Two Encounters with Pukwudgies in Lawrence, Massachusetts

One of the nice things about writing this blog is that sometimes people share strange stories with me. Last week someone I'll call Miss S. wrote and told me about some unusual things that happened to her family thirty years ago. She said I could share them so here they are.

The first incident happened to Miss S.'s brother Bob. He was just a child at the time (maybe seven or eight years old) and was watching TV with some cousins at his grandparent's house in Lawrence, Massachusetts. They were sitting on the couch, which faced the TV but had its back towards a doorway into another room.

As they sat there watching TV Bob felt someone pull on the back of his hair. He thought it was his cousin Sandra and he told her to stop. Sandra denied pulling his hair. A few seconds later he felt it again. Again he yelled at his cousin, who still said she didn't do it. A few more seconds passed and Bob once again felt someone tug on his air.

He turned around angrily, expecting to see one his cousins hiding behind the couch. But his anger turned to surprise when he saw who was there. Instead of a cousin, he saw a little old lady with long white hair. And when I write little, I mean quite small - she was only two or three feet tall. When she saw Bob looking at her she quickly started to run towards the front door of the house. She disappeared into thin air before she reached it.

Bob was understandably surprised by this, but when he blurted out what he had seen his grandmother told him not to worry about it. "Don't worry," she said. "They're friendly.'

The second incident occurred one day when Bob's mother took him and his cousins, including Sandra, out to the movies. After the movie was over they returned to their grandparents' house. The door was locked. No one was supposed to be home so they were surprised to see through the window that a lamp was on in the living room. Sandra peered through the window to see if she could see her grandparents. She jumped back from the window and screamed "I am getting the f***k out of here!"

Bob's mother stepped up to the window and looked inside. She saw a very short old man with long white hair run out of the living room. She gathered the kids together and they quickly left.

Miss S. says that her brother and mother still talk about these two incidents. They say that in retrospect they should have known something odd was happening in the grandparents' home. They would sometimes find the tin of coffee opened and spilled onto the floor, and bottles of Coke stored in the attic opened and half drunk. When asked about these things the grandparents would just shrug and say they had rats, but can rats take the metal caps off glass bottles?

In her email Miss S. wrote that she thought these were encounters with pukwudgies, the magical little people from local Native American lore. The beings her family members saw were short, fast and had very long hair, which certainly matches some of the descriptions from local Algonquin lore. That lore also describes them as being mischievous but shy, which matches these two encounters.

It's important to note that historically Native American lore from New England includes a wide variety of little people known by many names. It was only in the late 20th and early 21st century that pukwudgie, a word of Ojibwa origin, has become widely used to describe them. I use it because it is a convenient term that people are familiar with.

I think it's also important to point out that Miss S.'s grandparents, mother, and brother are of Mi'kmaq heritage. The Mi'kmaq are a Native American group originally from Canada's Maritime provinces and parts of Maine. Mi'kmaq legends tell of small beings called the wiklatmuj or pukulatmuj. They enjoy playing tricks, including tying knots in people's hair. Was this what the old woman was trying to do to  Bob? 

It seems possible that since the grandparents were Mi'kmaq they weren't worried about having the little people in their house. They understood that they were just part of life. A family of European descent unfamiliar with these beings would probably have called an exorcist!

Most local Native American groups tried to foster good relationships with the pukwudgies. Like any neighbor, they could be malicious when treated poorly and helpful when treated right. Miss S. says she has never seen the little people herself, but when she moves to a new house she always does something her mother taught her. She leaves a small spice cake on the back steps the first night she moves in. She says her house is peaceful and her garden very productive.

It may seem strange that pukwudgies would appear in someone's house since they are usually associated with woods and forests. The grandparents' house was in an urban part of Lawrence, so it was definitely not a rural environment. However, I have found at least two other cases where a small, fairy-type being has appeared in someone's home. In one case, a house in Somerville was allegedly haunted by a troll. I've also read about a house in Weymouth that might have been inhabited by a mischievous pukwudgie. Are some accounts of haunted houses actually caused by pukwudgies instead of ghosts? That's probably an unanswerable question.

Perry Boney, the Man Who Might Have Been A Fairy

Well, although this winter has been quite mild last night was still pretty chilly so I made Indian pudding and roasted buttercup squash for dinner. Pretty soon it will be too warm for roasting and I'll have to move on from wintry foods.

My last few posts have been about grim topics, so in anticipation of the slowly approaching spring here's a cheery yet weird legend from Connecticut. It's about a man named Perry Boney.

I had read about Perry Boney years ago in David Phillips's book Legendary Connecticut (1992), but then filed that information away deep inside my brain and basically forgot all about it. However, a few months ago a friend from the Fairy Investigation Society pointed me towards an online reference to Mr. Boney and suggested it might be something to research for the Society.

As you read this story, ask yourself this question: was Perry Boney human, or something else entirely?

Perry Boney lived during the early 20th century in a rural, mountainous area of Connecticut called the Great Basin. The area was populated mainly by lumbermen and a few farmers, although the ruins of old mills and industrial sites littered the landscape.

Neither a farmer nor a lumberjack, Boney made his living operating a very tiny general store near Green Pond Mountain. His store was really no more than a booth in the middle of the woods, and was so small that other than its proprietor it could only accommodate one adult or two children (and only if they were small). A painting of Custer's final battle (which was an ad for a whiskey company) hung on one wall.

Portulaca

A tiny path with a gate led to the store past petunias, candytuft, and portulaca, the latter growing in old iron stove. According to locals Boney planted the portulaca every year in honor of a female sweetheart who had died. No one knew who she was, though.

No one was really sure where Boney came from either. One day he and his tiny store were just suddenly there, almost magically. Small children were convinced he could talk with the fairies that lived near the mountain brooks, and some thought he was a fairy himself. He certainly looked the part. He was small and thin, with wild unruly hair, and large brown eyes that seemed to look right through whoever he talked to. His habit of playing the flute on moonlit nights added to his fairy mystique, but some skeptics said the music was really just the wind sighing in the trees.

The adults of the Great Basin may not have thought Boney was a fairy, but there was definitely something unusual about him. How, for example, did he actually make any money? Whenever he ran out of something at his store he would walk to a general store in nearby Sherman, where he purchased items at the same price he sold them in his store. If he bought candy for five cents in Sherman, he sold it for five cents at his tiny store. If he bought corn meal for fifty cents, he sold it for the same price. How did he manage to run a store if he never made a profit?

Boney also had a very friendly relationship with animals that was quite unusual. A large, tame raccoon lived in Sherman, and came running out to meet Boney whenever he came into town. Boney would speak to the racoon in strange, whistling language that no one else had ever heard, and the racoon would wait for him on the steps of the Sherman general store. When Boney was done with this shopping the racoon walked him home to his tiny store near Green Pond Mountain.

Locals knew to never buy shotgun shells from Boney's store. He didn't like hunting, and sold shotgun shells that had an almost explosive recoil, emitted huge clouds of black smoke, and echoed so loudly that they scared off any nearby game.

Boney's departure from the Great Basin was almost as mysterious as his arrival. A local man passed the store several days in a row and noticed that the door was swinging open in the wind. On the fourth day he decided to investigate. As he walked towards the store he saw Perry's body lying dead by the portulaca, holding one flower in his hand.

At least that's what he said. Other locals didn't believe it. No one else ever saw Boney's body, and the man who said he did later admitted that he had taken the Custer painting and sold it. Maybe he had said Boney was dead just so he could feel justified in taking the painting. And if Boney was dead, why could people still hear his flute music at night?

Candlewood Lake, from Pinterest.

Whether he was dead or not, he had abandoned his store. By the 1930s it had been torn down and a ski-chalet style house erected on the spot. The people who knew Perry Boney were scattered to the winds in the 1926 when a power company announced it was building a dam across the Rocky River. By 1927 the dam was complete. Water slowly filled the Great Basin, submerging the farms, lumber camps and old mills.

The Great Basin is now Candewood Lake, the deepest lake in Connecticut. Scuba divers sometimes report seeing old buildings, covered bridges, and even Model-T Fords at the bottom of it. No one has yet reported seeing a little man with wild hair playing a flute.

*****

The main sources for the Perry Boney legend are David Phillips's Legendary Connecticut (1992) and They Found A Way (1932) by Iveagh Hunt Sterry and William Garrigus. The 1938 book Connecticut: A Guide to Its Roads, Lore and People from the Works Project Administration has directions to the site of Perry Boney's store, but I don't know if they are still valid today.

The original online reference to Perry Boney that got this all started is here. 

Have You Seen a Fairy? Tell the Fairy Investigation Society!

Do you believe in fairies?

In some ways that's an odd question to ask in the 21st century. Even though many Americans believe in strange phenomena like UFOs, Bigfoot and ghosts, I think for most people fairies are a little anachronistic, like a relic from children's books written in Victorian England.

But not everyone feels that way. Last week a reader sent me a photo she had taken in October near a creek in Lincoln, New Hampshire. She was visiting from a southern state and staying at the Mountain Club, and the creek ran through the resort's property. In the photo there is a small blue and white object among the tree branches. It looks like it has wings...

The reader asked me if I thought it was a fairy.

She hadn't seen the fairy (if that's what it was) when she first took the photo, but it was pointed out to her when she was showing the photo to a friend who was familiar with the area. "Don't you see the fairy in the lower right hand corner?" her friend asked.

The friend went on to explain that she had seen a fairy in the area herself, and that the creek was the type of place fairies liked.

The reader also showed the photo to her husband, who was a little skeptical. He said, "Maybe it's just a plastic bag caught in a tree.."

For myself, I'm undecided. Last week when I first zoomed into the photo the blue object sort of looked like something stuck in the tree. But just now, when I zoomed in further, the blue object looked like it might be holding onto the tree, and it also looked like it had a face...

Perhaps it was just a case of pareidolia, a psychological phenomenon where humans see faces and living beings in inanimate objects. Or perhaps there really was a visitor from the faerie realm hovering near a creek in the White Mountains.

Certainly, the American Indians who lived here for thousands of years believed there were small magical beings who lived in the forests, under the hills, and in the lakes and streams. The early English settlers also believed in fairies, although they didn't see many of them here. But even contemporary New Englanders have sometimes seen strange little beings, like the Dover Demon or the weird little green man found in a New Hampshire forest in the 1950s. 

Which brings me back to my original question: do you believe in fairies? The Fairy Investigation Society wants to know.

The Fairy Investigation Society (FIS) was founded in 1927 by a British man named Quentin Crauford. Attracting mostly Theosophists who believed that fairies were elemental beings, the Society continued sporadically through the 20th century until finally disappearing in the 1990s.

In 2013 the Society was re-booted by Simon Young, an English historian living in Italy. While membership in the original Society was limited to people who believed in fairies, the current society is open to "all those who have an interest in fairylore, be they believers or ultra skeptics." I'm proud to be a member myself!

One of the first goals of the Fairy Investigation Society is to conduct a census of fairy sightings and beliefs. Do you believe in fairies? Have you or a friend seen one? Please tell the FIS. Complete the online survey and help the FIS understand more about fairies and fairy beliefs in the modern world.

The FIS is hoping to get thousands of submissions to the survey. I'm hoping some of those submissions will be from right here in New England!

Seeing Fairies, Here and Elsewhere: Books About Fairies

Do you believe in fairies? It's a loaded question, of course. If you were asked during a performance of Peter Pan, you'd respond affirmatively and clap your hands. Otherwise, Tinkerbell will die, and you don't want that on your conscience.

Asked that question in another context, you'd probably hesitate before saying yes, even if you did believe in fairies. After all, you probably don't want people to think you're eccentric! But there are quite a few people who unashamedly believe in fairies and many who claim to have seen them.

One of those people was  Marjorie Johnson (1911 - 2011), an English Spiritualist and Theosophist who was also a member of the Fairy Investigation Society (FIS), a British organization whose mission was apparent from its title. In the 1950s she compiled sightings from members of the FIS and also solicited them from the general public through ads in magazines. The resulting book, Seeing Fairies, is nearly 400 pages long. Although a German edition was published in 2000, it was published for the first time this year in English by Anomalist Books.

Seeing Fairies is probably the largest collection of modern fairy sightings ever compiled. Marjorie Johnson divided her books into chapters with titles like "Nature Spirits in Gardens and the Countryside" or "Fairies in Houses, Fairy Glamour." Each chapter contains multiple accounts of fairy sightings, including the name of the person who encountered the fairies and where they saw them. She doesn't include much overt theory or analysis of the material, but Johnson's interests in Spiritualism and Theosophy determine the overall tone of Seeing Fairies. As the book's editor Simon Young notes, Spiritualism was "more than just table rapping and knocks and 'ether.' It was an attempt, honest in the case of most members of the movement, to open vistas onto a wider world beyond the physical realm. It was only natural that fairies were eventually appropriated by spiritualists as part of this wider spirit land..."

Gustave Moreau, Fairy and Griffon

Because many of the book's accounts came from Marjorie's fellow Spiritualists, the majority of the fairy sightings are of gentle nature spirits. These fairies tend to be small, beautiful and associated with gardens, woods, trees, and flowers. Simon Young calls these the "new traditional fairies." Picture Tinkerbell or even Angelina Jolie as Maleficent and her fellow fairies in the recent Disney film. These beings care for the natural world and sometimes help humans who are in distress.

This is relatively new role for fairies. Up until the 19th century fairies were often viewed as frightening and dangerous, more likely to steal a child or cause illness than to tend a flower bed. Seeing Fairies does contain a few accounts in this vein. For example, a man tells what he saw in a deserted moorland brickyard when he was a boy:

... For some reason I looked over my shoulder, and about a minute's walk away I saw in broad daylight a man about a foot high, dressed in red, running along the path after me, waving his arms in what I took to be a threatening manner. But the impression that has remained with me most clearly over the 23 years or so between now and then is that he looked demented, and his face was shiny and so suffused with color that it was redder than his clothing. Being a timid child, I started running...

A woman in Australia saw the following:

It was coming down backwards from a branchless tree-trunk, and in shape it resembled a large-sized ape. Its body had a dark leaf covering; its neck was short and I saw no hair but a dark green head with a cap-like covering. Its feet were flat with nails like claws; its had had small hooks. ... I was not brave enough to go after it with a torch.

I wouldn't either!

If you are at all interested in fairies I would recommend this book. It's a testament to the enduring power of fairies, whether new traditional or old traditional, and how they still occasionally erupt into our modern rational world.

Simon Young, the book's editor, is a professor of history in Florence, Italy and we have collaborated on some research about pixies which will be published next year. Professor Young also hopes to restart the Fairy Investigation Society and to collect modern fairy sightings through a survey. Stay tuned!

Seeing Fairies includes a few sightings from America, but sadly none are from New England. As I've noted before, fairies aren't seen much in our part of the country. Another Theosophist, Dora Van Gelder Kunz, did see nature spirits and fairies near her home in New Hampshire, but as a trained psychic perhaps she had an advantage over the average New Englander. Her sightings in New Hampshire and elsewhere are recounted in her 1977 book The Real World of Fairies.

Overall, it's slim pickings for New England in modern fairy literature. Another book, Janet Bord's 1997 Fairies: Real Encounters with Little People, gives an excellent overview of the fairy phenomenon and also discusses several theories about what fairies may be. Are they pagan gods? Are they related to UFOs? A few New England encounters are included in Bord's book, including the famous Dover Demon as well as some fairy sightings from Massachusetts that appeared in the 1970s. If I can get more information on the latter I'll blog about them.

If you have ever seen a fairy in New England let me know, or you can wait until the fairy survey appears in the future. Maybe when the survey is published we'll know for sure how many fairies are in New England!

The Little People Who Live Under the Hill

In September of 2012, a developer trying to build housing in Montville, Connecticut received some surprising news during a town hearing. They would need to alter their project because it threatened small stone structures that had been made by magical, dwarf-like creatures that lived underground.

Readers may be familiar with situations like this from Iceland, where construction projects are not allowed to harm the dwelling places of elves. But they are rare here in New England, where most people don't believe in fairies, elves, and dwarves. (Bigfoot, ghosts, and UFOs are another story...)

However, magical little people are an ancient tradition among the Algonquian tribes that are native to this area, and the developer was planning to build 120 units of housing on Mohegan Hill, which is the historic and spiritual home of the sovereign Mohegan Tribe. Although the hill is not technically within the boundaries of the tribe's reservation, it is still very important to them. A letter from the tribe's historic preservation officer explained the significance of the stone structures:

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The sacred stone piles on Mohegan Hill are a critical feature of the traditional landscape of Mohegan Hill; they were created by the “Little People” who live deep within the ground of Mohegan Hill. These “Little People” or Makiawisug are the ancient culture heroes of this region. These stone piles also possess powers that protect the Mohegan people from outsiders. Not only do the “Little People” still live within the ground on the Hill and continue to guard the stones, these stone piles are perceived as being made of the bones of Mother Earth and they contain messages that guide generation after generation of Mohegan People. Contemporary Mohegan tribal members make offerings to the “Little People” in hopes that they will continue to protect our Tribe.

The Makiawisug are similar in some ways to the fairies or dwarves that are familiar to people from European folklore. According the Mohegan medicine woman Gladys Tantaquidgeon (b. 1899, d. 2005), the Makiawisug are ancient beings who have lived under Mohegan Hill since before the Mohegans arrived. They are dense, bulky and born from the stones of the earth. But they are also delicate, wearing lady slipper flowers as moccasins. The Makiawisug are often mistaken for small children on the rare occasions they are seen by humans, but are quite wise. Many medicine people among the Mohegan learned their skills from the Makiawisug.

Photo of Gladys Tantaquidgeon from Wikipedia.

Tantaquidgeon learned four important tips about the Makiawisug from her elders:

1. If you come upon one of the Makiawisug, do not look directly at him. If you look directly at the Little People they will point their finger at you, which allows them to become invisible. Once invisible they will secretly enter your home and steal your possessions. 

2. To get help from the Makiawisug, leave them offerings. They prefer baskets of cornbread and berries, but sometimes they will also accept meat.

3. Never speak about the Makiawisug during the summer. This is the season when they are most active and wandering through the woods. They will be offended by overhearing your comments and you don't want to offend them. (See #1 above.) I realize I am publishing this post in the summer and it may incite discussion. Maybe you can think of it instead as a warning to avoid discussing the Little People, particularly if you are out in the woods. 

4. The Makiawisug are led by Granny Squannit, a very powerful and ancient being. Stay on her good side! Granny Squannit is most likely the modern name for Squauanit, a goddess who was one of the thirty-seven deities revered across southern New England by the Algonquians. 

These four rules come from the book Medicine Trail: the Life and Lessons of Gladys Tantaquidgeon by Melissa Jayne Fawcett. I think it's quite interesting that some of them are similar to rules about interacting with fairies from Europe. For example, in Europe fairies are said to be most active around the summer solstice, and Europeans who believe in fairies often don't speak directly about them for fear of offending them. In many parts of Europe it was also traditional to leave out offerings for the fairy folk, who often were said to live inside certain hills with their queen.

I suppose if you are historically minded you might say the Mohegan picked up some European traditions from English settlers and added them to their original Makiawisug beliefs. If you're feeling a little more metaphysical, perhaps you'd say that although European fairies and Mohegan Makiawisug are different beings, magical beings across the world still share a lot of similar traits.

But whatever you say about the Makiawisug, try not to say it during the summer, and certainly not if you're walking through the woods!

PS - The information about the housing developer and the stone structures is online here.

Fairies at a New Hampshire Inn

Lots of witches and ghosts lurk in New England folklore, but not many fairies. Why is that?

The poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote, "Fairy faith is, we may safely say, now dead everywhere ... It never had much hold upon the Yankee mind, our superstitions being mostly of a sterner and less poetical kind." He also claims that any fairy beliefs found in New England were brought here in the 1700s by Irish Presbyterians.

That quote is from Prose Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, which was published around 1866. He then goes on to provide a story to prove the Irish brought the fairies with them.

Poet John Greenleaf Whittier, 1807 - 1892.

In the early 1800s, a surly, unhappy man decided to open an inn in New Hampshire. Business suffered because of his dour personality and "poverty came upon the house and its tenants like an armed man." The man's wife, who was of Irish descent, remained hopeful despite the dire financial situation. A better day would come, she told her husband and daughters.

The inn's business did improve, but for an odd reason: a troupe of fairies took up residence in the building. Although they were invisible to mortal eyes, their quiet, squeaky voices could be heard by everyone who visited the tavern. It was noted by several visitors that they spoke in a distinct Yankee/Irish dialect.

Word spread throughout the area about the fairies, and curious crowds gathered to hear them speak - and to spend money on food and drink. Life was good for the innkeeper, his wife, and three daughters.

Gradually, though, people began to question the reality of the fairies. Why had they taken up residence in New Hampshire? How come no one could see them? Whittier claims these doubts arose because fairies just weren't part of New England culture:

Had the place been traversed by a ghost of disturbed by a witch they could have acquiesced in it very quietly; but this outlandish belief in fairies was altogether an overtask for Yankee credulity. As might have been expected, the little strangers, unable to breath in an atmosphere of doubt and suspicion, soon took their leave, shaking off the dust of their elfin feet as a testimony against an unbelieving generation.

Some skeptics said the fairies weren't even real. The skeptics claimed some men from Massachusetts had come to hear the fairies and pried away a board in the ceiling - to reveal the innkeeper's three daughters upstairs speaking like the fairies. The skeptics also claimed that once the hoax was revealed the fairy visitation stopped. The innkeeper's wife dismissed this rumor, claiming instead that the fairies had simply gone back to Ireland.

I have a few rambling thoughts on this story. It does seem Whittier was correct that New Englanders were happy to believe in supernatural beings, but only if they were scary and malevolent. The witchlore and ghost stories from this area are full of gruesome creatures and grim situations. You don't encounter too many playful magical creatures in the folklore of this area, but there are a few exceptions.

Whittier doesn't name the town where the inn stood, but only gives the first letter of its name: S. There aren't many New Hampshire town names beginning with S, and since Whittier lived most of his life in the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts I suspect the inn was in southern New Hampshire. Maybe it was in Salem, or possibly Sandown?

Southern New Hampshire does seem to have a stronger fairy tradition than other parts of New England. You can see my post about Tisenetto, the Derry fairy, here. Some people also claim this little green man seen in the 1950s was another version of the Derry fairy. You can find some more speculation on the topic of fairies in New Hampshire here.