Woman Reportedly 'Pixie-Led' During Woodland Walk in County Meath, Ireland

A report published recently by Dublin Live recounted the experience of an anonymous woman who became inexplicably lost while traversing a patch of woods in County Meath, Ireland.

In her report, the woman describes being what is often referred to as “pixie-led.”

This term refers to the belief that faeries will sometimes lead travelers astray through supernatural means. The most cited remedy for the condition in folklore is to turn one’s coat inside out, which is said to break the spell.

According to her testimony:

I just had to get my steps up for a challenge that we were doing in work. I decided to go walk somewhere nice instead of just doing laps of my estate. It was a nice day so I said I would go for a walk in the woods. What was the worst that could happen?
It was going fine then the path leads through two identical trees. I stepped through and put my hands on both trees. People are saying now that this was a mistake. One was really warm and the other was really wet and cold. I walked on and I think I took a left.
The main path kind of branched off to the left and it just went nowhere. It went into a really overgrown forest, really high weeds and plants. I knew it wasn't the path. There were lots of people around. It's a really popular spot so I walked back, and I thought that this wasn't the main path, and I should have taken the other way.
I took the other way and then that similarly went nowhere. I went back to the fork to start over. I went back and I think I tried to go back the way I came. That also lead me nowhere.
I walked back up the main path again, but it didn't look familiar. It was quite overcast at this point as well. I had pulled up Google Maps and I didn't have a signal on my phone at all, which is not unusual for that area.
I decided to keep trying paths. There were only three, so I thought I'd eventually get somewhere. I kept walking down a path towards a really overgrown area again. At that point then, I heard a really light woman's voice. I don't know how to describe it. It was really high. She was shouting 'over here'. I thought she was probably calling to her kids or something. Then she laughed and it was just when she laughed, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
I have a very professional job. I'm not crazy. I'm quite logical but then the call came from the other side of me. I knew something wasn't right.
Something was just wrong. My first instinct was to run but I didn't even know where to run. I just remember turning your clothes inside out is supposed to help. So, I just tried that. I felt like it was just mental. I just had to do it. I turned my t-shirt inside out, put it back on. I was hoping nobody was looking at me because it was a really weird thing to do in the middle of a forest.
I turned around and walked back and almost immediately came to the two trees again. When I turned around and came back, I came to them quicker than when I had been walking in the opposite direction.
I didn't even think. I just wanted to get through. Then I could hear the birds again and people and stuff. I didn't know what had just happened.
When I got back to the car, I looked at my steps. The last time I had checked my step counter I had done 8,000 steps or something like that. I had put on an extra 10,000 steps. I didn't come from a family that would have believed in that sort of stuff. Certain things just stick in your head and that's why I remembered the turning the clothes inside out thing.

The woman was reportedly terrified by the phantom laughter, which she did not interpret as friendly in any way.

"I was scared when she laughed. When she laughed, I don't think I've words in the English language for it. I had never heard someone laugh like that. I knew something was really wrong. I just got this really bad feeling that things were not going to end well for me if I didn't do something," she said. "I wasn't scared until then. When she laughed, I knew something was very wrong. A lot of people have said that it was a 'stray sod'. I always just thought they were nice stories. I love that collectively as a nation we often acknowledge it as a thing. I don't know where all the extra steps on my Fitbit came from. I was surprised by the amount of people that it had happened to."

Although sharing her story on social media led to others coming forward with their own accounts and explanations regarding the phenomenon, the woman was ultimately left with few firm beliefs other than that she had experienced something very strange and that whatever she encountered seems to have a legacy still felt in the area today.

"We may not believe but we still don't ever want to run the risk," she said. "I think I just got unlucky. I've been in those woods before. People were saying that the two trees on the path were a portal. I've no massive opinion but something really weird happened. We do so many things on a daily basis instinctively. There are open fields but every so often there will be a ring of trees in the middle of a field. They will plough around them. Even with our modern farming equipment, they still plough around those trees."

Reports like this one, of changing landscapes causing unwary travelers to become lost, are not unheard of in the modern era.

Two years ago, the Singular Fortean Society received a report from Shirley Ivey; a woman who said she, her husband, their teenage daughters, and at least two strangers all experienced a strange spacetime distortion while visiting the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.

This happened [on Monday, April 3rd, 2000] in the Okefenokee Swamp in southeast Georgia. On our way to Florida from our home in Michigan at the time, we stopped at the Suwanee Canal recreation area. While there we decided to rent a motorboat and go up the canal to a picnic area for lunch. The waterway is on a meandering canal. Conditions were "low and trashy" so there was no chance of getting lost on any of the small tributaries because there was no way of getting through. The canal was fairly wide and easy to follow. We enjoyed the dark and mysterious water and the moss draped cypress of this ancient swamp. But then we noticed that it seemed to be taking a very long time to go the few miles or so to the picnic area.
We finally made it and walked on the "trembling earth" to the picnic area. I definitely made sure to note which way to go upon leaving the picnic spot. After lunch, as we were preparing to push off, two young men approached us in another motorboat. They were in a distressed state and asked if they could follow us back to the concession. They said they could not get through. We agreed to allow them to follow us. I had observed that they did not appear to be drunk.
After about 30 feet, we came to a stop because our way was blocked by a strip of dry land with tall grass growing on top. I could see the canal continuing beyond the barrier. We considered portaging over it but concluded it was not a good idea in a wild swamp. I even touched the side of the bank, and it was solid. We looked back at the two guys, and they shrugged their shoulders.
We could do only one thing and that was to go back to the picnic area to see if we could possibly have veered off course. We had not.
On the way back we passed an elderly couple paddling a canoe in the direction of the barrier (unusual because we had not encountered anyone else in a canoe). I tried to warn them about the blockage ahead, but they only kept their focus ahead with no acknowledgement as if we were not even there.
When we reached the picnic area, we decided to try again. This time we not only had no barriers in the way, but we seemed to have gotten there very quickly.
Those two guys got out of their boat and peeled rubber in the parking lot before I could even discuss this event with them. The people at the concession were no help as far as information on others experiencing similar problems.

Another experience eerily similar to the recent report out of Ireland is that of a Springfield, Illinois man who contacted the Singular Fortean Society to report a September 2003 encounter in which he was waylaid by seemingly paranormal phenomena while on his way home one night. The man described hearing phantom footsteps approaching him and being chased by a humanoid flying a strange vehicle. Even the trees seemed to act against him.

“When I got to the outskirts of the woods the small trees started acting funny, kind of spinning in circles on the top, for some reason it almost felt like the woods were alive and the trees were going to grab me,” he said.

Later, he returned to those same woods during the day and noticed that a tree he had hidden behind was no longer there, as though the landscape itself changed during his encounter.

Incidents of high strangeness like those previously mentioned are often reported in out-of-the-way places.

Other unusual reports in similar areas include the unexplained, haunting melody heard by Angela Nichols and her family one afternoon during the summer of 1987 while fishing on the Saline River in Arkansas, and a multitude of strange creatures and UFOs reportedly seen by witnesses.

Often, the reported details of these incidents overlap with existing faerie lore, although what connection, if any, exists between these phenomena is unknown and the subject remains hotly debated among researchers and investigators.

To report your own encounter with the impossible, reach out to us directly at the Singular Fortean Society through our contact page.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to support the Singular Fortean Society, please consider becoming an official member by signing up through our Patreon page—membership includes a ton of extra content and behind-the-scenes access to the Society’s inner workings.