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FARRELLY:     As a clairsentient, which is my most developed ability, I am able to pick up the physical and emotional feelings of individuals, which tells me exactly what's bothering them.  I use it in my diagnostic work with doctors.

CBird:  When were you first aware of these abilities in yourself?

FARRELLY:  At the time of the influenza epidemic during World War I, when I was six years old, I made myself a little Red Cross uniform and went round to our sick neighbors.  I'd rub their heads and their symptoms would disappear.  When they informed my mother, she retorted, down-to-earth Vermonter that she was: "Don't admit it to her, for God's sake!  She's crazy enough as it is."  So I didn't really know I had any healing ability until I was over forty when I was first introduced to other healers and the practice of laying-on-of-hands.

CBird:  Were there any other psychic experiences as a child?

FARRELLY:  Well, I could see little nature spirits in the woods.  They were similar to what I learned later were called leprechauns in Irish stories.  We had a flower-collecting contest in elementary school.  All the children were sent out to collect wild flowers and got points for the number of varieties they could find.  I won the contest each year, starting from the first grade, with the help of my little friends.  Finally, in the fourth grade, my teacher asked me how it was that I'd won the contest three years running.  I told her honestly that my friends told me where to find the flowers.  She asked, "What friends?"  And I told her about the little people I played and talked with and that they're around all the time.  I mentioned how they often walked to school with me and then waited and walked home with me.  The teacher smiled and said she'd like to go along and see what happened next time.

    So one morning, one of these . . . you could call them elves . . . told me he could show me a place in the woods where there was a rare white lady slipper.  There had been lots of pink lady slippers in our area, but I'd never seen a white one.  All excited, I asked my elfin friend if my teacher could come along and he agreed.  He led us about two miles from the school to a part of the woods I had never visited before.  As we walked along, my little friend played games.  He'd walk along the top of rail fences for instance.

CBird:  What was your teacher's reaction to being led by your little guide?

FARRELLY:  She couldn't see him but she seemed to accept my running account of what he was doing.  He led us right up to a gorgeous white lady slipper.

    Delighted he'd been true to his word, I turned, beaming at my teacher.  Her response was unexpected.  She suddenly grabbed me and began shaking me and slapping my face.  She told me that I was a liar and a cheat and that I’d known all along that the white flower was where it was.

    As hurt as I was, it was nothing compared to the fright I felt when the teacher said she would report the incident to my mother.  I'd had several confrontations with my mother from about the age of eight about my fancied play with "little people."  At first, she made light of it but then she told me with great severity that it was all in my "imagination" and it was time to forget about it.  She began punishing me whenever she caught me talking to my friends.

    When the teacher told my mother about the white lady slipper, I got a nasty licking with a switch and was told there'd be more if I was ever again caught talking to the little people.  Although I continued to see them for a couple of years more, I never told anybody.

CBird:  What did they look like?

FARRELLY: Lovely and elfish.  They were dressed in little costumes, and were about six to eight inches tall.  They'd speak to me in good English, but with high-pitched squeaky voices.  After I saw Geoffry Hodson's books on the little people, I was amazed to learn that someone had actually written seriously about what I'd seen as a child.