Household Spirits

Little Tiny Elf

I've been working with two young researchers, ages 6 and 3½, on these cascading changes taking place.  They confirmed my speculation that because we are spending so much more time in our homes, there are indeed more opportunities to encounter spirits of the household. The older colleague described, at great length,  her encounters with "Penny" or Penelope,  the ghost of the woman who lived in the house in the mid and late 20th century.  Penny was generally a good ghost because she had been a human; there are others who are not so kind to humans because they are and have always been pure spirits. She confirmed that they do indeed hide things and knock things over in the home.
The younger team member seems to specialize in Central European Household Deities.  Yesterday she encountered a "tiny little elf", who stayed visible long enough for her to make this record.

I am not as facile with field work as my colleagues and I have spent my time researching their finds. It sent me to the work of Professor Claude Lecouteux, and his many books on just this subject. I'm just starting to go through a few of them.
There's quite a rich developed body of knowledge on Slavic Household Deities.  Here's a place to start.  There are many more to find.  See if any are familiar.
These spirits are definitely a force to reckon with and I, as a public responsibility, have been collecting information on ways to stay a safe as possible now that we are more likely to encounter them.
And you?  What experiences have you been having in this cracked open world?
I'll let you know how our project develops.

Thursday, April 23
I've come upon the work of Brad Wigger, and his research into children and their imaginary friends.
Let's allow "imaginary" to include quite real experiences of presences and energies that others, (adults?),  have likely lost the ability to perceive.

the invention of invisible friends can be seen as an exercise in the understanding of others’ points of view, imagination used in the service of social maturing. “Appreciating the knowledge, desires, intentions, or perspectives of another is ultimately an act of the imagination,” Wigger points out. “By playing with mind, by imaginatively representing other minds—even when invisible—children are fine-tuning their ability to understand others” (p. 107).

I've always liked Brian Froud's work in this world: