Fairies of New England: The Little People of the Hills and Forests

In spring of 2025, I set out on a long journey through Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia, and eastern Ohio in search of stories about fairies in the Northern Appalachian Mountains.

My findings will be revealed in the book Fairies of Northern Appalachia: A History of the Little People of the Mountains, which releases on July 28, 2026.

From the field and garden fairies of Pennsylvania Dutch Country to the tormenting fairies of Kentucky’s Cumberland Mountains, it turns out that Appalachia is full of stories about these magical beings. My book gathers folklore from people of diverse ethnicity, including the Scots Irish (the first to bring fairy lore to these mountains); the Irish (who brought many stories about leprechauns and banshees to industrial West Virginia); the Cornish (who told stories about piskies or tommyknockers in Appalachia’s mines); and the Pennsylvania Dutch (whose farmlands were haunted by many different kinds of German fairies).

Although I’d always heard about the survival of European fairy lore in Appalachia, I wasn’t prepared for the breadth and diversity of what I found. The beings who inhabit Appalachian stories include: wassernixen, banshees, tommyknockers and mine piskies, winged fairies, mound fairies, household goblins, brownies, and nature spirits. I also included a chapter on “Appalachian pygmies,” a mythological construct created by nineteenth century farmers and historians. Although fairy lore was never ubiquitous in Appalachia (it was often transformed into lore about witches and ghosts), so many stories exist that we can safely assume that the fairies were never completely out of mind and that the mist-shrouded mountains of Appalachia preserved many archaic traditions.

The following is the book’s back cover copy:

Join Andrew Warburton, author of New York Fairies and New England Fairies, as he explores the deep, but often overlooked, roots of fairy lore in the mist-shrouded mountains of Northern Appalachia.

The magic of Old World folklore lingers in Northern Appalachia’s hills and hollers. From banshees to tommyknockers to mischievous elves, myriad fairy spirits populate the stories of the region’s mountain folk. The Little Hunchbacked Man who dwelled in corners of Pennsylvania Dutch homes. Pixies whose knocking warned of explosions in West Virginia’s mines. A red-haired fairy whose magical arrows tormented the Scots Irish of Kentucky’s Cumberland Mountains.

In this vivid and well-researched history, Andrew Warburton gathers the region’s forgotten fairy stories―from tales about “ancient pygmies” in Ohio to a psychiatrist’s account of photographing fairies in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.

And this was my journey: