This is a clip from the Weird Walk Home.

You can access the entire episode now on our website and all podcast platforms.

Wizarding World of Harry Potter has pushed the idea of the house fairy into the modern mainstream consciousness.

But it has been in the shadows of human awareness for quite some time.

As I discussed in the last episode, Haunt Sweet Haunt, a count of beings in the home space have been around nearly forever.

The opening clips are claimed to be real recordings of house fairies

taken within the last 15 years. Although the film quality could perhaps use improvement,

and some people may say that the blurriness either lends to or damages the credibility of the claims.

It is potential evidence, if nothing else.

For as long as people have had houses, they have apparently also had house elves and house fairies.

They are called many names and with many distinctions in many cultures.

In Scotland, we have the brownie.

These are typically said to be under two feet tall, with wrinkled brown skin and large noses,

rather similar to Dobby in the Harry Potter world, actually, and apparently they have the power to shape-shift.

They hide during the day, in the walls and or other liminal spaces, it is asserted, and come out at night to

clean and mend when the human family has gone to sleep. Older accounts say that they enjoy

sitting by the fireplace and use horseshoes as little seats. This I find fascinating because typically iron is

legendary in keeping fairies away. I do suspect, however, that this alleged iron-clad

method of repellent is not, indeed, iron-clad, for I believe that individual and family genetics of the fairy in question

determine the response to iron, much as metal allergies run in some human individuals and families.

It is within the old lore that brownies turn into Boggarts when angered. Here again we see a separate

ego, it seems, as I've discussed in the episode Imaginary. The Bantee is the Irish variant of a

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