Rambling Lemurian

Do faeries exist?

It’s not often that I get a free weekend to myself, but I was blessed with one this past weekend. My wife took our daughter on an impromptu trip to southern Illinois, leaving me at home with the dog. Friday evening after they left, I did what one would expect out of a suburban dad left alone at home. I got Mexican food, weed, and turned on Netflix (to watch Arcane), and finished reading The Mothman Prophecies. I usually stay up late even though I know I’ll have to be up by 7:15 at the latest to get my daughter a bagel or whatever, so I was looking forward to the opportunity to be depraved and sleep in as long as possible. Of course that resulted in me waking up at 6:55am for no reason other than the fact that my brain hates me.

Saturday was a day for nostalgia. I met up with a couple friends from my old job for lunch. We text most days but I hadn’t seen them in a long time. Sometimes as I sit in my home office lamenting my boring, stagnant, and fully-remote job I miss my time working at my old company. The only thing keeping me from trying to find a way back there is to remind myself that I’d rather not work a job that almost exclusively caters to the MAGA crowd. We met up in Andersonville. When I lived on my own, I had a condo in Sheridan Park, about a mile south of Andersonville. So I spent quite a bit of time in that area on my own or on failed dates. I always enjoyed walking up and down Clark looking through the different shops, bookstores, restaurants, and bars. Now that I’m in my mid-30s, married with a kid, and in the suburbs, I regret how much time I wasted back then. I wish I had done something about my depression and social anxiety back then. Maybe if I had embraced my Weird in my 20s my whole life would have turned out different. Or it’d be the same but with better stories to tell.

Anyway, after lunch I walked down to Uncharted Books, a used bookstore known for their canine employee, Romona, their “secret” reading room, and the ghost that supposedly haunts the building. Unfortunately I didn’t find anything worth buying this time. Shame on me for assuming that a haunted bookstore would have more books about the paranormal, I guess. My trip to another icon of Andersonville, Women and Children First, also proved fruitless in my quest to expand my new paranormal/high-strangeness book collection. I conSOLEd myself with a trip to Alamo Shoes to get a new pair of Merrell walking shoes for the fall, and headed home.

I don’t really smoke weed. I did once in my early 20s or late teens. I don’t remember a lot of it except that I was blitzed and we were watching The Matrix. I didn’t particularly like it, but I didn’t hate it. As a boring loner in a state where weed was still illegal at the time, I just didn’t have much opportunity to partake much after that. For the past few years, since Illinois legalized marijuana, I’ve dabbled with gummies but don’t enjoy the delayed effect and inconsistency. Also the last few times I took strong gummies, I kept thinking I was seeing ghosts. I distinctly recall one time feeling my dog brush against my leg but when I looked down he wasn’t there. He was sleeping on the bed in the next room. Marijuana isn’t hallucinogenic, so maybe it was just making me more anxious. Or opening myself up to the other realm?? Either way, I was a bit creeped out and didn’t enjoy it. I’ve tried smoking on my own a couple times very unsuccessfully too. But with my free weekend I figured I should give it another shot. Maybe if I can manage it this time, not having to worry too much about the odor or the possibility of being called upstairs to put my daughter back to sleep then it can be a better experience for me. I got myself some small pre-rolls and a lighter in preparation of a Saturday night of solitude, pizza, nachos, and Blackhawks hockey.

I ended up not feeling much of anything. I cautiously got through one pre-roll and felt basically nothing. I went back inside to binge on my food and hockey, and later tried again. This time I tried to focus on taking deeper inhales. Again, not as much of an effect as I expected. Maybe I just got some weak stuff, which ultimately is good since I’m a novice. Even though I was kind of disappointed that I wasn’t “high” and therefore would likely not see or feel anything “weird”, I was weirdly proud of the fact that I smoked a couple (small) joints without having a coughing and dry-heaving fit.

I “slept in” on Sunday morning, all the way to 7:55am. I decided that after a weekend of dietary debauchery I would do something healthy, and take my dog to a local forest preserve. We headed over to Caldwell Woods. The last time I remember being at Caldwell Woods, I was roughly 12 and I went rollerblading there with my friend. Otherwise it was basically new to me, and more importantly full of new smells for my dog. We wandered off the main path into the more wooded area that followed the river. It was a typical walk through the forest. The dog was enjoying all the smells as usual. I was enjoying the solitude and fresh air (as fresh as you can get on the edge of Chicago), while listening to an episode of “Hi, Strangeness”. Then it got slightly strange.

I came across this dope tree which acted as a natural gate. Immediately after passing under this branch, I saw a man coming towards me. He looked like just a normal middle-aged man. You can see him in the distance of the pic above, walking away. (I had turned around to take this pic after he passed me). We did the normal slight-head-nod-of-acknowledge that’s typical of strangers passing each other. But there was something slightly unsettling about him. I cannot give any rational description of that feeling, but just the general feeling that something was off. I continued on though, and a couple minutes later came to another unsettling sight: a collapsed bridge

This pic was taken after I walked past it. I walked between the two pillars on the left, where there was what appeared to be fresh graffiti. Pretty cool, on its face, but again there was just something unsettling about walking through those pillars, as if I was walking through a gate into private property and was being watched. I paused and looked around for a bit but didn’t see or hear anybody. That man I had passed was the only other person I saw on this leg of the trail, on either side of the river. The dog seemed undisturbed though so I pressed on. I walked several more minutes before reaching what looked like the end of the trail, as it reached a road that crossed the river. At that point I turned around. What was odd was that the road bridge was fairly busy with car traffic, but as I turned away from it to head back, it immediately got quiet. I hadn’t moved farther away but it was odd that as soon as it was out of sight I didn’t hear any of the cars, despite being no more than 200 feet from it. Also another slightly odd thing was that as I turned around, my dog got more excited than normal. Like he was happy to head back and leave this area. He wasn’t showing any fear or hesitancy so far, but still seemed relieved that I was turning around.

We walked for a bit in silence. I thought maybe since we were well off the main trails and there were no other people around we’d see some deer, as they are all over the forest preserves here and I’d seen some tracks in the mud. I carefully looked through the grasses and shrubs and trees while walking along the relatively well-defined trail but didn’t spot any. As we walked I quietly said to my dog “I guess there are no deer here today”. He didn’t seem to care as he sniffed and walked on. And then I had a random thought pop into my head. “There wouldn’t be any fae here either”.

I’m not quite sure why I thought that. I wasn’t thinking of faeries when I came to the forest. I was listening to a podcast about high strangeness in Wisconsin earlier in this walk (I had turned it off earlier), but nothing related to faeries or hidden folk. But for whatever reason, it popped into my head. Less than 10 seconds later, as I was walking on this obviously defined and clear dirt walking trail, I became stuck in a thorny shrub. The thorns caught onto my jacket and pants, and nicked my finger as I pulled myself out of it. For a second I cursed myself for being careless enough to walking into thorns. But immediately I wondered how I even managed to do that. The trail was clear just a second ago. It’s the same trail I was on earlier and it’s wide enough to walk shoulder-to-shoulder with someone and not touch the plants on either side. How did I manage to walk straight into a spot completely blocked by thorns, as if it wasn’t there a few seconds earlier?

I looked around and realized I was no longer right next to the river as I had been this entire walk, and as I had been right before I was entangled in the thorns. I was about 50 feet away from the main trail somehow, the river not even easily visible. I headed toward the river, when I became entangled again. Not by thorns this time though. My dog’s leash suddenly was wrapped around a thick stick in an annoying pattern. My dog was walking straight at the time, and I had zero issues with his leash on this trip prior to this even when he would try to go off-trail to follow a scent or a squirrel. But this time it was tightly and inexplicable wrapped around this stick. I had to spend some time untying it by hand before we could get moving again. At this point I said to myself “ok, maybe there are some fae here. Sorry guys”.

I only recently learned about “fae”, or at least contemporary interpretations of faeries. I didn’t know until about a year ago that a lot of people believe in their existence. My mental image of a fairy was the Disney kind, little human-like beings with wings that are magical. It wasn’t until I got into my most recent interest in the paranormal and high strangeness and modern folklore that I learned about “the fae” or the hidden folk and just how mischievous they could be. But a couple things I distinctly remember about them that I learned from the Six Degrees of John Keel podcast is that if you don’t respect and acknowledge them, they can ensnare you in a forest and make you disoriented. And that’s basically what happened to me. Is it a coincidence that right after the random idea of faeries not being present there I get ensnared on a thorny bush that I swear was not there seconds earlier? Or that my dog’s leash was inexplicably tied around a big stick seconds after that? Maybe. Probably. I still wouldn’t say I necessarily believe in faeries or the hidden folk. But I can’t say for sure they don’t exist.

We got back on the main trail, crossed the collapsed bridge and the swooping tree gate without any more annoyances. Shortly afterwards, I came across a perfect bird’s nest, maybe 6 feet off the ground right over the path. I’m not sure how I didn’t notice it before.

Also rather curiously, was that as soon as I crossed that swooping tree gate, it’s like the rest of the forest came to life again. I hadn’t noticed it earlier, but the birds were gone after I saw the solitary man and cross the tree gate the first time. But now that I crossed over back towards the main path, the birds were back along with the squirrels. And suddenly there were a lot more people around. Cyclists were on a path parallel to mine across the river. Families with young kids were exploring just like I was but only on the other side of the river. The rest of the hike was uneventful as we were retracing our steps. We stopped to watch the ducks for a bit. Apparently they congregated near a bridge hoping for generous humans to toss down some treats.

In the last bit of wooded area before we reached the parking lot, I saw the last strange thing of the day. A black squirrel darted in front of us, and onto a large diagonal tree branch. It’s rare to see completely black squirrels in my area but they aren’t unheard of. The squirrel chittered at us and got my dog more riled up than at any point on this walk. I kept watching this squirrel and seconds later we were surrounded by black squirrels. I counted at least six, all jumping and running through the trees directly above us. They were too fast to get a picture, so I moved along before my dog broke free of his harness.

We got home, watched the Bears lose again, and I won big on an impulsive bet I made earlier in the week.

I still don’t know if faeries exist. Maybe I’ll go back there and see if anything else slightly strange happens. Maybe my black squirrel friends will be back to say hello. But that’s my story, as mundane as it is. My only advice though, is to respect the forest. You never know who or what is watching.