Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact - Above Top Secret

Mrs. J. MacGregor who keeps the key to the old churchyard where there is a tomb to Kirk,though many say there is nothing in it but a coffin filled with stones, told me Kirk was takeninto the Fairy Knoll, which she pointed to just across a little valley in front of us, and is thereyet, for the hill is full of caverns and in them the "good people" have their homes. And sheadded that Kirk appeared to a relative of his after he was taken.Evans-Wentz, who reports this interesting story, made further inquiries regarding the circumstancesof Kirk's death. He went to see the successor to Kirk in Aberfoyle, Reverend Taylor, who clarifiedthe story:At the time of his disappearance people said he was taken because the fairies weredispleased with him for disclosing their secrets in so public manner as he did. At all events,it seems likely that Kirk was taken ill very suddenly with something like apoplexy while onthe Fairy Knoll, and died there. I have searched the presbyter books and find no record ofhow Kirk's death really took place, but of course there is not the least doubt of his bodybeing in the grave.Kirk believed in the ability of the Good People to perform abductions, and this idea was sowidespread that it has come down to us through a variety of channels. This fact enables us toexamine in detail four aspects of fairy lore that directly relate to our study: (1) the conditions andpurpose of the abductions; (2) the cases of release from Magonia and the forms taken by the elves'gratitude when the abducted human being had performed some valuable service during his stay; (3)the belief in the kidnapping activities of the fairy people; and (4) what I shall call the relativisticaspects of the trip to Magonia.Hartland reports that a Swedish book published in 1775 contains a legal statement, solemnly swornon April 12, 1671, by the husband of a midwife who was taken to fairyland to assist a troll's wife ingiving birth to a child. The author of the statement seems to have been a clergyman.On the authority of this declaration we are called on to believe that the event recordedactually happened in the year 1660. Peter Rahm alleges that he and his wife were at theirfarm one evening late when there came a little man, swart of face and clad in grey, whobegged the declarant's wife to come and help his wife then in labour. The declarant, seeingthat they had to do with a Troll, prayed over his wife, blessed her, and bade her in God'sname go with the stranger. She seemed to be borne along by the wind.It is reported that she came home "in the same manner," having refused any food offered to herwhile in the troll's company.In another tale, the midwife's husband accompanies her through the forest. They are guided by the"earthman" – the gnome who has requested their help. They go through a moss door, then a woodendoor, and later through a door of shining metal. A stairway leads them inside the earth, to amagnificent chamber where the "earthwife" is resting. Kirk reports that in a case whose principalshe personally knew the abducted woman found the home of the Little People filled with light,although she could not see any lamp or fire.Reverend Kirk also says that later, "in the company of another clergyman," he visited a woman,then forty years old, and asked her questions concerning her knowledge of the fairies. It wasrumored that for a number of years she had taken almost no nourishment, and that she often stayedlate in the fields looking after her sheep, that she met there and talked with people she did not know,and that one night she had fallen asleep on a hill and had been carried away into another placebefore sunrise. This woman, says Kirk, was always melancholy and silent.Magonia, as it appears in such tales, is sometimes a remote country, an invisible island, somefaraway place one can reach only by a long journey. Indeed, in some tales, it is a celestial country,as in the Indian story quoted earlier. This parallels the belief in the extraterrestrial origin of UFOs so