Speaking of fairies, one was captured by a guava picker outside Guadalajara. Hundreds of residents have now lined up for hours to pay 20 pesos to see the fairy. And when I say a fairy was captured, I mean a plastic toy was placed in a jar.

“Mexican news agencies were quick to show a “real fairy” that was supposedly found the outskirts of Guadalajara, Mexico. The supposed fairy was found by a 22 year old man who claimed to have captured the creature while picking Guavas. His mother gave an emotional testimony to the cameras, claiming to have had experienced some sort of spiritual awakening.”

[Ghost Theory]

Who knew these delicate dead faeries were hiding on Etsy all along? This is the handiwork of Weird Things reader Jim Transue who hand makes all of these oddities by hand and sells them for those who really want to get a gift for a man who has everything.

Click AFTER THE JUMP for a few more pictures…

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In 2007, an illusion designer from the UK put up for auction what appeared to be the remains of a dead fairy. The winged creature was said to have been inspected by X-Ray and proved a biological organism. Although the bone structure seemed to be that of a child, the bones themselves were said to be hollow.

Here was the initial description according to a BBC article at the time:

“The 8in remains, complete with wings, skin, teeth and flowing red hair, have been examined by anthropologists and forensic experts who can confirm the body is genuine.”

The exact day of the posting should have been a tip off, so skeptics found it as no surprise when the April Fools Day hoax was revealed to be nothing but a model. However, even after it was revealed as a fake, the curiosity still sold for £280 to a private art collector.

Messages still poured in after the confession, with many upset that the seller listed the location where the fairy was found.

[Wikipedia // Dead Fairy Hoax]

French for “Red Gnome,” the Nain Rouge is described as a small, furry imp with rotten teeth, glowing red eyes and an uncanny knack for showing up right before tragedy, misfortune and death beset Detroit, Michigan. A ghoulish, shadowy square in the endurant patchwork of the city’s checkered history, the creature has appeared repeatedly, always materializing, red-eyed and cawing, out of the hot breath and noise of the city, only to disappear immediately, fading away into black smoke or the high, hollow echo of screams. Though not nearly as notorious as Point Pleasant, West Virginia’s Mothman, whose spate of appearances in 1966 are often linked to the 1967 rush hour collapse of the Silver Bridge, the Nain Rouge is said to have presaged every major disaster to have struck Detroit since its founding in 1701.

Although the original legend of the Nain Rouge comes from French folklore, where the creature is regarded as a sort of fairytale hobgoblin, the emigration of the story to the United States found the dwarf written into the DNA of Detroit and repurposed to serve the infant metropolis’ need for a malevolent face to assign to the first stumbling steps, and subsequent spills, of a city learning to walk on its own. As such, early stories of the Nain Rouge portray the puckish dwarf as a malevolent creature who not only revels in tragedy, but also has the ability to cause it.

It’s said that in 1701, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, French adventurer and first settler of Detroit, encountered the creature on the land that would become Detroit, and, being an accomplished swordsman, assaulted the Nain Rouge in an attempt to drive it away. Supposedly, from that day on, Cadillac was cursed, as allegedly evidenced by the string of imprisonments and bureaucratic entanglements that haunted him during the final 29 years of his life.

As the city grew from a fort to a settlement, and then into a town, the Nain Rouge extricated himself from the role of active hexing, of causing misfortune, and into the strange, and perhaps creepier, role of predicating it, steering the legend away from the superstitious scapegoating of monsters, and into the desperate guilt exemption of determinism – if the Nain Rouge appears as a portent of disasters, the disasters are fated, and neither planners nor politicians can steer a city’s fate.

Wednsday: Destiny and the Nain Rouge

It was one of the greatest hoaxes of the early 20th century, ensnaring even famous author and spiritualist Arthur Conan Doyle. Here is the original. Funny at how silly it looks now in the world of modern photography.

Pic is credited to the UK’s National Media Museum who staged it to promote a production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream.

Most of us see fairies as the most harmless of folklore. The Cottingley Fairy hoax perpetrated by Elsie Wright in 1916 comes to mind. What’s the harm? Stories to do with fairies are most often adorable tales of dainty little creatures doing pleasant things. The real life Irish fairy tale of Bridget Cleary however is a few shades darker than your average Guinness.

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