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If there's anywhere in the United States one would expect to find fairies, it would be in the hills and hollers of Northern Appalachia. It's a place where one would expect to find Old World magic infused with the nature spirits of yore. And its folklore is brimming with fairy folk — banshees, tommyknockers and mischievous elves — brought over by immigrants. "Throughout history, the region we call Appalachia has been awash in ancient traditions — from storytelling to folk singing to healing with herbs and charms. Due to their isolation in the hills and hollows of this region, the immigrants who came here in the 17th and 18th centuries — from the British Isles, Ireland or the German-speaking parts of Europe — tended to preserve folkways that died out soon after in the lands they'd left," writes Andrew Warburton in the introduction to "Fairies of Northern Appalachia: A History of the Little People of the Mountains," his third book on fairies in the United States. In seeking out the lore of Northern Appalachia, Warburton's research took him to Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia, where he found tales of leprechauns, Jeebies, Hobyahs, treasure gnomes and Wassernixen (water spirits). Often, he could trace the lore to the European origins of the region's immigrant ancestors. Tommyknockers — pixies who warned of collapses or gas explosions with loud knocking sounds — came to America with Cornish, Welsh and Irish miners. Hobyahs, man-eating goblins, traveled here with Scottish immigrants. Gleen Leit, a type of fairy, arrived with the Pennsylvania Dutch, German-speaking immigrants of Lutheran faith. Warburton, who writes about fairies from a folkloric, literary and historical perspective and previously published "New England Fairies" and "New York Fairies," is participating in the inaugural Fairy & Arts Festival at Nonotuck Park in Easthampton on Sept. 12. He recently spoke with The Eagle about his findings when researching "Fairies of Northern Appalachia." His answers are lightly edited for clarity and length. Here are five things to know about fairy folk in Northern Appalachia: 1. American fairies are often friendlier than their European counterparts. Northern Appalachia still has its share of tricksters and mischievous fairy folk, but many of the stories cast them in a benevolent light. “What you see, for some reason, in much of the folklore about fairies in America is that the fairies are remembered as being good. Like, it just seems to be an aspect unique to American folklore that the fairies are more good than they would have been back home [in Europe]," Warburton said. "They bestow blessings, or they help you. It's the same with the Irish. There are two things I mentioned in the book. There's the Little People [fairies, leprechauns, pixies], whom they remember as blessing families and ancestors." In Scotland, failing to accept a cup of tea from the "tea-carrying woman" was a fatal mistake. "A man in Lake Como, Pa., encountered the woman who said, ‘You haven't had your tea.’ In Scotland, that was a scary story. You died if you didn't accept the woman's tea, whereas in Pennsylvania, that ending was removed. She just happened to be a fairy. No one died as a result.” 2. Miners listened for warnings from the supernatural. In Cornwall, England, the pixies who live in mines, known as tommyknockers, were not helpful beings. They were said to distract miners, leading them away from the deposits of coal and tin they were seeking. But in Pennsylvania, the tommyknockers were so helpful in keeping the workers safe from collapsing mines and gas explosions that miners didn't want anything to keep them from hearing those supernatural knocks. Warburton found many references to the tommyknockers in the 1920s, including a story from 1929 that was told to famous radio announcer Gavin Dishart of Wilkes-Barre, Pa. The story said that one day, a fellow suggested putting radios on every level of the mine so the workers could listen to music. The suggestion was met with disgust by one Cornishman, who replied, "Would you drive out the few tommyknockers we have left?" "I guess they relied on sound so much to hear their warnings from the knockers. Putting in a radio, unnatural sounds, would block them out. I do think there is that sense of the mines being inhabited by supernatural beings, and when we go into the Earth to get what we need, there's a certain respect that you have to give these beings, in the same way that other communities gave respect to beings in the woods," Warburton said. 3. Fairies weren't always little. Today, we think of fairies as being able to fit through keyholes and in pockets. But that wasn't always the case. In older tales, fairies were the same size as humans. Warburton said he isn't quite sure when or why fairies shrank in stature, but he's heard several theories as to why they've become smaller over the centuries. "One person said to me — and I think this is kind of convincing — that fairies had been seen as small because they're unseen. When you can't see something, one way of interpreting that is to be like, ‘Oh, they're small. They must be tiny. They can hide,'" he said. "I also think the idea of an adult-size being living in your home is pretty scary. You can deal with a Little Person [brownie or pixie], who is invisible, over in the corner." 4. Fairy lore sometimes became witch lore. As European fairy traditions arrived in North America, fairy characteristics were often reinterpreted as witchcraft. Instead of malevolent pixies spoiling the milk, making the crops fail and causing droughts, those afflictions were now seen as signs of witchcraft. “It happens in all of the folklore, it seems, as it comes over to North America. A lot of fairy traits seem to be remembered through witches," he said. In north-central Pennsylvania, the story of the "Witchie Folk" is still handed down generation to generation. Originally from the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia, the tale is about a community of people with "thatchy red hair" who lived in the "back hills" and had unusual talents. Among those "talents" was the ability to "lay hands on people and heal them." This community of magical people was said to have abilities that are both traits of fairies and witches. “The Witchie Folk ... they are very much like fairies. They can come and go. They can sort of appear here, disappear, so that they don't seem very human, but then they also do have human traits, like red hair," Warburton said, noting they were said to draw power from the moon to do their "witchy stuff." 5. Old fairy lore persists in modern sightings. Fairy sightings are still being reported in Northern Appalachia, he said. People have reported hearing fairy music and encountering Little People in the forest. There are also encounters with a winged fairy in West Virginia as recently as the 2010s. Most frequently, people report encounters with ghostly lights in the woods. “I tried to trace each of them a little bit back to older Appalachian [folklore]. There are so many encounters in the modern day with these lights in the woods," Warburton said. "I tried to trace that back to the tradition of the Shining-Light Fairy, Will-o'-the-Wisps and Jack-ma-Lanterns.” The ghostly lights, attributed to both fairies and witches, are said to enchant those who see them, leading them into the deep woods. READ IT "Fairies of Northern Appalachia" by Andrew Warburton Published by The History Press 140 pages $24.99