Sir,

I had read with amusement the descriptions of fairies given by your various correspondents. They entertained me, but left me unconvinced. That was my reaction until –

I was sitting alone one night, writing. It was late; everybody else had gone to bed. With a flourish I turned over a page. The draught it created blew a paper (a laundry bill, incidentally) off the table to the floor. I saw it flutter down, and went on writing. (I was not going to let a laundry bill interrupt my romantic cogitations).

Some two minutes later I rattled through another page, having entirely forgotten the paltry bill at my feet. It was with mild astonishment, then, that when I turned the next page I beheld the same bill fluttering floorwards again. I concluded that my first experience was pure imagination, but when the same thing happened the third time I bounded up and searched for the invisible person playing the trick on me.

Then I went down on my hands and knees to see how many bills had conglomerated on the floor. I found only a solitary one – the laundry bill. I picked it up, secured it to the table, sat down, and tried to collect my startled wits. It was a failure, and so I went to bed in a daze. But until I fell asleep I seemed to sense the presence of somebody else in that room.

Who or what was it?

Sydney                                                                      Kenneth A James

James, Kenneth A. ‘Was It a Fairy’ John O’London’s Weekly (5 September, 1936), 812: for other John O’London fairy letters follow the link.