Flying Saucers and Fairies. An uncomfortable similarity.

We got the term flying saucer from a report in 1947. Since then, we have had countless eye witnesses state that they have seen flying saucers. The problem, however, is that the original witness in 1947 did not describe flying saucers or disc shaped craft. He described flying wing like craft what flew like saucers skipping across the water. Prior to this incident, people had mostly only see lights, and odd craft, but never much described as a disc, saucer, plate, or even a bowl.

Fairies are in a similar position. There are no shortage of accounts over the past century of people seeing beings straight out of a children's book or Disney cartoon. The problem is that the popular image of fairies was almost entirely invented in the 19th century and popularized in works of fiction. The hundreds of years worth of faerie lore that predates it bares little to no resemblance to the popular representations seen today.

So now the uncomfortable part. Seeing as how in both instances, the most common descriptions given after a specific form is popularized line up with that image, despite the image being a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the original concept, how many of these reports are simply made up? How many are people's brains filling in blanks of an otherwise mundane occurrence, based on their own biases toward certain imagery?

There is still room for the strange, however, as it has been suggested that perhaps the things that people see are not what they seem to be, but rather present or otherwise imprint themselves in a way that the target will find acceptable. People of the 1800s saw airships. Then they saw strange lights and aircraft, until people who only read headlines spread the idea of literal flying saucers. Likewise, for centuries, there were a wide variety of strange seemingly otherworldly entities engaging in disturbingly similar behaviors, but today it is pretty much a handful of alien races, and "cartoon" fairies.

Fairies take it a step further, however, as almost all of the disturbing behavior has been transferred over to alien beings, right down to paralyzing wands, bright rooms with no light sources, asynchronous time passage, an interest in reproduction, passing through solid objects, and vanishing in and out of plain sight. Most winged fairy sightings that I have seen these days tend to lean toward the bizarre or are just brief sightings of a small "winged humanoid." So it is interesting to see how, despite faerie lore being almost completely divorced from modern fairies, the concepts present in old fae encounters have continued under a completely different label.

That said, I think it is important to understand that while that may be the case, that it is also very common for people to lie for attention, for a variety of reasons, some for greed, and others for loneliness or illness. I feel it is important to remind ourselves when spending time and energy looking into topics like this that we have to be vigilant and not just take everything at face value.

Submitted December 13, 2021 at 08:14PM by ToastyPotato https://ift.tt/3pStUbw