A Faerie, of the evil troublemaking sort, may have tried to lure a woman from Meath, Ireland, away to fairyland. Or perhaps there were more nefarious plans in store for her. Fairies of folklore have been associated with all sorts of devilry. From cruel pranks and vandalism to kidnapping and murder. Leading a human astray – possibly right over a cliff’s edge – could really be the typical antics of a number of Fae Folk. The woman took to Twitter to share her otherworldly experience during a stroll through the woods. It sounded as if she stepped on ‘a stray sod’ or through a veil of some sort. As the shift in her environment was sudden and dramatic.
A ‘stray sod’ is a clustering of grass that’s been enchanted by faerie magic.
When a human happens to step across a stray sod, they’re immediately disoriented. Even the most familiar places suddenly become foreign to them. They can spend hours ‘lost’ in a small patch of woods they visit daily or even their own backyard. Then (theoretically) they’re at the mercy of the faerie and can be led anywhere. The person has to wear an item of clothing inside-out in order to break the enchantment. That’s the only way they’ll be able to find their way again.
Two trees framed the path. Was she led there by the faerie?
Like something out of a fable, all was ordinary until she reached a point on the path that led her to step between two trees. She placed a hand on each one as she made her way through. “One was warm and dry and the other was cold and wet.” Once crossing to the other side, the sun retreated. “It got really overcast and a bit cold and damp.”
She followed the path, until it split off…
She veered left at the fork but the path just petered out into dense woodland. She returned to the fork to try a different path. It too, faded into woodland. This wasn’t her first time at this location, that’s usually quite populated. Yet she was completely disoriented and seemingly alone.
“I remember thinking, ‘This is weird.’ But I’ve gotten lost before. So, I went back, noted where I was, put rocks down to mark where I’d been, and took the next path. I walked back up the main path again, but it didn’t look familiar. It was quite overcast at this point as well. I had pulled up Google Maps and I didn’t have a signal on my phone at all. Which is not unusual for that area.”
It didn’t matter which direction she took the paths all led to nowhere
As if she’d stepped into a pocket universe. All the people were gone. She was still able to hear birds chirping all around her, yet muted as if far away in the forest. “They’re chirping and singing all around but it was like they were behind glass.”
She described how at that point, the path had narrowed so much that she couldn’t see ahead or behind. That’s when she heard the woman’s voice.
“I kept walking down a path towards a really overgrown area again. At that point, I heard a really light woman’s voice. I don’t know how to describe it. It was really high.”
She was shouting: ‘Over here! Over here!’ and then she laughed.
And I have never felt such fear in my life.” The panic set in as stories from her childhood started flashing through her mind. “…the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.”
The woman’s voice called out to her again. This time, somehow, from the opposite direction. That chilling laughter rang out once more. She emphasized how intense her fear was when she heard that laughter. In the Dublin Live, she recalled her instinct to run but knew there was nowhere to run too.
“I had never heard someone laugh like that. I knew something was really wrong. I just got this really bad feeling that things were not going to end well for me if I didn’t do something.”
What’d she do? A trick from old Irish folklore – which says turn your clothes inside out to break the faerie’s enchantment
“And then I, a GROWN ADULT, stood in the middle of the overgrown forest, took off my t-shirt, turned it inside out, got my hoodie out of my bag, and put that on too.”
“I just remember turning your clothes inside out is supposed to help. So, I just tried that. I felt like it was just mental. I just had to do it. I turned my t-shirt inside out, put it back on. I was hoping nobody was looking at me because it was a really weird thing to do in the middle of a forest.”
Then she just started walking again.
“I came to the two trees again, almost immediately.” She could hear the birds again, the sun was shining and people were roaming about. All was right with the world again. Or as she exclaimed in a tweet, “Ooh de lally.”
She thinks 2-hours were lost to that pesky faerie & her ‘stray sod’
The extent of how far she had wandered didn’t hit her until she’d reached her car and checked her step count. “When I got back to the car, I looked at my steps. The last time I checked my step counter I had done 8,000 steps or something like that. I had put on an extra 10,000.”
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