When my grandpa died, I didn’t just lose a family member—I lost the guardian of our family’s lore. Grandpa was a wellspring of stories about the Fae, those mystical and often malicious beings that inhabited the woods surrounding his old home. After his passing, I felt a strange urge to visit the house once more. The place was eerily silent without him, and perhaps that’s why I decided to break the one rule he’d insisted upon: I walked into the woods that he had warned us about all those years. Upon entering, it felt like crossing into an alternate realm. The air got heavy and thick, like wading through a pool. The stars above me weren’t any constellations I could recognize. Then came the singing—an elusive, enchanting melody that guided me into a clearing bathed in otherworldly moonlight.
That’s where I saw her. This creature was incomprehensibly beautiful, with radiant skin, golden hair, and eyes that glowed an unnatural shade of blue. “Would you like to dance?” she asked. Her voice was hypnotic, intoxicating. Caught in her allure, we danced. Time and space seemed to blur until her voice broke the trance, asking if I would join her in her world. Grandpa’s warnings exploded in my head: “Never accept their offerings. Never go into their realm.” “I can’t,” I stammered. In a blink, her stunning visage twisted into something grotesque. She lunged at me with newly-formed claws, screeching in a demonic tone. I bolted, heart pounding, finally breaking through to the Faerie Ring—a circle of mushrooms—that marked the boundary between their world and ours.
I returned to the house, shaken to my core. After what I’d seen, I couldn’t let it go. I spent months researching Fae folklore, desperately looking for something, anything, that would make sense of my experience. Finally, I found it: a tale of a “Leanan Sidhe,” a Fae who lures men with her beauty and voice, only to drain their life force if they accept her offer. The similarities were uncanny. Now, whenever the moon is out, I can still hear her haunting melody drifting through the night air. It’s as though she’s taunting me, a lingering promise of what might have been—or a reminder of the nightmare I narrowly escaped. I realize now that the world is full of hidden perils that lurk just beyond the veil of our understanding. And while my grandpa may have left me, his warnings have never been more alive.
I tell you this as a cautionary tale: some boundaries, like those between us and the Fae, are best left uncrossed. Since that night, I’ve dived even deeper into my research, trying to gather as much information as possible. From ancient manuscripts to digital forums where people share their own “Fae encounters,” my thirst for understanding became almost an obsession. I even reached out to folklore experts, and their responses were a mix of academic dismissal and eerie silence. It’s as if even talking about the Fae was taboo within the academic community. That in itself was alarming, but what terrified me even more were the similarities in the experiences people described. The recurring theme? No one who had been lured into their world ever came back the same. There were accounts of people losing years off their lives, or worse, returning only to die under mysterious circumstances shortly afterward. Some folks, who knew a bit about Fae folklore, mentioned the need to carry “cold iron” as a protective measure, or how one should never speak their name out loud, as it could draw their attention. I also came across stories of people who’d lost loved ones—missing without a trace—only to later realize that a Fae had been sighted near their last known location. I installed iron bars on my windows and took to carrying an iron nail in my pocket at all times. Call it paranoia, but after what I’d been through, I wasn’t taking any chances. The experiences and the research have changed me. I’m not the same person I was before that night; now, there’s a constant, lurking anxiety that didn’t exist before. I find myself glancing over my shoulder more often, avoiding patches of mushrooms in the woods, and tensing up whenever the wind carries a tune that seems a little too melodious.
I share this story as a warning to all. There are realms that lie close to ours, their inhabitants walking a fine line between folklore and reality. While we might be tempted to explore, some worlds are best left as stories, never to be experienced firsthand. The Fae are not the whimsical, benign creatures many would like to believe; they are cunning, malevolent, and always watching, waiting for the next unsuspecting soul to lure into their web. And if you hear singing in the woods, no matter how beautiful, do yourself a favor—turn back before it’s too late.