Fairies: Real Encounters with the Little People

Janet Bord gathers reported encounters with fairies and other ‘little people’, asking where such meetings are said to happen, how they begin and what witnesses claim to have seen or heard. The accounts range from rural sightings to encounters involving diminutive figures, strange visitors and beings associated with other worlds.

Alongside individual testimonies, Bord considers older explanations for fairy belief, including connections with fallen angels, pagan gods and traditional fairyland. The book also discusses the Cottingley photographs and Arthur Conan Doyle’s interest in them. Some reports describe children seeing gnome-like figures travelling in fairy cars, while another recounts handless, alien-like visitors using translator machines, placing modern encounter narratives beside older folklore.