I still remember the day my brother came running through the house, breathless with excitement, insisting he had seen a real fairy. He was six years old, I was nine, and the certainty in his voice was unmistakable. The moment had felt so real to him that he continued to insist on it—quietly, privately—even through his teenage years.
He told me he had walked into the shed just in time to see a small, female figure brushing off her dress as she sat on the edge of a rabbit hutch. When he entered, she looked up at him, mouth open in surprise, and then darted out the back window in a flash of wings. To him, it wasn’t imagination. It was an encounter.
Stories like his aren’t rare. Across cultures and generations, especially among children, people have described seeing beings that match what we call “fairies.” The explanations vary, but several possibilities make sense. Some spirits seem able to appear in whatever form best fits the expectations—or the comfort—of the person they’re meeting. Others describe fairies as guardians of plants, animals, and small places in nature, tending to the quiet corners of the world that humans often overlook.
My brother was a child when he saw his fairy, but age doesn’t seem to be a barrier. A close friend of mine, nearly forty at the time, once saw a small blue figure moving purposefully through the grass during a walk. She stopped, watched, and realized she was witnessing something she had no other name for.
And in my own early childhood, I saw a ring of tiny beings dancing and singing on the floor of my mother’s bedroom while she slept. I was only three years old, but the memory has never faded. It impressed itself on me with a clarity that outlasted the years.
What these beings “really” are may not have a single answer. They might be spirits choosing a familiar shape. They might be caretakers of the natural world. They might be something else entirely—something that doesn’t fit neatly into our categories.
But the experiences themselves are real to the people who have them. And that matters.
Have you ever seen or interacted with fairies?
What do you feel they might be?