When I was about eight years old, I had an alter ego: a dog by the name of Uffie. I would spend a lot of time as Uffie, exploring my house and garden on all fours, lapping juice from a saucer, clambering over rocks on family walks and drinking from the occasional stream. My mum indulged Uffie to the point of buying me a collar, a lead and a water bowl for my bedroom floor. I’m still not sure whether or not this was good parenting.
Then, one day, Uffie disappeared.
So what happened? Did I just grow up? Or did I suppress Uffie, bowing to a societal norm that tells children that if they don’t look like a dog, they probably aren’t one? If the latter is true, I may already be a member of this community.
I can’t remember how I initially uncovered the world of otherkin; probably down an internet rabbit hole on one of the many days I have lost to YouTube. In simplistic terms, otherkin believe themselves to be ‘other than’ or ‘more than’ human; although most accept that their current carnation is human, they believe that their spirit is either entirely or partially non-human. The most common otherkin are either mythical creatures – like elves and faeries – or animals (‘therians’).
This may sound fanciful, but many otherkin would argue that what they experience is a genuine spiritual and/or physical dysphoria; a feeling that they have been born in the wrong body.
Although uncertain of his true identity, Kiaan, who I meet at a bustling bar in London’s financial district, is currently ‘flirting’ with the idea that he might be a star (as in a celestial body). You may already be writing him off as a nutcase, but don’t do that just yet. With a degree in psychology and sociology, he is now a successful information management consultant who meets me wearing a smart suit in the financial district of London. ‘I have no right to sit here and say you are a woman if you tell me you are a man,’ he said. ‘Just as you have no right to sit there and tell me whether or not I am a walrus.’
He looked up and met my gaze. ‘I’m not a walrus, by the way.’
For some, it’s not necessarily about being in the wrong body; it is about expressing another part of themselves. A week later I explore this idea with Shaft, the founder of ‘The Fabulus of Unicorns’ in London – a subculture of people who dress as unicorns and live by the mantra ‘spread the sparkle’.
Shaft is not strictly otherkin, and would probably be referred to as a ‘furry’ within the community because, rather than believing he is a unicorn spirit in human form, he sees the unicorn as his ‘power animal’, in the same way a Native American has a ‘totem animal’, and a Druid has a ‘spirit animal’.
‘Some people have mythical power animals,’ he tells me, ‘like mermaids. I have always been attracted to those people.’
Shaft freelances as an artistic director for a major TV network and uses big arm gesticulations when he talks. We meet in a park in Shepherd’s Bush during his lunch break, where he is dressed in a sparkly top, a purple shell-suit jacket and skin-tight trousers, his mid-length hair clinging to his face in dark tendrils.
‘Since I hit thirty, I started going to Burning Man festival,’ he tells me. ‘I have a beautiful white bike that I call my unicorn. Everyone just decided “you are a unicorn”, and I realised I was. That’s when I bought my first horn.’
He leans back and picks at the grass. ‘It was always me on my own until recently. My mantra was “famous at festivals, lonely in London”. So I gathered this group of super-hot, fabulous individuals who are crushingly insecure and lonely, and created my own subculture.’
There is something vulnerable about Shaft, his raw honesty piercing holes in his charismatic armour.
‘But things are different now,’ he goes on. ‘We are a positive force of glittery energy. Born from the stars, each unicorn contains within them the sparkle of the UniForce that binds us all together. We live by the Ten Principles of Unicornia, which came to me in a vision I had in the Old City of Jerusalem.’
I don’t know where to start.
‘How many unicorns do you have in your Fabulus?’ I try.
‘Hundreds all over the world,’ he says whimsically. ‘There are many types: Pure Bloods, Homoeroticorns, Light Warriorcorns, Tantricorns, and there are always new breeds of unicorns rising every day. My dream is to create a subculture of mythical creatures, but trying to organise unicorns is like trying to herd fickle, glittery cats.’
Following a traditional Bangladeshi upbringing in Bexhill-on-Sea, Shaft turned his back on the faith of his Muslim parents at the age of seven. They are fine with him being a unicorn, so long as he realises that he will have to ‘come back to reality’ at some stage.
‘I am not always going to be a unicorn,’ he reassures me. For a moment I presume he is taking his parents’ advice. ‘After living a life of loneliness, depression and addiction, I found tantra as a form of healing. So now I’m a Tantricorn, and I travel the world empowering men and women to find a deeper love for themselves.’
When his lunch break is over, I walk him out of the park, sad that my time with this colourful character is coming to an end.
‘Never stop being YOUnicorn!’ he says, a parting gift as he waves me goodbye.
Two days, fifteen hours of otherkin-related internet research, and countless YouTube documentaries later, I meet Karen Kay at the Labyrinth Faery Ball in Glastonbury. It is the morning after the ball, and we are tucking into breakfast at a vegan café.
As the organiser of the now popular 3 Wishes Fairy Festival (which pulled in over 1,000 attendees this year), Karen is a prominent figure in the British faery subculture and the producer of the internationally successful FAE magazine. A tattoo of a sunflower decorates her right arm, and her thick wavy hair flows down to her lap, framing a gentle face.
For Karen, being a faery wasn’t a choice – it was a calling; an innate part of herself.
‘My whole life has been completely taken over by faeries,’ she says. ‘Faery people are quite shy and reclusive, so to get them to come to an event was difficult at first. But when they did come, there was a communal feeling of coming home; a sense of belonging and reconnecting with your family.’
‘Are you a faery?’ I get straight to the point.
‘Well, I feel like a hybrid of human, faery and mermaid. So I call myself a MerFae, but I am obviously dwelling in a human body at the moment. I definitely have mermaid in me because I like to be near the sea. It makes me feel invigorated. I am not a great swimmer, but I like to put my feet in the ocean.’
Organising the faery events and the publication of FAE magazine is now Karen’s full-time work.
‘The festival grows every year,’ she explains, ‘and I now organise faery events in Glastonbury and the magical location of Tintagel, home of King Arthur.’ (Who you’ll meet in the next chapter.) ‘Obviously it has to make money, because you have to adhere to certain rules in the human world, but we are very conscious that we don’t want it to become too commercial. So it’s a balance.’ I am reminded of the same conflict at Findhorn; the ever-present tension between a distrust of money and the impossibility of living without it.
‘It feels right, so I go with it,’ Karen says, smiling gracefully. ‘Some people think I’m bonkers, but, usually, it’s in a fond sort of way. And I don’t care what people think: it’s my incarnation, my life and I am having great fun working with the otherkin, and with the fae realms.’
‘So faeries are in a separate realm?’ I venture.
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘but it exists alongside our realm. You can find yourself in it if you go through a faery portal – they’re all over the place. Every flower and tree has a nature angel/faery watching over it too, helping it to grow – just like a parent would raise a child.’
I can’t help but wonder where all this stuff comes from. ‘Is your knowledge of faeries from folklore?’
‘A lot of it is folklore, yes,’ she nods, ‘wives’ tales, and legends, but it’s all steeped in truths.’
‘Do you know any non-faery otherkin?’
‘Yes, there are quite a lot of merfolk in the UK. A lot of elves as well. You look at these people and think, “You are an elf, of course you are, I can’t deny it.” It’s awakened within them. And hobbits. I know a lot of hobbits too.’
I can get on board with the idea of being a faery, or a mermaid, perhaps even a unicorn. But I wonder why it is that the otherkin community is full of fabulous mythical creatures, beautiful and fierce. And yet there aren’t any slugs. Why aren’t there any slugs?
Back in the City bar, I pose this question to Kiaan (you know… Kiaan the star from the start of this chapter).
He thinks for a while. ‘Well, I think there wouldn’t be a strong cognitive recognition of being a slug. The memory would be too simplistic, too weak. It wouldn’t influence your being.’
Articulate and self-confident, Kiaan is softly spoken with an unidentifiable accent, his face framed with tight blond curls. ‘Although I do struggle a little when people say they are Japanese anime characters or those who say: “I am Optimus Prime” – not “I identify with him” (who wouldn’t), but “I am Optimus Prime”. I find that difficult.’
When we first meet, he is adamant that he cannot represent the community in any way because he doesn’t want his experiences to be seen as forging a path for others. He laughs. ‘I’m a useless otherkin for you, aren’t I? There is no headline for you, “Walrus Speaks” or “Star Speaks” – I am an enormous ball of gas; hydrogen smashing into helium.’ He smiles, enjoying the image in his head.
‘There are stereotypes, like “I always knew I was different”, or “I didn’t recognise the life I had been born into”. Then you will get the feeling of being slightly out of sync with your dearest friends, or any group you try and fit into.’
I am surprised to hear Kiaan say this; he doesn’t come across as odd or socially awkward to me. I leave a silence, willing him to continue.
‘Before the internet, I didn’t have the word “otherkin”. But I always felt out of place. I was trying to work out why even my best friends had concerns about me, wishing I was a little bit more “same-o, same-o”. Then you ask questions: is it because of my religious upbringing? My conservative parents? Or because I was fighting being gay in a small town? It was an intersection of a few rigid ideas.’
‘And was it?’
‘Who knows.’ He looks resigned. ‘But you start to think, “Oh that’s why,” and you end up congratulating yourself. Then the internet comes along, and maybe you are being influenced or maybe you just “click”; the word “otherkin” is there, and it’s associated with magic, elves, vampires, and you think, “Ooh, this is interesting.”’
Kiaan explains to me that, for him, otherkin doesn’t mean ‘other than’ human, it means ‘more than’ human; acknowledging your human incarnation, but going further than that when it comes to identity.
‘There have been reported investigations online into whether or not otherkin tails show up on Kirlian photography,’ he explains. For the uninitiated – i.e. me, before I googled it – Kirlian photography is a technique for creating contact print photographs using high-voltage current and a metal discharge plate, said to be able to capture the electromagnetic field around an object or person, otherwise known as their ‘aura’. He continues, ‘Maybe that’s bull, but the point is, that’s not looking for a sense of identity any more; that’s looking for objective truth. People in forums will say, “I’ve had my blood tested and I’m deficient in iron,” but that doesn’t mean you are a vampire.’
I decide that, if I were otherkin, I would be this way: wanting to prove everything; searching for the hard facts, the objective truths. I explain to Kiaan about my experiences with Kabbalah; that I am too much in ‘tree of knowledge’ and want to put everything in a box.
‘Yes!’ he nods enthusiastically. ‘I studied Kabbalah for a while. The Tree of Life is a great model for anything. I am the same as you. My friends don’t like watching films with me. Like the Hulk – I can’t just enjoy it, because I can’t work out where all that extra mass comes from! It’s just not possible, so it distracts me.’
We both laugh.
‘But I enjoyed suspending my disbelief for a while,’ he continues. ‘During the early web, when I wanted to find my identity. I flirted with my body, trying to feel for things, hoping for an epiphany. Like headgear; hair that turns to bone, like rhino horns. Or wings, maybe a tail, maybe fingers like this’ – he puts his middle two fingers together like a Simpsons character.
He looks down. ‘But I am too self-doubting. I worry I am tricking myself and just want to believe. That’s why I am flirting with the idea of “star” as kin because we are all stardust, aren’t we? So maybe I am just being poetic.’
There is a pause while Kiaan goes to the bar to get us another drink. When he returns, it is as if he’s just remembered something really important. ‘I have a friend I work with who came out as elven when she recognised the “kin” in my email address,’ he says.
‘Do elves speak in Elvish?’
‘With each other?’ he clarifies.
I nod.
‘Oh yes. They write it too. My elf friend, for example, she knows the vocabulary. So, often she will think of the elf word for something before the English word.’
‘But where do the languages come from?’
‘Well, Tolkien has laid down the basis for two different elf languages, but they are always remembering new words as well. They remember the feeling of the words in their mouths.’
I decide to tell Kiaan about Uffie.
‘So, as a kid, I was always a dog, on all fours,’ I explain. ‘My mum even bought me a collar and lead.’
‘OK, well that really is something.’ He leans forward in his chair, hands clasped in his lap like a therapist.
‘I would lap from streams and stuff…’ I start to feel embarrassed.
‘LUCY!’ he says, looking shocked. ‘What are you saying?!’
I laugh, not sure whether or not to take him seriously. He smiles but continues to look straight at me, eyes wide, as if I have just revealed something life-changing.
‘But I was a kid!’ I say, feeling the sudden need to defend myself. ‘Kids have imaginations!’
He laughs, ‘Ha, yes! I would dress up as a lollipop man.’
‘Exactly,’ I say, relieved he hasn’t locked me in the otherkin box, ‘and imaginary friends and stuff. So I don’t know if all this was suppressed because society told me to act more like a little girl, or if I just grew up.’
He nods. ‘There is nothing wrong with saying a lot of people like dogs.’
‘Have you considered how a psychologist would interpret the otherkin phenomenon?’ I lean forward, mirroring his pose.
‘Yes, just look up “magical thinking”,’ he says. ‘It’s when, instead of finding the logical cause for the effect you are experiencing, you embroider it so that everything has significance. But it’s irrelevant, really; if something has significance for you, it doesn’t matter whether or not it was a coincidence.’
He looks at the ceiling and takes a deep breath, searching for an example. ‘If I see a sign in a twig or a feather or the sky, that’s my meaning, and if you want to discount that as magical thinking, that’s fine. There are a lot of psychologists out there who understand that you are modelling the world, and your model is just as relevant as anything else. Psychologists can be quite groovy in that respect. You can poke every occultist with the “magical thinking” stick. But you are right to query the trap; you are right to query what a psychologist would say.’
I left our meeting feeling like my brain had been wired to an electric current. The idea of modelling fascinated me, challenging me to step outside of my own map of this world and consider how others might experience it. Life is much harder when you can’t put people in boxes, when you can’t write them off as crazy when they don’t conform to your model. To negate a belief system by labelling it a cult; to vilify fox hunters, yet poison rats because society happens to deem the latter more acceptable; to patronise hippies for experiencing a breadth of emotions not accessible to all of us. I realise that if I am truly going to understand the communities I am exploring, I need to let go of my fanatical quest for ‘the truth’, for objective fact, and realise that life is full of grey areas, full of the inexplicable and the unverifiable, as is the very nature of human consciousness.
Don’t misunderstand me here: I bloody love science – just look at where it has got us. But if you aren’t careful it can become a tyrant in its denial of the flexible, the changing, the poetic and the subjective. I have always been obsessed with debating, with proving people wrong, with debunking and smugly pointing out logical fallacies, as if all communication and human interaction can be boiled down to a mathematical equation.
You can find fanatical otherkin, who want to prove the world wrong with scientific evidence, just as you can find fanatical naturists who want to convert everyone to their way of living, and fanatical circus families who refuse to allow their children to integrate with the ‘private’ world. But you can also find trolls who flood the otherkin forums with ‘logic bombs’, conservatives who protest the opening of naturist beaches, and progressives who campaign against those who choose to live by old traditions. Both sides fight with a dangerous rigidity, rejecting all that is shaded grey, that uncertain place where human beings hate to linger.
I only wish I could fully immerse myself properly into this world, perhaps by spending the week in the body of a dog (it would definitely be a dog, not a slug), rather than sitting on the sidelines as an observer for this chapter, as if I were back in the big top. Kiaan had helped me to understand that lurking beneath what may seem like an Americanised ‘fad’ is a far deeper, far more considered community of people who are asking interesting Cartesian questions about identity and what it means to be human.
Kim, who shares her body with the spirit of a wolf called Luna, helped me further in this realisation. I meet her for lunch the next day in her local town of Chichester.
Arriving late, and all a fluster, I buy us both a pint of cider. The Wetherspoons pub we have chosen for our meeting is dimly lit and smells of bleach.
Kim ‘awakened’ – the otherkin term for realising your true identity – when she was fifteen years old. Her short bob tucks neatly behind one ear and is pinned down by thick-framed glasses.
‘Everything just clicked into place,’ she tells me as we order food from the dog-eared menus. ‘All of the feelings and weirdness, and the phantom limb sensations – all of it made perfect sense.’
‘Phantom limbs?’
She smiles patiently. ‘A lot of otherkin get the same sensations as people who have had an amputation, but in the animal parts we don’t have in this body. Like, teeth. I would feel like I had sharper, longer teeth, and pointed ears and claws and things like that. Tails are also very common.’
Kim feels that she and Luna are two parts of one soul. ‘When I was younger,’ she explains, ‘there was more of a divide between us. My friends would notice; I would speak in a different voice and say things out of character. But now we are much more balanced.’
‘Do you know what Luna’s body looks like?’
‘Oh yeah,’ she says confidently, ‘when I dream and meditate, I am often in my wolf body. It’s very intense.’
I picture Bran from Game of Thrones, wondering how his ability to port himself into the minds and forms of other creatures compares with Kim’s experience.
She continues, fingering a silver wolf pendant as she speaks, ‘I don’t know how long we’ve been together. I think it’s a while. She is a spiritual, intelligent being as well. I think, if she were ever on her own, she would have been a creature of another realm, an astral realm, perhaps.’
‘Is there much of a community in this country?’
‘Online, yes, but real-life community not so much, although I have friends who are otherkin. We just find each other. It’s creepy. You somehow know, and you fall into these situations – something tingling on the edge of your senses – you just get the feeling they aren’t quite human, you know?’ I nod, but I don’t really.
‘The last otherkin I met is a teacher,’ she goes on. ‘She just started behaving in a telltale way. Then she told us that she was a cat, and I was like “ah yes”. My husband is a wolf too. We have been together since we were sixteen. We just instantly bonded, and I could sense what he was.’
‘It seems like a massive coincidence that you are both wolves…’
‘Yeah, but it was meant to happen.’ She purses her lips into a tight smile and shrugs. ‘We found each other for a reason. Wolves are probably the most common otherkin. Maybe it has something to do with the way humans domesticated dogs; we spent so much time with them and developed such a deep relationship with them.’
This excites me. ‘Yeah, maybe we spent so much time together, our souls became permeable?’
‘Maybe,’ Kim sticks out her bottom lip and nods slowly.
‘Are you happy you awakened?’
‘Of course. It was hard to adjust at first, but it doesn’t affect me so much any more. There are still times it pops out. Like when I am hurt I will growl, especially when I am surprised. Also, I am very scent-orientated. Smells distract me. I’m not saying I have a better than average sense of smell, but I pay more attention to it.’
Our food arrives, and I have a momentary fear that Kim is going to put her plate on the floor and eat as Luna. She politely picks up her knife and fork and puts her paper serviette on her lap.
‘My husband and I can be wolves with each other,’ she continues, ‘especially when we communicate. It’s so normal for us, and we have to be careful in public. We communicate in noises, growls and grunts, and our body language. It’s just natural for us. When we are out in public, we say to each other, “We need to use our people words.”’
‘Do you ever think that everybody is otherkin?’ I ask, my mind desperate to weave its narrative. ‘You know, like maybe we are all a mixture of souls in one body, but some people are more sensitive to this than others?’
Kim smiles at me, enjoying my enthusiasm. ‘I have thought about that,’ she says. ‘Maybe some people are born to see, and others aren’t. Children can see faeries and into the other worlds, but they get told by adults that it’s not real, so they stop seeing over time. They are so pure, they have no filter like we do, and they haven’t been corrupted by a standard they have to abide by to fit into society.’
I can’t help but want to figure out the cause of all this. Surely there must be something that connects Kim, Karen and Kiaan?
‘Have you seen a thread that connects your otherkin friends?’
‘Well, a lot of otherkin I know are pagans,’ Kim says, picking at her chips. ‘But then again I know a lot of pagans. Most otherkin are creative and in touch with who they are. Sometimes you know someone is otherkin before they do, but you can’t tell them. It feels wrong, like breaking a sacred law. So there is a stage when you have the awkward feeling of “I wonder if they are going to figure this out…”’
Like Kiaan, Kim is far from the ‘crazy’ I had expected. Friendly, intelligent and spiritual, she is completely open and comfortable with her realised identity. I trust her enough to let her in on my secret.
‘You know, I used to pretend I was a dog when I was a kid. I had a lead and everything.’
‘I did exactly the same thing!’ She smiles knowingly, ever so slightly raising an eyebrow.