Imagine that you are walking in the woods and you hear beautiful music, but there is nobody there. Or you see a barn in the fields, from which music comes, and the door is open. You have a peek inside and see a group of beautiful people dancing. They invite you in. Would you accept their invitation?

Once in a while this happens, in different parts of the world, regardless of culture. Somebody is playing that music, and strange beings are seen dancing to that music. Who are they?

This is a short article about people who really hear such music and who the beings are who are playing this music.

Contents:

Music In The Barn

Music From a Glass Palace

The Sidhe, or The Good People From Ireland

The Nûñnë'hï

A Worldwide Dimensional Race

Music In The Barn

When I was growing up (in Belgium) I read a lot of folk stories, mostly from Flanders and the Netherlands. One of the tales I remember, because I found it so fascinating, is that of a farmer that walked home, late at night, through the fields. In one of the fields he noticed a barn he had never seen before. Light was shining through the windows and through the crack of a half open door. Then he heard music coming from the barn. Out of curiosity, he walked up to the barn and had a peek through the open door. Inside the well-lit barn, a group of beautiful people were dancing to enchanting music. The farmer was invited in, and had a good time dancing with the group, until he uttered a certain word (usually a Christian word), and everything suddenly disappeared leaving the farmer standing in an empty field. What really happened? Did the entire experience happen only in his mind, reminiscent to the mind manipulation of certain beings I talked about in my other articles? Or did he step through a portal into another dimension where those beings live, and suddenly the portal closed, and he was back in the physical world?

In case you think these folktales are just fantasy, consider the following contemporary experience from the other end of the world, in South-America. It is part of an article by Scott Corrales (a writer and translator of paranormal subjects in Latin America and Spain), called Markawasi: Dimensions Beyond Our Own (https://www.labyrinthina.com/void.html). Comments in square brackets are mine.

The following account of a possible visit to another dimension in time or space was forwarded to this author by Dr. Raul Rios Centeno, an investigator of the unexplained in Lima, Peru. "Several months ago," begins his fascinating narration, "a patient came to see me about a serious case of hemiplegic [complete paralysis of half of the body]. The patient claimed to be 30 years old but was unable to prove it, stating that she’d lost her formal identification card. It was a very strange case of hemiplegic, since upon examination with a CAT (Computerized Axial Tomography) scan, there were neither areas showing bleeding vessels nor any traumatic lesions."

When I began asking questions about the case, the patient told me the following: "I was at a campground in the vicinity of the ancient stone forest, Markawasi [also called Marcahuasi, is a plateau in the Andes Mountains, located 60 km east of Lima, known for curious shapes of human faces and animals visible in granite rock], when I went out exploring late at night with some friends. Oddly enough, we heard the strains of music and noticed a small torch-lit stone cabin. I was able to see people dancing inside, but upon getting closer I felt a sudden sensation of cold which I paid little attention to, and I stuck my head through an open door. It was then that I saw the occupants were clad in 17th century fashion. I tried to enter the room, but one of my girlfriends pulled me out."

"The patient was tugged out by one of her friends, and her body became paralyzed in half precisely as she was drawn out of the 'stone cabin'. My conclusion is that the probable cause behind the hemiplegic is unknown. No medical test was able to ascertain its cause. Nonetheless, an EEG was able to show that the left hemisphere of the brain did not show signs of normal functioning, as well as an abnormal amount of electric waves.

"Many Peruvians claim having had contact experiences in Markawasi, while many scholars indicate the existence of a dimensional doorway. No conclusive proof of this exists, of course. Some friends, myself, obviously, and others who have visited the stone forest can attest to the existence of a strange kind of energy. According to those persons having knowledge of this subject, dimensional doorways tend to open and close not necessarily in specific places. The patient is currently undergoing physical rehabilitation in Lima’s Arzobispo Loayza National Hospital.

"The unanswered question is, of course, what would have happened if her body had entered completely into the stone cabin? Would she have gone into another dimension? I suppose the truth shall be known in the fullness of time."

Dr. Rios fascinating account was followed up with the following information concerning the CAT scan results on the anonymous patient. The test, he indicated, showed "Intact intracranial regions without any specific area having been compromised. There is neither swelling nor color changes which may suggest some manner of trauma. The clinician certifying this exam cannot find a justified cause for the hemiplegic in the left hemisphere, due to the fact its vascularization and irrigation fall within parameters considered to be normal. The EEG shows areas evidently paralyzed due to the lack of electric current transmission. These tests lead me to believe — and this is my personal opinion, since my colleagues have simply catalogued it as an 'unknown affliction' — that the dimensional shift, or 'partial entry' of this person into this anomalous zone, was able to produce a change in the energy flow existing in her nervous system, or perhaps even a change in the type of energy. Given that the cranial area is where our nerve impulses are contained — in other words, the right cerebral hemisphere controls the left side of the body and vice-versa — this could be the reason why the left hand autonomous nervous system did not at all affect the operation of crucial organs such as the heart or the stomach, which are governed by the right cerebral hemisphere."

Is this not a remarkable similarity? It also show that we are dealing with at least a different kind of spatial energy, or energy-space. It is said that higher dimensions have much more intense energy. If the person would have entered the barn completely, she would have been unharmed, as the body would have adapted to the higher energy. However, there are enough folktales who tell of people who have entered 'fairy land', and danced and feasted with the fairy people for hours, after which they returned to the physical world where several days, even many years passed by. Usually the person dies shortly after, although there are cases in which the person returned from fairy land unharmed.

W. Y. Evans-Wentz (1878-1965), in The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries (1911), gives an example of this time passage difference:

From the bower could be heard the pipe and the song and the voice of laughter as the fairies ‘sett’ and reeled in the mazes of the dance. Sometimes a man hearing the merry music and seeing the wonderful light within would be tempted to go in and join them, but woe to him if he omitted to leave a piece of iron at the door of the bower on entering, for the cunning fairies would close the door and the man would find no egress. There he would dance for years—but to him the years were as one day—while his wife and family mourned him as dead. (page 88)

The term fairy has been used for all kind of spiritual beings. The beings we are talking about here are the tall human looking fairies.

With these fairies there is also a warning not to eat from any food or drink offered, as return to the physical world would then not be possible. The physics laws and time are different in those other dimensions. Nevertheless, some people who have visited this realm and have eaten or drank, have returned fine. It seems to depend what the fairies themselves have in mind when they offer food or drink.

Music From a Glass Palace

A story from the Island of Man (a self-governing British Crown dependency in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland), talks about a man hearing music coming from a glass castle, clearly not in our physical dimension. Although he didn't see any beings, it is yet another story about music coming from another dimension.

William Cain, of Glen Helen (formerly Rhenass), was going home in the evening across the mountains near Brook's Park, when he heard music down below in a glen, and saw there a great glass house like a palace, all lit up. He stopped to listen, and when he had the new tune he went home to practice it on his fiddle; and recently he played the same fairy tune at Miss Sophia Morrison's Manx entertainment in Peel. (The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. Evans-Wentz, page 131)

The Sidhe, or The Good People From Ireland

Hearing music from the Good People in the countryside was not uncommon in Ireland. According to an old man interviewed by Evan-Wentz:

As sure as you are sitting down I heard the pipes there in that wood (pointing to a wood on the north-west slope of the Hill, and west of the banquet hall). I heard the music another time on a hot summer evening at the Rath of Ringlestown, in a field where all the grass had been burned off; and I often heard it in the wood of Tara. Whenever the good people play, you hear their music all through the field as plain as can be; and it is the grandest kind of music. It may last half the night, but once day comes, it ends.’ (page 32)

At this Michael said to his companion in the cart with us, William Barber, "You tell how you heard the music"; and this followed: "One dark night, about one o’clock, myself and another young man were passing along the road up there round Ben Bulbin, when we heard the finest kind of music. All sorts of music seemed to be playing. We could see nothing at all, though we thought we heard voices like children’s. It was the music of the gentry we heard." (page 57)

The Good People, also called the Gentry, are the Sidhe. They were descended from the Tuatha de Danann (sometimes they were considered one and the same) who settled in Ireland millennia ago and in being defeated by the Milesians they retreated to a different dimension of space and time than our own. They live under mounds, fairy raths and cairns, and also in the land of "Tír na nÓg" a mythical island to the west of Ireland. They are called the Good People because they would give the Irish people healing, protection and teachings. They are dressed very richly and accounts of their halls are of richly decorated places with sumptuous foods and drinks.

Evan-Wentz tells of a story in which the Gentry were even coming into one man's home to play music and dance:

On Connor’s Island (about two miles southward from Carns by the mainland) my uncle, Dan Quinn, often used to see big crowds of the gentry come into his house and play music and dance. The house would be full of them, but they caused him no fear. Once on such an occasion, one of them came up to him as he lay in bed, and giving him a green leaf told him to put it in his mouth. When he did this, instantly he could not see the gentry, but could still hear their music. Uncle Dan always believed he recognized some of the gentry his drowned friends. Only when he was alone would the gentry visit him. He was a silent old man, and so never talked much; but I know that this story is as true as can be, and that the gentry always took an interest in him. (page 56)

The music could also be heard passing by one's house, because the Sidhe like to walk through the countryside or run by on their horses. In the following story such an event was interpreted as a death coach, probably because these people were afraid of the Sidhe, or the strange noise accompanying them.

The next tale the mother told was about the death coach which used to pass by the very house we were in. Every night until after her daughter was born she used to rise up on her elbow in bed to listen to the death coach passing by. It passed about midnight, and she could hear the rushing, the tramping of the horses, and most beautiful singing, just like fairy music, but she could not understand the words. Once or twice she was brave enough to open the door and look out as the coach passed, but she could never see a thing, though there was the noise and singing. One time a man had to wait on the roadside to let the fairy horses go by, and he could hear their passing very clearly, and couldn’t see one of them. (page 71-72)

That reminds me of my own grandmother who lived in the countryside when she was a child (in Belgium). Sometimes they would see a light sphere fly over the fields, and from the light sphere came music. They had no idea what it was.

These tall, beautiful human looking fairies are not restricted to the Celtic or Gaelic countries, where most of the stories in literature come from. The exact same spiritual or dimensional beings also appear in other parts of the world.

The Nûñnë'hï

The Cherokee Indians in the USA, knew about the Nûñnë'hï or immortals, the "people who live anywhere," who were a race of spirit people who lived in the highlands of the old Cherokee country and had a great many townhouses, especially in the Bald Mountains, a mountain range rising along the border between Tennessee and North Carolinas. Being invisible, they lived under the mountains, but also in hill side and under water, just like the Sidhe. They were seen only when they wanted to be seen. When they choose to be visible they were dressed just like the Cherokee.

They were very fond of music and dancing, and hunters in the mountains would often hear the dance, songs and the drum beating in some invisible townhouse, but when they went toward the sound it would shift about, and they would hear it behind them or away in some other direction, so that they could never find the place where the dance was.

These immortal Nûñnë'hï appeared many times to help and assist the people in times of need. In the legend of the Spirit Defenders of Nïkwäsï, the Nûñnë'hï defended a peaceful tribe against an attack by a warrior tribe.

They were a friendly people, and often brought lost wanderers to their townhouses under the mountains and cared for them there until they were rested and then guided them back to their home. There is Cherokee legend in which Yahula, a Cherokee stock trader, got lost in the mountains. The Nûñnë'hï had found him and brought him to their town, took care of him, and brought him back to his people. However, he could not stay, because he had tasted the fairy food and could never again eat with human kind. For the same reason he could not stay with his family, but he had to go back to the Nûñnë'hï. In the years after he did come back to visit his family, but finally he stopped coming.

Notice that in this story the eating of food also binds the person to the other world. We find that with the Sidhe too. With the Nûñnë'hï, one can come back to the physical world for shorts amount of time, and this is also known in the Celtic countries.

W. Y. Evans Wentz, in The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, tells us of a similar story of a man taken by the 'Gentry' (another name for the Fairies), who came back afterwards to visit his family, several times. The story was told to him by an old man from Grange, Ireland:

"An old woman near Lough More, where Father Patrick was drowned, who used to make her living by selling flax at the market, was taken by the gentry, and often came back afterwards to her three children to comb their hair. One time she told a neighbour that the money she saved from her dealings in flax would be found near a big rock on the lake-shore, which she indicated, and that she wanted the three children to have it."

A Worldwide Dimensional Race

In the past, people saw the Sidhe in palaces with banquets, dance and music, probably because it would be more in line with the culture of their time. In our present culture it would be more apt for people to enter cafe's and restaurants to eat and drink. I think that the people who had the strange experience in the cafe and restaurant mentioned in my article of Strange Encounters of the Unusual Kind were most probably unaware participants in a theatrical play by the same beings, whether they are called the Sidhe, the Nûñnë'hï, or by other names. Being other dimensional beings, the subtle environment, such as luxurious palaces or a roadside restaurants, are created by the mind of those beings. In the astral dimension where they reside, the astral matter is organized into form by thought.

The Cherokee say that the Nûñnë'hï can take the shape of a person known to the person who encounters them, in order to make the person more at ease. The person thinks that he is with a family member or friend, only to discover later that this was not so. The Sidhe are also known to be able to take on any form.

The Sidhe are fairly benign, hence their name as the Good People. They seem to be race of human-like beings who, although different from humans, do share the good and not so good qualities in their characters. The Sidhe have been seen in armies, sometimes fighting each other. The Nûñnë'hï too could come out of hillside to fight alongside a Cherokee tribe to ward of an invader.

Being an other-world people, they are found all around the globe, although under different names, but their characteristics are the same.