Please be aware the stories, theories, re-enactments and language in this podcast are of an adult nature and can be disturbing, frightening and in some cases offensive. Listener Discretion is advised – there is very adult content ahead and you have been warned.

Welcome heathens welcome to the world of the weird and unexplained. I’m your host, Nicole Delacroix and together, we will be investigating stories about the weird, wonderful, unexplained, eerie, scary and down-right unbelievable. There will be tales of ghosts, murder, supernatural beings and unexplained mysteries. So, sit back, grab your favorite drink, relax and prepare to be transported to today's dark Enigma....

And on today’s Dark enigma we’re jumping into a new story that maybe you know, maybe you don’t, but I had a simple request from a listener to hear a story about fairies. And you I’m nothing if not accommodating, so today’s story is going to be about fairies! But before we get into all that, we will be playing our drinking game but only for those of you that are at home and have nowhere else to go tonight. Since today’s episode is sort of vague, I’ll let you guys pick your poison. Now for the game part… every time I say Fairy will be a single shot and every time I say Cornwall, that’s a double shot. Now that we have the business end out of the way we can jump headfirst into today’s dark enigma… and the story of the fairy abduction of Anne Jefferies, so let’s hit it my heathens…

Outside the dramatic inventions of Shakespeare, Drayton, Herrick et al., most accounts of human interaction with the faeries from the Early Modern period are derived from the disparate records of witch trials. These records often chronicle the accused witches’ testimony (usually under torture) of consorting with faerie familiars, for the purposes of divination, healing and sometimes flying to Sabbaths. Historians such as Carlo Ginzberg and Emma Wilby have teased out the detail from the trial records to create a convincing argument that they encode genuine evidence of shamanic practice amongst the witches, who were frequently able to interact with the faeries in a disassociated altered state of consciousness. The records supply us with the largest body of documentary evidence for the ontology of the faeries between the 16th and 18th centuries. But there is one unusual case that comes down to us from different sources, and yet contains many of the motifs usually contained in the witch trials. This is the story of Anne Jefferies from St Teath, close to the north coast of Cornwall.