A MID-SPRING NIGHTS DREAM?

My boyfriend and I live in a Hollywood canyon, in a ramshackle Craftsman bungalow house that is almost 100 years old. We definately believe that our house is haunted... both of us-as well as our neighbors- have experienced crazy paranormal type things, including clouds of mist, flickering lights, appliances turning themselves on and off, apparitions, and unexplained movements of inatimate objects. Since our canyon is one of the oldest in Hollywood, we have no doubt that we live among spirits.

Our house is surrounded by gardens, and we have a bounty of produce, including orange, lemon, fig and avocado trees. We grow herbs and tomatoes, peppers and pumpkins, as well as fragrant "volunteer" vines of Honeysuckle, Morning Glories, Passionflowers and Night Blooming Jasmine. The whole place is overgrown and jungle-like, the perfect playground for our four cats. In our yard are dense clumps of Birds of Paradise and Nile Lillies, and a big patch of Nasturtium, plus a grand old tree full of squirrels. We get big fat toadstools when it rains, and have beetles, ladybugs and large grasshoppers. The property is populated with families of skunks, opossum and raccoons, as well as humming birds, wrens, doves and lots of butterflies. My sister jokes that coming over to my house is like visiting Snow White!

In our yard, there's also twinkling strings of Christmas lights up all year, wind chimes and old-school garden statues... all of which some people believe will attract fairies.

My boyfriend swears he's seen fairies before, and though I have definately experienced the paranormal activities in and around our house, I have never had the pleasure of seeing ( as they have been referred to in various storytales, folklore and legends) "The Wee Folk" or "Them Ones".

Last night, our cats went CRAZY in our front yard.

Though they usually love to sleep with us, and spend their evenings hanging out in our living room, that wasn't the case yesterday around midnight. They were participating in what we call "kitty hi-jinks" : running around chasing things we couldn't see, pouncing at each other and at patches of weeds, and generally acting insane. Though we tried to call them in quite a few times, and they are usually obedient and come when called, they wouldn't come in last night...even after we tried our sure-fire methods of tempting them to come in by shaking bags of treats and offering catnip!

This morning, in the front yard, right where our cats had been galavanting last night, imagine our surprise when we found this tiny little cornflower-blue felt coat.

It was laying on the ground, not standing up as pictured. I "posed" it that way this afternoon, because we took it into the house to examine it.

Sure, it could be a coat from a doll a child dropped...but where was the doll?

What was it doing in front of our house?

And why was the little toggle-button undone, as though someone had slipped out of it?

I have STILL never seen a fairy... Have you?