Alternate Perceptions Magazine, June 2025
Robin Goodfellow and the Dream Factory
By Dennis Stamey
Otto Binder, the science-fiction author and comic artist, used to put out a syndicated column devoted to his illustrations of UFO reports. One of these stories concerned small humanoids seen wildly dancing on a roof. This incident supposedly occurred on October 21, 1966, near Toledo. Ohio, at the hilltop home of Mrs. E. Reeves. Mrs. Reeves and her daughter heard thumping on the roof, peeked outside, and noticed not only these creatures doing a jig but a glowing object hovering over them.
We’ve tried diligently to locate the source of this incident but to no avail. We suspect that if Reeves did make such a report, her story might be buried deep in the files of MUFON or some other UFO group. Binder was bad to twist facts and never bothered to give citations. Perhaps he was repeating hearsay.
But the yarn seems to have a connection with ghost lore. An acquaintance of ours once told us that he had a friend who heard footsteps on the roof at night. He went to the house a few times and heard the noises himself. Phantom footfalls on the roof are not an uncommon occurrence. On social media, there are a few stories about people hearing thuds on their roof or inside their attic. When they investigate, they can’t find anything. There are even instances of the sounds in alleged haunted houses. Sometimes though they turn out to be raccoons or some other wild animal. But critters crawling on the roof, which we’ve heard, don’t make a loud commotion. One spiritual blogger wrote: “According to the Bible, hearing footsteps at night could be the presence of angels…. If you hear footsteps at night, it could be a sign that angels are nearby, helping you through difficult moments. These footsteps might provide the reassurance and strength you need in times of uncertainty.”
Well, that’s not entirely true. While we’re not Biblical scholars, the only reference we could find remotely pertaining to supernatural footsteps is from 2 Samuel 5:24: “As soon as you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the poplar trees, move quickly, because that will mean the Lord has gone out in front of you to strike the Philistine army.” We doubt that verse has anything to do with the subject in question.
In 2012, there was an urban myth circulating throughout Scandinavia about a Tag Vandren (Roof Walker), a Tag Kavleren (Roof Crawler), or a Tag Hopper (Roof Jumper). Take your pick. The Roof Walker was mostly seen, yes seen, on the rooftops of buildings. People who glimpsed the Roof Walker said it looked like a man but had glowing orange dog eyes and claws and either wore black clothes or had ink-black skin.
Some versions of the creature depicted it chasing people alone at night, jumping from roofs or streetlamps, and running along fences. A group of teenagers who were being chased ran into the middle of a football field to escape it, but the Roof Walker launched itself over 30 feet and landed on top of one of the teens, breaking his back. The creature immediately leaped to another teen, knocking him over, and then bound away into the dark. Supposedly the Roof Walker will also grab a person if they are next to a window and pull them out even if the window is too small. The creature had also been blamed for the deaths of some construction workers who plunged to their death.
The Scandinavian Roof Walker reminds us of England’s Spring-Heeled Jack who terrorized mostly young women during the mid to late 1800s. Sightings of Spring-Heeled Jack were reported from London up to Liverpool, but they were especially prevalent in the Black Country, an urban area in the West Midlands, where they peeked in the 1880s. Descriptions of the creature varied, but most were agree he had a goatee, pointed ears and horns, and flashing, fiery eyes. The majority accounts also described him jumping over rooftops and across hedges. The last official sighting was in September 1904, when the newspapers reported a figure seen "jumping over a building in William Henry Street" in Birmingham.
While Spring-Heeled Jack has more credibility than the Roof Walker, some of these stories dissolve into mass hysteria and even urban myth. During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, a being known as "the Springer" was said to leap out from dark alleys and scare passersby. Some traditions say that the Springer could often over train carriages. A lot of these accounts were based on nothing but rumors. There’s an associated story about a "Razor Blade Man" who was said to slash at victims with razors attached to his fingers.
Footsteps on roofs, creatures able to jump from housetop to housetop, phantom attackers. A lot of this reminds us of fairy folklore. The wee folk loved dancing whether it was in the meadow or on roofs. But besides being a merry race, they also had a devious side. Sometimes they would injure humans and kill and steal cattle using bows and arrows otherwise known as “elf-shot.” Later accused witches would claim they used elf shot from bows and arrows given to them by the Devil. A human hit by these invisible poisoned arrows might come down with rheumatism, arthritis, or cramps. It’s possible that the belief in elf-shot originated from the tradition of collecting Neolithic and Bronze Age flint arrowheads and using them for folk magic and folk medicine. These arrow heads were thought to be fairy darts and could cause as well as cure certain illnesses.
A few years back we did an extensive study of phantom assailants throughout modern history including phantom snipers and slashers (see our book Phantom Snipers, Slashers, and Animal Rippers). However, we couldn’t arrive at a theory as to why they occurred. The snipers emerged not long after World War I in the United States but were also reported in the UK in later years. After the phantom dart sniper’s forays in Westchester County, New York, in 1976 (a truly perplexing case), they faded away. The slashers, the first occurrence possibly in London during the 1780s, are still reported from time to time. Then there are the hat and scarf thieves, the hatpin stabbers, and the clothes rippers. In Boston during the early 1930s, both a phantom sniper and a clothes ripper were terrorizing the city. Nobody was ever caught.
We’ve speculated that the phantom assailants are a manifestation of our fears about urban crime. That could be true in part. But what if they are a modern version of fairy mischievousness, of elf-shot? The same with these mysterious roof walkers or their macabre leaping cousins. Fairy folklore is not a common denominator in high strangeness, but it tends to weave through the fabric, almost becoming the setting. The antics of Spring-Heeled Jack are not unlike those of Puck, The Goodfellows, or Robin Goodfellow of English folklore (they also go by the moniker hobgoblin) famous for their rascally pranks and practical jokes.
This Trickster mentality was inherent in UFO reports of the 1950s and 60s. Carl Jung believed that the Trickster motif was “a summation of all the inferior traits of character in individuals” which is likely true. Today the UFO phenomenon has become more sublime, possibly because of our holistic New Age mind shift, our rejection of “inferior traits.” Subsequently, the diminutive humanoids, uniformly greyish in color unlike before, have become, according to contactees, robots while the Nordics and the Lizard People are the real aliens who happen to control them.
Many aspects of the paranormal continue to remain Puckish in nature. Ghost hunters are often pushed, slapped, or otherwise slightly abused. We, of course, can’t forget the whimsical poltergeists. Cryptids are known to stand behind trees and bushes and watch people like shy children, something the fairy folk was known to do. The MIB, though usually presenting themselves as intimidating Mafia types, have occasionally been known to act like buffoons. However, its Ufology that best reflects the current mindset and the days of tomfoolery are gone. No more dancing spacemen. So too are the days of this mystery’s dark side that occurred mostly in the late 1960s, something popularized by John Keel.
We should note that there are no typologies in the paraphysical. It is all interrelated. There are cryptid witnesses who swear they were visited by the MIB.
Speaking of supernatural trickery, there’s the Devil’s Hoofprints. A correspondent to the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette wrote: “Sir, Thursday night, the 8th of February [1855], was marked by a heavy fall of snow, followed by rain and boisterous wind from the east, and in the morning frost.
“The return of daylight revealed the ramblings of some most busy and mysterious animal, endowed with the power of ubiquity, as its footprints were to be seen in all sorts of unaccountable places – on the tops of houses, narrow walls, in gardens and court yards, enclosed by high walls and palings, as well as in the open fields. The creature seems to have frolicked about through Exmouth, Littleham, Lympstone, Woodbury, Topsham, Starcross, Teignmouth, &c. &c.”
A correspondent for the Illustrated London News stated: “The marks which appeared on the snow (which lay very thinly on the ground at the time), and which were seen on the Friday morning, to all appearances were the perfect impression of a donkey’s hoof – the length 4 inches by 2 ¾ inches; but instead of progressing as that animal would have done (or indeed as any other would have done), feet right and left, it appeared that foot had followed foot, in a single line; the distance from each tread being eight inches, or rather more – the foot-marks in every parish being exactly the same size, and the steps the same length.” The prints stretched from 40 to100 miles along the south Devon coastline, always in the shape of cloven hoofs. While theories abound including an experimental balloon, hopping mice, a kangaroo, and donkeys, no one has been able to satisfactorily explain the phenomenon.
Was something trying to convince the good people of Devonshire, who were mostly pious churchgoers, that the Devil was afoot on that freezing snowy night? We should note at the time, Devon was starting to undergo drastic changes, including the rise of the tourist industry on the so-called English Riviera at Torbay, the decline of farming and fishing, urbanization, and the proliferation of holiday homes. Angst breeds strange happenings. We found this item in the New York Times of May 20, 1886. On May 17 around 9 p.m., people strolling down Church Street in New Haven, Connecticut, noticed a man pedaling toward them. The article said: “He seemed to be an expert wheelsman and was going at an exceedingly rapid rate.” But instead of the traditional cyclist outfit, the man was wearing “a long-tailed coat.” Worst of all, his coattails were on fire. Policemen and pedestrians kept yelling at the cyclist, but he strangely ignored them. The man disappeared down the boulevard, his coattails glowing in the distance. If this was simply a stunt, it was stupid and dangerous. 1886 was a very active year for strange events.
Fort recorded in his Wild Talents that, according to the New York World for July 29, detectives in Pittsburgh were investigating petty robberies that had taken place along Lincoln Avenue. Early in the morning of July 26th, a big, black dog sauntered past the investigators. "Good morning!" said the dog before disappearing in a thin, greenish vapor. Fort thought the story was nonsense, branding it as “a symbol of the false and arbitrary and unreasonable and inconsistent.” Yet he seemed rather intrigued by it. Black dogs are, of course, a staple of British folklore although there are no stories about them speaking. They were known though to disappear or even change shape.
But it’s not only the capricious nature of the fairy folk that serves as the backdrop for the paranormal, it’s the fairy folk themselves. Over a century ago, what we know as orbs and ghost lights were said to be the work of fairies. The Choctaw believed that that elfin beings known as the Kawnakuashas could only be seen and spoken to by medicine men. To everyone else, they appeared as glowing lights.
Sightings of fairy folk continue today after endless centuries, especially on Native American reservations or in Third World countries. They are a common cryptid even though they’re overlooked by researchers. After all, who wants to believe in something as childish as gnomes? They are also the dominant humanoid types in UFO reports, especially abductions (and the fairy folk were notorious abductors).
The UFO humanoids that were being reported in the early stages of the phenomenon varied in appearance. In a special 1968 edition of the Flying Saucer Review entitled The Humanoids, Jacques Vallee analyzed over 200 documented cases of UFO reports in France during the massive 1954 European wave. Many of these involved occupant sightings. The descriptions of these humanoids reveal a confusing tableau. Some were giants, others tall or medium-sized men. Then there were tiny beings three feet high, dwarves covered in hair, and even ones with green skin, the proverbial little green man. Despite the variety, however, diminutive creatures were the most common.
It's possible that images of little saucer pilots, just like the saucer craft, were rolling around in the collective psyche before their official advent in 1947. There was Marvin the Martian, a diminutive space creature from Looney Tunes who zipped around in his sleek metallic disk. Marvin made his initial appearance in the 1948 cartoon Haredevil Hare. Considering that animation took a good year to complete, it's possible that Marvin was conceived before the advent of the flying saucer.
During the past 40 years, most of the ufonauts, possibly 75 percent, have been described as four-foot hairless beings with bulbous heads, large black eyes, and gray skin. So how did this archetype usurp the other aliens? Under hypnosis, Barney and Betty Hill describe their captors as having greyish skin. Possibly this was where this new ufological species was introduced. Somehow, we’re convinced that this alien too was already out there, waiting to be introduced.
In the years 1917-1918, Aleister Crowley performed a ritual called the “Amalantrah working” in a New York City apartment which supposedly opened a portal for extra-dimensional entities to visit our world. The being that came through looks eerily like the classic “grey” with his bulbous cranium, long slanted eyes, thin mouth, pointed chin, and small body. The drawing was first reproduced in Helena Blavatsky’s The Voice of The Silence. Gustav Sandgren's 1933 Swedish novel The Unknown Danger: A Vision of the Future depicts ETs with “big and bald” heads, “very small noses and mouths”, “large, dark, gleaming” eyes, and “clothes made of soft grey fabric.” Then there are the three consecutive episodes of The Outer Limits that aired in the weeks before Barney Hill’s February 22, 1964, hypnosis session that contained key elements of the their abduction story. Skeptics believe the Hills were subconsciously influenced by these shows, but they deny ever watching them. “The Bellero Shield” featured an alien with slanted eye sockets and telepathic powers (the Hill’s abductors used telepathy). In “The Invisibles” aliens perform surgical experiments on humans. And in “The Children of Spider County” ETs with slanted eyes and dark complexions abduct four men, all from the same county. The men, brilliant intellects, are really hybrids and there’s another on the loose accused of a murder he didn’t commit. Hybrids would become an important element in the alien abduction narrative.
But the greys didn’t really come to fore until the 1980s with the publication of Budd Hopkin’s Missing Time (1981) Whitley Strieber's book Communion (1987). Streiber retold his alleged alien encounter two years previously in which he was abducted by alien beings including a robotic grey creature. The image of the small grey alien soon became cemented in popular culture in the 1990s. The X-Files, which began in 1993, used greys and by the end of the decade grays were familiar enough to be parodied in the first episode of South Park, which aired in 1997.
But we can go further back in pop culture. There’s the 1983 video for Styx's song Mr. Roboto, a ballad that laments the dehumanizing effects of technology. In the video, the singer, Dennis DeYoung, is placed on an examination table by undersized robots with sinister grey faces. Was this inspired by alien abduction stories? Probably not, their controversial concept album is really about a world where autocratic rulers use robots to exert their authority. Only later would the UFO fringe community tell us that the greys are automatons.
So, the frivolous Robin Goodfellow of yesteryear has been turned into an indifferent mechanical drab-skinned being of UFO lore. That makes sense considering that in the last 50 years humankind has witnessed astounding innovations and transformations in technology. Mr. Roboto was prophetic.
But the question is, if the collective psyche is behind the UFO phenomenon, which we believe it is, why did it put elves and pixies in these spaceships to begin with? Well, why not? If you’re going to have magical machines flitting through the sky, why not have magical beings inside them. And searching through the memory bank of archetypes, the “dream factory” if you will, the fairy folk are the most likely candidates.
W.Y. Evans-Wentz in his The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries mentions that there was a belief among the residents on the Isle of Man that if you put your ear against the ground, you could hear the Sounds Infinity, sounds that were like murmuring. However, it’s possible they were just listening to sea waves. Nevertheless, the locals were convinced that outer space was filled with invisible beings. While most legends said the little people dwelled underground, Evans-Wentz notes that a few said they were from other planets.
But small beings didn’t always ride around in mysterious crafts. The airships of the late 1800s, which most people thought were the work of secret inventors, contained very human occupants, which should be expected. This is a story from the Chicago Tribune of April 16, 1897. On April 14, the month of when hundreds of airships were seen over the American Midwest, Joseph Singler, captain of the "Sea Wing", was fishing with another man off Cleveland, Ohio on Lake Erie when they both observed what they thought was an unusual vessel nearby. It was about 50 feet in length and had some sort of canopy. They observed a young man with a hunting jacket fishing from the deck. Close by on deck were a woman and a young child. When Singler's boat approached the craft, a large balloon rose up from the superstructure and the entire ship rose out of the water into the air and circled " like a hawk" before flying out of sight.
The Houston Daily Post for April 23, 1897, reported that the day before, a farmer named John Barclay living near Rockland, Texas, was awakened around midnight by his dog barking. He also heard a shrill noise. Barclay got up and went outside to check on the commotion and saw a brilliantly illuminated elongated object with protrusions circling over his property.
The contraption landed and a man got out. He went over to Barclay and explained that he needed tools to repair his airship. Barclay happily complied. The stranger gave him a ten-dollar bill for his troubles, an amount worth about 400 dollars today. As soon as the repairs were completed the airship lifted off "like a bullet out of a gun." Even a Harrier Jump jet couldn’t have done that.
The process of putting the fairy folk in magic flying vessels might have started in the early 1900s. Janet and Colin Bord in their book Modern Mysteries of Britain mention that in 1910 in the village of St. Merryn, Cornwall, a couple of locals saw a red object resembling a ship flying in the clouds. Inside the ship were numerous dwarf-like creatures who were chattering, laughing, and pointing down at the witnesses.
An early precursor to flying saucers and little men?
