The Butler County Faerie

by Cole Herrold

Faeries have always interested me. The idea of small, allegedly magical humanoids that lived either as avatars of nature or as a parallel society that only occasionally interacted with humans was extremely fascinating, and the older I got, the more I appreciated the lore and myths associated with them. As I began researching Fortean phenomenon, however, I began to realize that the idea of small allegedly magical humanoids was something universal. I soon began hypothesizing a variety of ideas but the one I to this day adhere to is that what people are seeing is dwarf variations of a hominid species, especially since most of the famous cases take place on islands where dwarfism is rather commonplace. Now this explanation could explain humanoids like Iceland's elves or Ireland's Leprechauns, but there is another kind of faerie folk that makes this hypothesis more difficult. This kind of faerie is, of course, the winged variety that has been the poster child of faeries since tales have been recorded. I often dismissed reports or accounts of this as fancy as most reports of faeries that are reported are of small humanoids like gnomes, dwarves, goblins, elves, etc. Yet every once in a while, a case does occur of a strange flying humanoid of miniature stature that for all intents and purposes is a faerie.

I first came across the Butler County Faerie in Lon Strickler’s amazing book of flying freaks Winged Cryptids: Humanoids, Monsters, and Anomalous Creatures Casebook. Which I highly suggest anyone interested in more modernish accounts of flying creatures to get. I was taken back one for the fact that the witness believed it to be a faerie, two for how the witness described this faerie, and three for the fact that it took place not in the land of green in which these tales would seem commonplace but essentially in my own backyard. The encounter with this strange, winged anomaly took place in Chicora, which is located in Butler County. Butler County is a hotbed for paranormal activity and bizarre cryptid encounters, so it would only make sense that one of the good people would dwell there.

It was on a warm summer day in 2005 when a man named J.F. was sitting on a porch in the town of Chicora. It was a warm day, and he and several of his friends had decided to enjoy the day hanging out at one of his friend's parent's house. The house was in the thicker end of the woods, almost on the outskirts of Chicora. Anyone from Pennsylvania knows that our towns are often enveloped by thick woodlands, and even some of our smaller cities are a stone throw away from deep forests. It's the kind of area where almost anything could happen. The group convened on the back porch as he and seven or eight of his closest compatriots sat and watched as the sun began to dip lower in the sky. As the sun set, their conversations did not end as they sat at a table. The group was the spirit of sobriety, simply enjoying each other and the world around them, never expecting anything more bizarre than a potential encounter with a deer or raccoon. It was getting to be about ten o'clock, and darkness enveloped the group. The deck was practically open aside from some plants that his friend's mom had placed on the porch to give a little greenery to the brown porch. These plants were located towards the opposite side of where the group was sitting, and as a way to water the plants at night and give those coming in some light, a motion sensor light was connected to the side of the house just above that area.

As the night waned, so too did the conversation, and as anyone who has sat late with a friend knows, sometimes there's a moment where no one talks. It can be both peaceful and awkward depending on the situation, but it was in one of these comfortable/uncomfortable silences that a strange sound was heard. A hard yet hollow ptink sound. All the heads turned to where the group believed the origin of the sound came from. The hollow yet hard sound seemed to of emanated from the plant pots as though something had moved or bumped into them. The groups looked and there flittering, and fluttering seemed to be a large moth. Yet the group's attention was still captivated as while at. First, this seemed to simply be a normal entomological entity; they were taken back by the size, which was much larger than any mundane moth. The size of this creature was about a foot, and that was enough to perplex the group of teens. The creature shot straight up from the pot, but the more the group stared at the strange creature, the more it seemed unnatural. The group could tell automatically that this creature had wings, yet the wings were folded around the body, cocooning the strange beast.

J.F. stared intently at this strange figure just as the others had begun to lose interest when he realized that whatever this creature was, it was not an insect-like butterfly or moth or even a bat but instead something more esoteric. He realized the more that he stared at it that instead of a triangular insect-like head that it bore a large head almost like a human, yet even this was bizarre because the figure had large ears that seemed to be camouflaged to pass off as antenna. Yet the head, even though it was similar to a person's, had not a strand of long flowing hair or thick hair as one would expect from something described as human-like.

It was as J.F. was trying to accept the humanoidness of this creature when it began to float higher into the air. The creature floated for a brief second in the air before its enclosed wings sprung open. The scene was like something from Jeepers Creepers as the creature's membranous flight aids uncurled, revealing a membranous gliding type wing that connected from the arms along the body to the feet. As the creature did this J.F. and his friends could see that their uninvited guest was surprisingly even more human. J.F. would describe and later sketch the creature, indicating that it had a perfectly female form with breasts, delicate fingers at the end of slender arms, long legs with intricate toes, and other features that would indicate the fairer sex. Yet all this was incomparable to the wings, which he and his friends would describe as being similar to the skin of an earlobe, thick, coarse, semi-transparent, he could see veins as the creature was illuminated in the light of the motion sensor. The creature they could see was a pale green that seemed to glow in the light, yet it was covered in short white hairs giving it a magical quality.

This human/bat/butterfly was about the size, weight, and shape of a squirrel, yet this density seemed opposed to gravity, for as the strange creature unveiled itself, it seemed to float in the air. Yet this passed quickly, and the creature began to fly about four feet above the group and table and made off to the potential safety and solace of the woods. The entire length of time it took for the flying human was a mere 7-10 seconds, but it felt like a lifetime. It was escaping the gaze of the group and leaving them mystified about the occurrences that just happened. The group stared in astonishment and silence, mouth agape, for what they had seen could not have existed in the real world but certainly in the worlds of Labyrinth or the Dark Crystal. The group turned stared at each other wide-eyed, and in a cacophony of voices began a process of profanity that would make a sailor blush. The group, in between excited profanity and unbelief, began to frantically try to rationalize what they had seen going through the obvious suspects' moth, bat, mutated bird, swamp gas, sandhill crane until the group running out of potentially theories finally went quiet and realized that what they had encountered was, in fact, a faerie. About an hour later, J.F. and his girlfriend had left and continued to continuously discuss the strange figure that they encountered and how in that brief moment, it changed their entire perceptions of everything around them and that the world was, in fact, more magical than they had ever thought.

It is important to note that J.F., unlike most cryptid witnesses, was not terrified by his encounter but viewed it as a beautiful and enchanting experience as though walking into a dream. I find this extremely interesting, for, in many accounts of those who encounter the unknown, especially those who have encountered Mothman or the Jersey Devil or even Bigfoot, there are years of terror that their encounters claimed. Could it be the size or pre-knowledge of faeries that caused this since most of the traumatic cryptid encounters are of creatures larger than us? Who's to say I am glad though that he can find comfort in his encounter, for that is the best we can hope for, for anyone who encounters an as of yet undiscovered species.

In this case, it is bizarre in many ways, from the way it moves with flight to its appearance to simply the fact it is seen in Pennsylvania. There is literally nothing I can compare it to. The fossil record has nothing in an attempt for a primate or hominid to develop flight, even though countless flying humanoids are reported. In Native American Folklore, Mythology, and religion, I have found nothing that matches this creature. Pennsylvania's ancestral German Population is rich in faerie folk lore, and some claim they have, in fact, brought Tommyknockers over from their motherland, but the tommyknockers bear no resemblance to this creature, nor is it seen in a cave, meaning it cant be this potential Pennsylvania resident. The only thing that one can compare this creature to is a faerie, yet even that is bizarre.

Faeries or the classical fairy or pixie in every depiction are humanoids with one or two sets of insect wings located on the back of the creature, yet the Butler County Faerie has wings that essentially are connected to the body like a colugo or flying squirrel, something we see in Mammals and not in the classic faerie literature. I would be first in stating that this could be some evolutionary advancement of a flying squirrel or even the beginnings of a pygmy hominid species with the capacity of gliding after years of evolutionary development, but there's a significant problem with this aside from obviously the lack of fossil evidence or physical remains. The fact is when this creature is described as flying; it goes from winged wrapped around the body to opening like a Buffalo Bill style when "goodbye horses" is playing to flight in a matter of seconds. This indicates that flight is something that this creature is comfortable with to the point that it could do things that seem extrasensory if, in fact, it does not have some extrasensory abilities. This implies this creature is either gifted in flight as the first of this kind, or it's been flying for an extremely significant amount of time outside of human interaction.

This throws an exceptional monkey wrench in the works for either this species has gone for countless generations, even those of the native inhabitants without being identified, which is a possibility, or this creature is, in fact, something paranormal. Whether it is, in fact, an elemental of the earth as many faeries often manifest as or is some supernatural creature that coexists on planet earth either through another dimension or as a parallel evolution that somehow developed flight and a minuscule size in a matter of several thousands to millions of years. All of these options are possible since none can truly be ruled out when looking at this case. If a primitive or pygmy society reaching only a foot tall did exist, would we automatically recognize any physical evidence with them, or would we think them to be shrews, squirrels, or some other small rodent since we do share many similar morphological features? Could it be that this is the case and that with this smaller size, evolution was able to play with more possibilities like flight or an aquatic lifestyle? It has happened with other organisms but is that the case here?

It is important to note that Butler County is not a unique place for encounters with flying humanoids. Butler county is, in fact, home to one of Pennsylvania's most famous flying cryptids. This cryptid, interestingly enough, does bear some resemblance to the Butler County. Its form was human-like, not unlike the faerie, it too also had pointed ears even though they were not at the length of the Butler County Faerie and obviously most importantly bore wings, but its wings were connected to its back. Upon reading the encounter, I had wondered that while there are some differences in the account could it be that this is as a juvenile or obviously female version of the Butler County Gargoyle. It would regionally make sense, but with the formation of the faerie composed to the Gargoyle in regard to their size, it seems extremely unlikely. As biologically speaking, the faerie seems biologically capable of breeding at its size, thus eliminating the juvenile possibility of the creature in connection to the Gargoyle for breeding certainly could not be possible.

With this case, I'm left with more questions than answers, especially upon reading Stan Gordon's follow up in his book Astonishing Encounters which features the same information of the case as in Lon Strickler's book with one exception that with his research, he found similar cases in which people have described encountering creatures matching the faerie folk in Pennsylvania but any more information on those cases are unavailable. My family's ancestry is exceptionally Irish and predominately from Pennsylvania, and the sense of pride of my family's history has been ingrained in me, but I have to wonder when my ancestors came over to the U.S. could it be they brought other unintended guests with them resulting in a faerie community in the USA? It's a possibility, as with most hypotheses, that I spitball when researching these cases, but I'm left once more with more questions than answers, and we'll probably never find out the truth of what was seen in Butler County that night.

Quick Facts:

Species/Potential Species: Mammal? Insect? / Plant?
Location: Chicora, Butler County, Pennsylvania
Sighted: 2005

Works Cited:

Astonishing Encounters: Pennsylvania’s Unknown Creatures- Casebook Three by Stan Gordon
Winged Cryptids: Humanoids, Monsters, and Anomalous Creatures Casebook by Lon Strickler