Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact - Above Top Secret

expectations as if they were mere toys.It is difficult to come to grips with the UFO phenomenon. Although it clearly evolves throughphases, its effects are diffuse. We have to rely on legends, hearsay, and extrapolations.Evans-Wentz, as we have seen, found several people in Celtic countries who had seen the Gentry orhad known people who were taken by fairies. In Brittany, he had much greater difficulty:The general belief in the interior of Brittany is that the fees once existed, but that theydisappeared as their country was changed by modern conditions. In the region of the Meneand of Erce (Ille-et-Vilaine) it is said that for more than a century there have been no feesand on the sea coast where it is firmly believed that the fees used to inhabit certain grottoesin the cliffs, the opinion is that they disappeared at the beginning of the last century. Theoldest Bretons say that their parents or grandparents often spoke about having seen fees, butvery rarely do they say that they themselves have seen fees. M. Paul Sebillot found only twowho had. One was an old needlewoman of Saint-Cast, who had such fear of fees that if shewas on her way to do some sewing in the country and it was night she always took a longcircuitous route to avoid passing near a field known as the Couvent des Fees. The other wasMarie Chehu, a woman 88 years old.The central question in the analysis of the UFO phenomenon has always been that of the controllingintelligence behind the objects' apparently purposeful behavior. For the time being, let me simplystate again that the modern, global belief in flying saucers and their occupants is identical to anearlier belief in the Good People. The entities described as the pilots of the craft areindistinguishable from the elves, sylphs, and lutins of the Middle Ages. Through the observations ofunidentified flying objects, we are concerned with an agency our ancestors knew well and regardedwith awe: we are prying into the affairs of the Secret Commonwealth.Can we establish with certainty that the two beliefs are indeed identical? I believe we can. I havealready given several examples of the means of transportation used by the sylphs. The ability of theGentry to cross the continents cannot have escaped the reader's attention. But I have not yet drawnfrom popular folklore the stories that support most directly the idea that strange flying objects havebeen seen throughout history in connection with the Little People. Let us clear up this point now.Aerial Races: Farfadets and Sleagh MaithAs late as 1850, one race of lutins survived in France, in the region of Poitou, which has been inrecent years a favorite landing area for flying saucers. The lutins of Poitou were known as farfadets,and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris contains several delightful accounts of their mischievousdeeds.What were the main characteristics of the fadets or farfadets? They were little men, very black andhairy. All day long they lived in caves, and at night they liked to get close to the farms. Theliterature reports that their favorite pastime was to play tricks on terrified witnesses. Their dwellingswere located with some precision. C. Puichaud, for instance, has reported in a lecture that farfadetslived for a long time at La Boulardiere near Terves, Deux-Sevres, in underground tunnels. At LaBoissiere, the inhabitants describe the fadets as hairy dwarfs who played all sorts of pranks.One night in the 1850s, near the shore of the Egray River, a group of women talked outside untilabout midnight. As they were returning to the village – they had just crossed a bridge – they heard aterrible noise and saw something that froze their blood. Some object – which, for lack of a betterterm, they called a "chariot with whining wheels" – was speeding up the hill with a marvelousvelocity. It was pulled by the farfadets. The terrified women hung together as they saw theapparition. One of them, although half-dead with fear, made the sign of the cross. The strangechariot leaped up over the vineyard and was lost in the night. The women hurried home and told thestory to their husbands, who decided to investigate. They bravely went to the spot as soon as the sun