Three years after Marjorie Johnson’s death her large collection of fairy sightings that span more than four decades has finally been published. The Nottingham spinster (as they call her) lived to be 100 years of age and never got to see her book on fairy sightings published. At least not in a language she could read. Under its new title, Seeing Fairies, her stories of eyewitness accounts get another chance by being translated to English.

Marjorie Johnson was the honorary secretary of the Fairy Investigation Society. In her work, she collected hundreds of sightings from people all over.

“It all began in 1955 when she began to put together the material. She sent the impressive collection of fairy sightings to publishers in Britain and in Ireland but she had no luck.

“A fellow fairy enthusiast found a home for Seeing Fairies with a publisher based in, of all places, Germany. One can imagine Marjorie’s pride but also bewilderment as she, at 89, finally held in her hands her life’s work in a language she could not read.”

In his foreword, Dr Young adds: “If this sounds like the universe playing a cruel joke, the punchline had not been delivered. In 2004, when the author was 94, it was translated into Italian. Another book that Marjorie could not read.”

Although published in the United States, at least her work can now be read in English and believers in fairies, and the curious, can absorb reports collated largely through members and contacts of the Fairy Investigation Society.

Read more: Nottingham Post

Gnomes, fairies, goblins, and elves. I’ve always had a fascination reading the first-hand accounts of people claiming to have seen these mythical beings. The book Seeing Fairies will be out on Amazon soon and I think I might just get a copy. Here are some snippets from the book from Nottingham Post:

As secretary of the society in the post-war years, she collated countless reports of fairies – pixies, elves, call them what you will – scores of which are detailed in her book.

Ada Constable lived in an isolated bungalow near the Notts village of Walesby. Her son was gazing intently through the window, so she asked him what he was looking at. “The funny little man,” he replied.

The mother asked the boy to describe him and he reported “a fair description of what she associated with a dwarf or gnome, wearing a long, pointed cap. What was he doing? “He’s working in the beans, mummy.”

The date of the Wellow sighting is not recorded but we know that Nottingham woman Mrs L F Small’s experience dated from 1940. Again, little people are involved.

Looking into her garden through the French windows, “she became aware of two little gnomes about one foot high, standing pointing to where the first crop of tomatoes should be,” the book records.

“A short time afterwards… she became conscious of somebody at her feet and on looking down she saw two little gnomes holding a basket of green tomatoes. She felt they were trying to tell her something.

“She opened her mind to receive their message, which was to the effect that if she gathered the tomatoes at once, while they were green, and wrapped them up and put them in a dark place to ripen, she would still have a good crop. When they realised she had understood them they walked solemnly away.”