A Faerie-Type Encounter on the Icknield Way

The latest on Neil Rushton's Deadbutdreaming blog.

https://deadbutdreaming.wordpress.com/20...nield-way/

Interesting to me because something strange happened to myself and two friends of mine back in the eighties.  We were supposed to be walking the Ridgeway from Barbury Castle to Avebury stone circle but below Barbury Castle, one of my friends and I decided to take the older Ridgeway path that runs below and cut my other friend off on the other side.  Half way along that part, I realized my friend was no longer with me, so we were now all separated.  To cut a long story short, when we all finally found each other, the friend who had been with me on the older Ridgeway path told us he had stopped because he heard strange small voices talking to each other in the adjacent field.  After a while, he heard one of them say "Shhh, he can hear us" and immediately felt like he shouldn't be there and left the area.  The Icknield way is another similar ancient path.  There are many ancient structures along these paths, such as round barrows, long barrows, chalk carvings, circular structures like Avebury stone circle and The Sanctuary on Overton hill.

From the blog:

One evening I was walking my dog among a stretch of the Icknield Way between Hitchin (Pirton) and along the crest of Deacon and Pegsdon Hills, following the Bedfordshire/Hertfordshire boundary. I know the area very well and was a volunteer warden on Pegsdon Hills Nature Reserve. It was mid May, warm, still and sunny. Part of the stretch forms a ‘green lane’ about 20ft wide with with thick hedges each side and, one on side was a ditch about 10-12ft feet wide and about 4-5ft deep, overhung with tangled hawthorn, blackthorn, wild clematis and with mature ash trees overhead.

There were no other people around but as I climbed up the hill I could smell and see smoke. I came across several people who were camping in the ditch. I then realised with absolute astonishment that they looked really ‘odd’. They were small in height and size and most appeared very old and wrinkled – as if they had lived outside all their lives. They were weathered looking with dark or grey hair, tied back. There were about ten or twelve of them in total; men and women. At least two of the women were nursing babies, well wrapped up. I did not notice any children. The tents were very small, brown, very old looking and appeared to be of leather. Most of the tents had small fires outside with cooking utensils hanging over the fires.

[Ninshub]

I liked Neil's analysis of an experience like this, and find myself sympathetic to the view he expresses here:

This is not to suggest that Steve’s experience was a dream, but rather that it was akin to a dream state, whereby entities not usually allowed into consensus reality can manifest, and make themselves apparent within an individual’s consciousness. His consciousness was altered, however slightly, and it experienced entities that were either removed in time or dimensional locality, or maybe both.

I liked Neil's analysis of an experience like this, and find myself sympathetic to the view he expresses here:

Yeah, that bit struck me too.