of details about, the story. This family has a lot of strange stuff going on in their house, but they think that it started when the daughter started building fairy houses, and she did that because she saw a documentary that you were actually in yourself. You were one of the people. I know the one. It was by a Canadian film maker, which was very well done. I actually just watched it myself on YouTube. It's called

the Fairy Faith. If anybody's curious, it's really good. But yeah, she started building these fairy houses and essentially begging the fairies, or I believe she was just begging anything to come in and live in these houses, live in their house, and all this weird stuff in their house started happening. What do you think of all this? Yes, I remember what you said.

I would think that some of that was imagination. I really do, because there is no chance that the fairies, would answer that kind of query to come and live in a fairy house. Not the fairies, the Irish fairies, no chance. It might be some other kind of a spirit in which, you know, spiritualism does exist, and that's a dangerous business. Spiritualism is not a thing that I would ever get involved with,

because, you know, these tarot cards and all this kind of stuff, you don't know what you're inviting to yourself when you get involved with that. Absolutely. I would have nothing to do with that myself. And what I do in regard to the fairies and that, I describe with stories and that. But even there with the fairies and that, I would never invite, we'll say,

or any such thing. I visit fairy forts. I photograph, I measure, but I would never bring anything out of a fairy fort. Never. Never. I shall respect. Always respect for these places. Okay, that's interesting. So you think that there's, no matter how hard she would have asked, she couldn't have really invited fairies into their house. What did you think of everything else that was going on in their home? Because there were so many different things happening all at the same time. I sent over. like a big list of it.

Did any of that sound familiar to you or something, anything related to stories that you've heard before? I read it. I read it. And I came across in Kerry,

where I do come from originally, something similar. Now, not the same, similar. I knew, I still do know, because the house is still there, a house that was built on a ferry path. Now, the man made a mistake. He should have known

better, but he was a bit stubborn. You know, I'll build where I like. This is my property, and I'll build where I don't believe in that whole bloody nonsense. Now, you can't, you can't do that with powers that you don't understand. You may not believe in them, but But respect, as I say, goes a long way. The house was built on a ferry path. Because it was built where it shouldn't have been built, everything started going wrong. Everything in that house started going wrong. At night, the dresser, the tables and chairs, started clattering around the house, falling around the house.

There was banging noises, there was doors opening and shutting, until eventually the old man saw his mistake. Now, it's a long story, but eventually once they had freedom to pass through, like they always did, that cured it. And things you can't see, you don't have much chance against. I would always advise people, look, even if you don't believe, keep a little corner of your mind

which has a question mark in it Okay, so even if this girl could not have invited the fairies in hypothetically if this was something that involved fairies like what kind of mischief or disturbances in the house would be tell-tale signs of it having something to do with fairies Mischief is the wrong word. Okay. Because mischief gives the impression that they're little playful figures,

that they're playful little figures, and that they're there for our amusement. And they're not. They're not. They would ignore us entirely because the impression I always got from what I heard from old people was, we're only by the way to them. We introduce,

As long as we keep out of their way, they're not interested in us. They're not interested at all in us. If we manage to stumble across something that they are either doing or that belongs to them, then, then they'll interfere. But to be thinking that you can invite them in for your own entertainment, it shows that you know nothing about them. Does any of the things that I described in the house sound familiar to you, even if it's not related to fairies? A little quick rundown again of what the things were.

They heard... One thing that I thought was interesting is they heard the sound of like a room of people talking. They would just be sitting in their house and hear voices, but like hundreds of them at the same time, quietly. The other thing is they saw a little... That comes from... from a ghost stories. I know a place. I do know a place down in Kerry,

where I come from, where there is a house and that very thing does happen. Very same thing. And local people have told me, now I haven't heard it, but local people have told me that it's a very, very frightening place.

And the house was done up reconstructed because it had fallen into a ruin at quite an expense it was done up and they couldn't live in it because of the voices

and because of the and they recognised the voices of the people who were dead before previous generation they were named and eventually they had to abandon the house that had to abandon the house

that had been done up at quite an expense. And the houses now falling into decay again. That's really interesting. I mean, yeah, maybe it had nothing to do with the fairy houses at all. But it had some... No, no, no, this one hadn't. This one hadn't. No, no, in my story even, you know.

I would think not. I would think not. That sounds to me like a house that was involved with something done. Yeah. Maybe while she was trying to invite the fairies, she invited something else. What I would think needs very much to be examined in America is houses like that from the period of the civil war. Because terrible deeds were done during the civil war in various houses. And I don't think that that has really been examined at all in America.

Horrible deeds were done in individual houses. I think if that was examined, you would find that some of the places that that army marched through, you would find that some of the places there they left of stain, and maybe like the house that is being described there in what you sent me because of the violence that was committed. This was built on top of battle sites from the Civil War, where this was... Was it?

Yeah. Well, now, how did I know that? I think you're... Actually, don't know. I know I didn't mention in the email. And I bet that is a thing that's worth following up. In other places, I mean. Very interesting.

I would think that that would about sum it up. This is really interesting. It sounds like this might not have anything to do with the fairies, but I think you ended up. I think not. I think not. Well, Eddie, Thank you so much for talking to me today. Is there anything that you would like my listeners to know about fairies before we go? They were real.

They were to be respected. That there were nothing like this nonsense that you hear from in the films. That there weren't these pointy ears, little creatures, the delicate, translucent wings. Not at all. They were like us. They bought. They sold. They played games.

They danced. They played music just like us in so many ways, but you let them mind their own business. There were a separate race of people, and they interacted with us only occasionally. They would do you a favor if you help them in their hour of need, and sometimes they were in need. But what did I say? Like I said to you earlier, if you interfered with them when they didn't need you, you took your life in your their own hands. They were good friends, but there were very bad enemies. All right, thank you so much to Eddie Lenehan for speaking with me. By the way, Eddie has written

many books, and if you want to check any of those out, I'd recommend meeting the other crowd. And the documentary that Eileen watched as a kid is called The Fairy Faith, and you could find it on YouTube in many other places. I watched it myself, and I thought it was really interesting. It seems that this situation is not connected to the fairies. And after speaking with Eddie and learning more about what actual fairies are, I'd say that the family is pretty lucky that that's the case. I did think it was really interesting that at the end, Eddie brought up the Civil War. I never told him anything about where this house was located.

I never brought up the war. But the family mentioned to me quite a bit that this town was the site of something. major civil war landmarks. I mean, obviously, this is Virginia. There were civil war battles happening all over the place, and they told me that there's basically signs of it everywhere, not to mention the fact that they were describing this man they saw on the porch as the Civil War man. Personally, I don't think that's the entire answer either. If I had to guess what was going on, my hunch is that maybe something was already taking place on this land or in the house when they moved in. And then when Eileen started going out and making these offers,

and begging for something to come in the house, and the parents did the same thing, basically, on the Ouija board. Maybe the fairies didn't answer, but perhaps something else did. By the way, as if this situation couldn't get any weirder, Aiden's dad told me that when they moved into the next house, the one after this one, they found out that the previous owners killed each other in some kind of gun battle, like a shootout. and he had to fix all sorts of damage on the walls.

However, that house was not haunted. He said that despite the past, it was a perfectly fine house, and they had no issues living there. This is a lot of weird stuff happening to a very normal family, a very, very strange story. Anyway, I was so interested in hearing Eddie's stories, and I wanted to hear more, but I knew it would be too much for this episode, especially considering this does not have anything to do with the fairies, most likely. So I decided I wanted to do another interview with Eddie. To hear more stories about the fairies and old Irish stories,

I'm going to do that on Patreon. Hopefully this week, if you want to hear that, you could sign up at patreon.com slash Otherworld. This has been episode 67, The Fairy House Part 2, and you've been listening to Otherworld. Otherworld is executive produced and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner. Our theme song is by Cobra Man.

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