FEBRUARY 17th, 2016
By LANA CARBON
Take a trip with me (I’d ask you to close your eyes but that might make reading a little difficult). Imagine that you are lying in bed in the middle of the night. You are sleeping soundly until you hear a commotion outside. Your dogs, which are exceptionally well behaved, begin barking incessantly. You rise from your bed to see why but there appears to be nothing at all. The dogs have stopped just as suddenly as they began so you decide to return to your bed. You no more than let your head hit the pillow when the dogs go crazy again but this time it is different…they are whining. You spring from under the covers and rush outside. The dogs are visibly shaken but again there was no hint as to the cause. You spend a few moments calming the animals down before returning to bed. The remainder of the night is uneventful.
The morning comes too soon but there are tasks to be accomplished. You get ready for a day of chores around the house. You go outside and prepare to mow your lawn. As you are riding your lawn tractor, it stalls out and won’t restart. You push it towards your workshop. Trying to turn the engine again, it roars to life as though nothing had ever happened. Baffled but excited that it is working; you try to finish cutting the grass. As you return to the spot where you left off, the tractor sputters and dies once more. This time something catches your eye. Some wild mushrooms have grown in a circular pattern in the middle of the yard where none had been before and the lawn tractor was right in the centre of them. Is this a coincidence? You push the mower outside the circle and it starts right up. What is going on?
The ring of mushrooms that appeared overnight.
This is the situation that my friend, Micah Leythe* (*pseudonym) brought to me that day in the summer of the early 2000’s. He took a few pictures but was unable to show them to me as his battery had died. I told him that I would come over as soon as I possibly could since I was working at the moment and couldn’t leave with customers in the store. He left to return home telling me that he was going to recharge the camera battery so that I could see the pictures when I arrived.
The advantage of owning your own business is that you can sometimes slip away in the slow times and that is exactly what I did. Since my friend lived just down the road, I grabbed my camera and drove over to his house. I pulled into the driveway and noticed the circle of mushrooms right away. I was in awe at the size of them. They were huge considering the short period of time since they had first been seen. The circle was easily 9-10 feet in diameter.
Micah Leythe, at 6’2”, lying in the circle showing the size of the ring.
I started taking photos right away. Micah had heard me pull in (side note: his dogs only barked once when I arrived to inform their owners someone was present, showing exactly how well-behaved and well-trained they were) and he came out to join me with his camera. In comparing his photos from earlier in the day to this moment when I’d arrived, the mushrooms had grown exponentially. His pictures showed them approximately the size of a golf ball whereas they were now larger than a softball. The other big change from earlier was that the grass between each mushroom was dying off. It was creating a burnt-looking circle around the perimeter. In fact, it almost seemed like this “burn mark” was an invisible physical barrier when it came to the growth of the mushrooms.
Micah, who had just finished charging his camera, apparently got too close as he totally lost power after only 5 photos. I took a number of photos before I wanted to experiment with my power source as well. Just to be safe, I removed the memory card so I wouldn’t lose anything I had already taken. I watched the bars rapidly fall away as I reached my hands inside the ring. Once it was completely drained, I packed my stuff away, thanked my friend for sharing the experience and hopped back into my car.
Just before pulling out of the driveway, I was flagged down. Micah told me one piece of information that he had forgotten to mention. The dogs were avoiding the ring like the plague. They would always run right to their master’s side but they simply refused if he was anywhere near those mushrooms.
This was the size of a loaf of bread, showing the rapid growth of the mushrooms within a few days.
Over the next few days we continued to monitor the circle. The mushrooms were growing and growing. The softball-sized fungi were now the size of a loaf of homemade bread and still growing. Something of interest to note… anywhere that a mushroom would have crossed that burnt line of grass, it appeared to have been cut off as if sliced by a laser. It basically looked as though it had been cauterized by some high heat source (which is why we likened it to a laser).
The mushroom seems to be cut off at the outer-edge of the circle.
So what were these things? According to European folklore, they are called fairy rings (also known as a fairy circle, elf circle, elf ring or pixie ring) which are said to be caused by fairies dancing in a circle. Warnings abound about entering the circle lest you be taken to fairyland or be forced to join their dance until dying of exhaustion, unless someone from outside the ring can pull you to safety and freedom. This isn’t as easy as it sounds however, as the individual inside the ring is invisible to those outside it. Even if you can manage to save the person (who will not remember their experiences inside), their life is believed to be cursed.
There are a couple ways to investigate one of these rings whilst guaranteeing your safety. The first is circling the ring exactly 9 times clockwise. This allows you a chance to hear the fairies dancing underground and the opportunity to escape. If you accidentally go counter-clockwise, you will fall under their control. The second method (and coincidentally the one which both my friend and I happened to unknowingly manage) is to wear your hat backwards thereby confusing the sprites.
So what does science have to say?
There are soil-inhabiting fungi of the class Basidiomycetes that depletes the nutrients in the soil for grass, causing it to die out and create that burnt appearance. At the same time, the fungi release nitrogen ahead of the growth path so the grass outside the ring looks green and lush. These fungi originate from organic matter that is buried under the ground such as roots, stumps or lumber. In this particular case, the local heritage centre informed us that this property formerly belonged to the carriage maker and it was quite possible that wagon wheels could have been buried on the premises.
The curator informed us during our research that there had been reports of strange lights in the sky the night that the dogs were acting up (something else to add a little mystery to the situation).
What do you believe? The scientific answer of a naturally growing fungus is the most logical answer but nowhere in my reading did it mention the power-draining abilities of these mushrooms or the apprehension that the dogs had of the area. I have never heard of a 10 foot diameter wagon wheel either which is what the local historian believed was the buried organic material in question. I wish I had some answers.
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