Fey Fridays: Those You Invite Into Your Home

Something strange is going on in your house — your jewelry is beginning to go missing, only to be discovered in the strangest of locations a few days later. Maybe your pets are watching, playing, or reacting to something you can’t see. You hear unusual noises in the hallway at night, like tiny footsteps running across the hardwoods floors.

Your first instinct might be spirits, maybe even a full-fledged poltergeist, but there’s another possibility: your home might be infested with mischievous little faeries.

For the most part, if you have a small magical companion or two, they’re likely going to be too shy to show themselves to you entirely — but eventually they might just gain the courage to expose themselves and reveal themselves as the source of all the weird things going on under your roof.

Losing Sleep

If you’re normally a pretty sound sleeper, but suddenly find yourself waking up during the night, unable to fall asleep because you’re busy listening to the soft sounds happening through the house, or maybe being kept awake by your cat swatting at nothing at the end of the bed, there’s a chance you have something of an infestation on your hands.

Of course, the scariest thing about this is that darker spirits exhibit the same patterns of activity — making noises at night, shuffling things around, messing with pets, but unless your nerves are alarming you that the thing inside your walls is evil, you might just have a faerie or two causing mischief.

There are ways to track their activity, too, even when fast asleep at night. Of course there’s the obvious option of setting up cameras throughout your home, but the truth of the matter is, faeries aren’t likely to show themselves unless they really want to. So, even with the most high-tech, night-vision, HDMI camera on the market, you still might not be able to see anything.

Rather, focus on hearing them. Using individual microphones, or even phone apps that are meant for sleeping aids, but record sounds throughout the night. Sure, you might mostly get sound clips of you rolling over in bed or snoring a little bit, but what are the odds of capturing something else a little more mysterious, too? All I know is, there’s a pretty jarring no-sleep story revolving around exactly this premise.

Coaxing Them Out

Faeries love a lot of things, ranging from sweet treats, to wine cellars, to little children. If you’re eager to keep them around for whatever reason, there are a number of things you can do not only to coax out those who already live in your home, but to also invite others to join the party.

1. Fairies love humans who respect and love the earth, meaning they’re eco friendly and environmentally conscious, doing whatever they can to live green.
2. Houseplants, trees, indoor and outdoor gardens, and so on, offer not only a clean place for them to hide, but a reminder of the world outside while they’re staying nice and cozy indoors with you during the winter.
3. Shiny jewelry, lights, etc., attract them almost more than anything. This means come Christmastime, you might have to buy gifts for more than just the humans in your life — consider the flock of faeries living in your Christmas tree amongst the string lights, too. And remember, the brighter and more colorful the Christmas lights, the better.

1. Open water, whether in a big bowl, a fountain, a fish tank, and so on — though I might not recommend luring them in with a fish tank, they might do more harm than good to those animals already swimming around inside.
2. Build faerie houses, allowing them a designated place to spend their time. Chances are, if they have a regular home to return to, you might have a better chance at catching a glimpse for yourself!

The Best Kind to Keep Around

Between the many courts of the faerie realm, chances are you’ll likely come across dozens of different kinds, especially when purposefully seeking them out to come and rest inside your home. The most preferred type when it comes to human and faerie relations, however, has to be the Brownie Faeries.

Brownies are specifically known as “house faeries,” and will even stick around in a family’s home for as long as the family does, maybe longer. Brownies supposedly originated in Scotland, and then tagged along to the US on the backs of Scottish immigrants.

Brownies are said to resemble Hobs, or Hobgoblins, in their short stature and lots of curly brown hair (hence the name, I’m guessing!). Their biggest jobs in the home where they reside are helping out with small tasks like chasing and disposing of spiders, dusting out hidden corners, and other things humans are just too big to attend to. In return, they love receiving small gifts of food and treats, as well as honey and cream.

Honestly, that sounds similar to what my parents used to have to give me to make me do any household chores too.

What other kinds of faeries would you be interested in meeting? Have you ever had a run in with one, or suspect there are a few running around your home as you read this? Leave a message in the comments!