Fairy Ring

My mother once lived in an old house in the Hills of South Australia in a small town called Nairne. In the school holidays I would go down and see her and usually stay for two weeks.

A visit to this house was very unusual. My mum had a little gift shop which was set up in the front part of the house (it was a really long house with 6 bedrooms) the first 4 bedrooms were made into little showrooms where she had on display little ornaments and country style gifts like cushions, dried flowers and little gifts like that. She was very particular in how things would be on display (being a interior designer she was good at it.) It was a very cute little shop and used to do alright for its location.

Just after one of my trips down there I spoke to her on the phone and she told me that some weird things have been happening. Firstly she noticed a very strange ring of mushrooms that were coming up around a single rose bush she had growing in the backyard, the second thing she noticed was that little ornaments in her shop were being moved.

At first she thought it was her partner moving things around to trick her but when she confronted him about it he said that it wasn't him. She also thought that maybe it was customers moving things around but that wasn't it because every night after closing she would tidy up and replace things to just how she wanted it.

After this was happening for a while she thought she would try a few experiments, after closing she would tidy up as always and place some ornaments in specific spots around the shop, in the morning she would get up and first thing check to see if the ornaments were moved sure enough they were moved. Some were on completely different shelves and some were in other rooms. Mainly ornaments of pigs and cows would be moved but every night there was always something moved.

This eventually got to her and she was finding it very frustrating. She started to talk about it to a few of the locals and one of them knew exactly what she was talking about. She was an older lady and had been in Nairne for many years, she asked mum if she had any mushrooms growing anywhere and mum remembering about the mushrooms around the rose said that she did.

The lady smiled and said that mum had a Fairy Ring, she said its just the Fairies moving things to how they think the ornaments should be displayed, to get rid of them you just have to tell them to leave everything alone and that you are happy with the way things are.

So that's what mum did, she closed up the shop and cleaned up and then stood in the middle of each room and said exactly what the lady told her to say. Feeling very stupid she did this in every room just how the lady explained to do it.

The next day she got up went to have a look and to her surprise nothing was moved, she checked every little ornament that she placed and not one thing was touched. She went outside to check the mushroom ring, and sure enough that was gone too.

Well I did not know what to make of this interesting story I laughed it off and never really thought about it again until... I was up there for my usual school holidays and on the last day I packed my bag to come home.

I was already to go but still had to brush my teeth, I got my toothbrush out of my bag and put it on top the bag. I left the room for about 5 minutes and when I returned to get my toothbrush I didn't find it on my bag where I left it but I actually found it on the bed, I am 100% certain that I left it on my bag because I remember thinking that it could slip off onto the floor.

I brushed my teeth and on my way back to the room I looked outside and sure enough I saw the start of some mushrooms coming up around the rose bush...

Very interesting!!

Thank you I hope you enjoyed my story.