This story is more of a magical flavor than scary, but it is still 100% true.

After almost 20 years of working with the paranormal and metaphysical, I thought I'd seen it all until I moved into a remote mountain town on the edge of the El Dorado National Forest in California.   One of the things in which I'd never placed much stock and honestly, had snickered derisively about for years was the belief many of my friends had in the wee folks:  fairies and the like.

There are entire spiritual paths built around the belief that these little critters actually exist in a corporal state, living and walking (and flying) amongst us.  In retrospect, I have no idea why I was so closed off to the notion, especially since I had opened my eyes and my mind to all of the other things that exist but cannot always be seen.

When we moved up here from the city (Sacramento), I was completely overwhelmed by the strong presence of all of the elements.  Immediately, I had the impression that regardless of whatever a real estate deed said, I was a guest who was being "allowed" to live here.  It's a very reverent and sacred place that belongs to nature. 

We moved here in March and on MidSummer's Eve, we did our usual blessing of the land.  One thing we did differently was to welcome the fairies into our circle to play.  Shakespeare really brought the ancient idea of MidSummer as magical time of fairies to the modern world and we decided to go for it.  I'd felt their energy and still balked at it a bit, being a grown up and all. 

We created a fairy playground by arranging little stones in a circle that was about 2' in diameter and put several pretty, polished stones in it, some shiny things, tiny goblets that we found at the thrift store and a bowl of milk and honey.  We called them to come and play and enjoy themselves.  I felt a rising up of the energy of the elements.  The feel of earth, air, fire and water intensified around us. 

We left the circle intact and went inside.  The next morning, I went out to clean up and found the tiniest pair of bright pink shoes in a crystal plate of polished stones.  They were about an inch long.  I brought them inside and held onto them for a year.  The next MidSummer, we did the same thing again, except that this time, I put the shoes in the fairy circle as well.  When I went out to clean up the next morning, one of the shoes was gone and the other remained.  In 2006, I put out the final shoe and the next morning, it was gone as well.

This year, we welcomed the fairies, but no shoes...until last week.  In fact, two very odd things happened last week. 

As many of you who read my journal know, this has been a year of change for me, for "demanding more" of myself and of stepping up to the plate when I really had no clue why I was being called to do it.  This is pretty out of character for me, but I felt it was what needed to happen, so I did it. 

This has been a very challenging year, more so than it was for me, for a LOT of other people.  Up here in Grizzly Flats, we have had a number of deaths, a lot of people having accidents or debilitating, scary illnesses and a lot of people losing their jobs.  It seems as though so many people are being put through the fire.  Eric and I were in our meditation area talking about how it seems to be happening all around us, but so far, not to us, for which we are grateful.  We finalized the night and had intended on doing some Tarot card readings, but never got to it. 

When I got up the next morning, I went out back to get something out of the storage shed, which is in the far back of our property.  As I was starting down the path through our back yard, something caught my eye on the ground.  It was one of my Tarot cards.  (?!)  Face up, looking right at me was The Empress, which means a bountiful harvest, having all you need and being well blessed.  Nice!  I got concerned and went into the meditation area side of the old shed and sure enough, my entire bag of Tarot cards was missing.  Nothing was disturbed...they just weren't where I'd left them behind the candles and incense and smudge pot.  I looked around the back yard and found the rest of them next to the fence.  They were spread out in a little pond of Tarot cards with about 4-5 rocks sitting on top of them.  There were two cards on outside of the fence (we have one of those wire fences around the yards to keep the dogs in, the ones that have a grid of about 3-4" of space between the wires).  One was the 10 of swords (injury or illness) and the other card was Death (intense change).  I brought all of the cards inside and tried to knock the dirt off of them.  The bag the cards had been in was shredded to bits. 

Eric and I thought about the meaning and to us, the Empress was giving us her protection and the fact that the 10 of swords and Death cards were outside our fence meant that we'd dodged a bullet of some kind.  The next day, I was outside again and found another fairy shoe:

This one, as you can see, is orange.  Still just one.  :)

There are a couple of things to note about this.  One is that Delena does not own any dolls that have shoes like this.  Our neighbors are not close by and the only one who might have had shoes like this would not have been playing with them in the middle of the night in our back yard, specifically in the fairy playground.

Another fun thing about the fairies is the dragonflies.  Our first year here (2004), the day after we called in the fairies, the dragonflies came.  They came in droves.  It went through my mind when I saw the shoe and then saw all those dragonflies, "The fairies are here!"  I didn't mention it because it was such a goony thing to say, but a couple of days later, my son, Nathan, who was 6 at the time, said, "Have you seen all the FAIRIES???"  Now, Nathan had not been involved in our calling of the fairies that year and we hadn't mentioned it to him.  I asked him, "What fairies?" and he said, "They're everywhere!  See?" and he pointed to the dragonflies.  I told him they were dragonflies and he looked back at me, VERY assured, and said, "Only when you look at them with the fronts of your eyes.  When you look out the sides of your eyes, they're fairies!"

Since then, the day after our MidSummer celebration, the dragonflies come.  Mind you, not the day after June 21st, but the day after we celebrate it, which can be anywhere from a day or two early to a day or two later, the dragonflies come.

I always try to look at them with the sides of my eyes instead of the fronts.