How to actually meet the fae | Jo Hickey-Hall on Modern Fairy Sightings, Orbs, and Sacred Place

What’s Jo’s Favorite Fairy Sighting?

This week, Jordan finally gets to ask the host of the singular Modern Fairy Sightings Podcast the most annoying question he can come up with, and she does not disappoint.

Jo Hickey-Hall has been collecting these stories for years. And the one she leads with is hers: a stick being made of literal sticks, running down a beach in Jersey with a gait so strange it made everyone watching laugh. Years later, a man in northeast England describes seeing almost exactly the same thing.

We talk about why these things, these beings, whatever they are, resist being accurately described or depicted. They’re so vivid in the moment, but as soon as you start to try to put words on them, they seem to slip away.

But we’re doing our best. You can come judge for yourself.

Highlights:

Jo Hickey-Hall, folklorist, social historian, host of The Modern Fairy Sightings Podcast (also find her at scarlettofthefae.com and preorder her book here)

Nerd Critic

Jo’s favorite fairy sighting

The shadow-cutters

A stick being made of sticks

The Brazilian Ent (a tree trunk that walked, then tried to become a man, and didn’t quite get it right)