Fate of the World @ 13
The weather that summer was bad on the whole, but it cleared
enough on occasions for Hodson and the girls to walk in the glen or
sit by the beck as Hodson took notes on what he and the girls could
see. The whole glen, according to Hodson, was swarming with many
forms of elemental life, including wood elves, gnomes, and goblins,
with even the rarer undines floating on the stream.
Hodson would pick out a psychic object, point in its direction, and
ask the girls for a description. He says that within the linuts of their
powers the girls' descriptions were correct but that their powers of
clairvoyance were more limited than his.
On August 12, as all three sat on a fden tree in a beech grove near
Cottingley, Hodson observed the girls as they watched two tiny wood
elves racing toward them. The elves, as Elsie described them, wore a
tight one-piece skin, shiny as if wet; their hands and feet were dispro-
portionately large, their legs thin, ears large and pointed, mouths wide
and toothless. Pulling up short, the elves stared at the humans with ev-
ident amusement but no fear.Then, as Frances approached them, they
withdrew, as if in alarm.
In a field Hodson and the girls spotted figures the size of gnomes,
making weird faces and grotesque contortions.To Elsie these forms ap-
peared singly, one dissolving into another.To Hodson's more powerful
clairvoyance, the whole group was visible at once.
Hodson noted in his booklet,"Elsie sees a beautiful fairy quite near;
it is nude, with golden hair, and is kneeling in the grass, loolung this
way with hands on knees, smiling at us. It has a very beautiful face, and
is concentrating its gaze on me.This figure came within five feet of us,
and afier being described, faded away."
Hodson noted a group of female figures playing a game somewhat
resembling the children's game of oranges-and-lemons, dancing in a
ring "like the grand chain in Lancers." The result of the game appeared
to be the formation of a vortex "which streamed upwards to an appar-
ent distance of four or five feet above the ground; and in those parts of
the field where the grass was thicker and darker there appeared to be a
correspondingly extra activity among the fairy creatures."
In the beck itself, near a large rock, by a slight fd of the water,
Hodson spotted a water sprite, entirely nude, which he described as of