MORE STORIES OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE
Daniel heard a curious story from his “Unc'Willy”. At the time, Willy was a young man in his early 30s. He was riding on his horse along one of the many natural springs in the area and stopped to roll himself a cigarette and rest a while. As he stood by the water, he heard a strange "scraping sound," and curious that it may be an animal he crept to the grass along this small stream. Upon pushing the reeds apart, he looked on two strange little figures that were no taller than a man's fist! One came out of the water while the other sat alongside the stream. The one sitting seemed to be scraping something in its hands.
When Willy realized what he was seeing was real, the awareness brought about the awareness of these small people, who froze in their tracks. As Willy pushed through the grass toward them for a better look, one figure dropped to one side and fell into the water, disappearing, even though this small stream of water was no more than an inch or two deep. The other produced a small leather pouch out of which he took several old arrowheads, and with these was the tool which produced the scraping noise he heard. It was a tiny stone knife and he also kept the crayfish claw that the creature was trying to open when Willy happened along.
Paul of South Africa has a story that’s equally strange. This experience took place in 1986 in Durban, South Africa at the Mangrove Swamps Nature Reserve at approximately 6 p.m. On this day, Paul tells us, he and five friends set off on a hike off the main trial in the swamp. “We walked for about 10 minutes when the swamp gave way to a clearing with rock formations similar to that of a small natural amphitheater,” he says. “There were illuminated fire lights all around this amphitheater. Directly in front of me was a small person who was just over three feet in height. He looked directly at me and pointed at me in surprise.”
At this point the entire group of friends had caught up to Paul. “We looked around and witnessed little people sitting on the illuminated rock formations and others who were interacting with each other,” he continues. “The light and forms we saw were of an ethereal light clearly less dense then light we are familiar with. I estimated there to be between 20 to 30 of these little people. We were shocked and frightened by this phenomenon we experienced.”
The experience lasted only about 10 seconds for the friends, but seemed to play out as if in slow motion. “We turned and ran as fast as we could toward our vehicle,” Paul says. “On arriving, we tried to make sense of what we witnessed. We returned to the spot and saw nothing but bush. No lights, no little people, no rock formation, just bush.”
What can we make of these stories? Tall tales? Hallucinations? Could they possibly be real – “real” in a way that challenges our current understanding of the world?
