As to glimpses from windows, when I was 4 and 5, I used to watch what I called The Faeries outside, through my bedroom window, late at night. They’d play and work in our yard then, and often noticed me and tried to get me to come out to “play” with them. Once one came over to press its forehead to the window right in front of me and, as I was doing the same, being unafraid, my mother walked in, saw it, and screamed blue murder. Never mentioned it later, though.
Another time my younger sister and I were playing in that same back yard on an overcast autumnal day when we heard a “hello” from the fringe of woods at the bottom of our orchard. Yes, it was an orchard house. Anyhow, we yelled back and pretty soon this voice was claiming to be a dolphin who wanted to play with us. We kept glimpsing grey skin and big eyes, so we thought it was a dolphin. I was even aware enough to ask if it needed water and it immediately said yes, that’s why it wanted to take us to its pool to have fun, claiming it was warm water, very nice. My younger sister was all for this, but I got wary and backed off, dragging her with me. We went inside and told my mother, who bolted the door and had us play inside the rest of that month.
My youngest son, 26 now, reported seeing what he said was a small elf in our back yard here, leaning up against the base of our oak. I asked if he was sure it wasn’t a squirrel, and he assured me it was not, and, given what I’d experienced, I believed him.
My father, while driving a semi, one morning saw what he said was clearly an elf, complete with green suit of leaves and pointy hat, gamboling along the line of trees as he drove through early morning mist. He said he slowed down and got a good look, then figured maybe he was going crazy. The frolicking elf looked at him, he said, and smiled, then just scampered amazingly fast into the woods and was gone. Very strange. My father, understand, was a pragmatic realist, and when he told me about this he was shy and asked after the story, “So, do you think I’m crazy, or what?” He was genuinely worried. I assured him what he’d seen was actually kinda common.
My childhood and my father’s experience are from W. PA, while my son’s sighting was here in NE. We also saw trolls and gnomes in the Black Forest in Germany on a hike. Scared my wife.
