Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 10 hours ago
My recent chat with Jordan E. Petersen on the excellent Gods, Ghosts and UFOs (ggupodcast.substack.com/p/how-to-actually-meet-the-fae-jo-hickey) Podcast. Follow them on substack: ggupodcast.substack.com
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 (open.spotify.com/show/0DycOuj18Zh9tfP0CsZq5Lhttps://open.spotify.com/show/0DycOuj18Zh9tfP0CsZq5L) (also find her at scarlettofthefae.com (scarlettofthefae.com/) and preorder her book here (https://amzn.eu/d/09NUdoJi) )
Nerd Critic (podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nerd-critic/id1387225385)
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)
The disconnect between perception and description
“I can see it in my head, but it just doesn’t seem to translate into words or drawings”
Rudolf Otto, (amazon.com/Idea-Holy-R-Otto/dp/0195002105) The Idea of the Holy (amazon.com/Idea-Holy-R-Otto/dp/0195002105)
Mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascinans
Why one guy runs away and the other is filled with awe
Conditioning, inheritance, and the holding place we make for the uncanny
Orbs in the context of UFOs, fae, and consciousness
Conscious plasma :)
Different witnesses, different filters/stations/signals
How to learn to see auras (try it at a conference with a white screen behind the speaker)
The Genius Loci
Two strangers see the same being in the same place, twenty years apart
“Your daemon is really driving you”
How to actually meet the fae
Picking up litter is an offering
Thresholds: doorways, dawn and dusk, the line where the beach meets the sea, the transitions in your own life
Theosophy and the elemental beings — Blavatsky, Steiner, Paracelsus
The London flat haunted by goblins (near a crossroads, near water)
Are the fae hitching lifts on trains and trucks?
Fairies as emergent phenomena of place (this is what humans are, actually)
Part two maybe? (with Mal (and Tom???))
And in the epilogue… (ggupodcast.substack.com/p/s2e8-epilogue) on Gods, Ghosts and UFOs
A disembodied head in a kitchen window
Why you can’t tear down a house to make a haunting go away
How UFOs are seen so often over a Neolithic burial chamber that locals don’t bother to look up anymore
⭐️ JOIN THE MODERN FAIRY SIGHTINGS COMMUNITY ⭐️
patreon.com/c/themodernfairysightingspodcast/membership (https://%20patreon.com/c/themodernfairysightingspodcast/membership)
My recent chat with Jordan E. Petersen on the excellent Gods, Ghosts and UFOs (ggupodcast.substack.com/p/how-to-actually-meet-the-fae-jo-hickey) Podcast. Follow them on substack: ggupodcast.substack.com
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 (open.spotify.com/show/0DycOuj18Zh9tfP0CsZq5Lhttps://open.spotify.com/show/0DycOuj18Zh9tfP0CsZq5L) (also find her at scarlettofthefae.com (scarlettofthefae.com/) and preorder her book here (https://amzn.eu/d/09NUdoJi) )
Nerd Critic (podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nerd-critic/id1387225385)
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)
The disconnect between perception and description
“I can see it in my head, but it just doesn’t seem to translate into words or drawings”
Rudolf Otto, (amazon.com/Idea-Holy-R-Otto/dp/0195002105) The Idea of the Holy (amazon.com/Idea-Holy-R-Otto/dp/0195002105)
Mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascinans
Why one guy runs away and the other is filled with awe
Conditioning, inheritance, and the holding place we make for the uncanny
Orbs in the context of UFOs, fae, and consciousness
Conscious plasma :)
Different witnesses, different filters/stations/signals
How to learn to see auras (try it at a conference with a white screen behind the speaker)
The Genius Loci
Two strangers see the same being in the same place, twenty years apart
“Your daemon is really driving you”
How to actually meet the fae
Picking up litter is an offering
Thresholds: doorways, dawn and dusk, the line where the beach meets the sea, the transitions in your own life
Theosophy and the elemental beings — Blavatsky, Steiner, Paracelsus
The London flat haunted by goblins (near a crossroads, near water)
Are the fae hitching lifts on trains and trucks?
Fairies as emergent phenomena of place (this is what humans are, actually)
Part two maybe? (with Mal (and Tom???))
And in the epilogue… (ggupodcast.substack.com/p/s2e8-epilogue) on Gods, Ghosts and UFOs
A disembodied head in a kitchen window
Why you can’t tear down a house to make a haunting go away
How UFOs are seen so often over a Neolithic burial chamber that locals don’t bother to look up anymore
⭐️ JOIN THE MODERN FAIRY SIGHTINGS COMMUNITY ⭐️
patreon.com/c/themodernfairysightingspodcast/membership (https://%20patreon.com/c/themodernfairysightingspodcast/membership)
