Once upon a time in Appalachia, there was a very special Traveling Show. It was made up of the strangest folk anyone ever saw. Straight out of storybooks they were, with pointed ears and gossamer wings, furry faces and tails that twitched, men with goat legs, even a mermaid. When they came to town, they brought the magic of Faerie with them: wishes could come true, animals could talk, the imaginary became real.
The Shepherdstown Fairy Festival is an immersive energetic experience of fairies, fairy tales, and folklore for people of all ages where you can hear live music, listen to magical stories, and interact with goblins, fairies, giants and other magical creatures.
For two days we'll be celebrating the beauty of Autumn and the magic of stories.​
Image Credit: Steve Parke
Our Mission Statement
Creative Procrastinations, LLC organizes and produces fairy themed events that celebrate storytelling and community through magical folklore.
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Our Goals:
-Make a magical experience for all of our participants: patrons, performers, vendors, staff, and volunteers.
-Provide an inclusive and diverse space for people to be lighthearted and play pretend as a community.
-Create a shared fictional experience that invites people to engage with their own creativity through stories and art.
-Invite people to take a moment to celebrate the magics of the world: imagination, nature, and creativity.
-Showcase artists and vendors whose work is inspired by nature and by stories.
-Build community through partnership with local businesses and organizations.
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Commitment to Diversity and Representation
-Anyone can be a fairy or magical creature.
​-We seek to hire performers, musicians, and storytellers who represent the racial and cultural diversity of our world, but especially as those influences intermingle in the United States.
-We seek to make our events as accessible as we can. At our first festival at Sam Michaels Park, all of our stage performances had ASL translators.
-We provide a tent where those who experience sensory overload can recover.
-We welcome volunteers with open arms, we also understand the economic challenges for those who live paycheck to paycheck and arrange to make up for income lost when possible.
-In order to bridge some of the economic divides that we face in our country, our smaller festival that takes place in the town of Shepherdstown is offered with free general admission. In addition, we provide Shepherdstown Shares with kids' activity packs with 2 game tickets and a craft ticket for the children whose families use the food pantry.
The Festival Fairytale
itty's Curious Carnival
Photo Credit Steve Parke
In 2017, Her Royal Majesty, The Queen of the Fae designated The Shepherdstown Fairy Shop an Official Embassy and appointed Miss Emma, The Fairy Lady, to the position of Local Ambassador of the Fae. Miss Emma thought this was just because she was so good at welcoming people and sharing her knowledge of the Fae. As it turns out, there was a little something Miss Emma didn't know.
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Her great great grandmother was part Fae. But that's not all! Her great great grandmother was just a little bit famous among the Fae. Her name was Kitty O'Donnell.
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Back in the 1840s, Kitty O'Donnell found herself unsuited to live her life as a proper young woman in Baltimore. So she ran away to join a circus. One Autumn day while traveling through the Appalachian mountains, she stepped left when everyone else stepped right and found herself at the edge of Faerie. She went on many fairy adventures, discovering on one of them that her real father was a goblin… and a junk dealer. This was less shocking than one might suppose.
Eventually, to the surprise of many in Faerie, Kitty decided to go back to the human world. Those who knew her best understood. You see, Kitty still had a hankering for the circus life, and she knew there were others like herself in the human world - those with fae blood who didn’t quite fit. She wanted to find them.
Three of Kitty’s closest friends went with her to the Human world: two Fae and a human changeling who had never quite felt that they fit in Faerie and who wished to see what it might be like to live among the humans. The four companions became the core of a new traveling show.
So began the days of Kitty’s Curious Carnival, a traveling haven for those who didn’t quite fit in this place or in that. All were welcome: human or Fae, for as long as they needed to be there.
For 150 years, Kitty and her circus traveled the between spaces of the Appalachian mountains. Until one year they didn’t. No one, not even the Queen of the Fae herself knows where they went.
Miss Emma, through a series of coincidences and unexpected discoveries (and a strange encounter with a fairy fortune teller) learned about her famous ancestor and her traveling circus. And so, the Shepherdstown Fairy Lady decided, now is the time to manifest her dream, and create The Shepherdstown Fairy Festival. She hopes it will be a community every bit as wonderful as the folk of Kitty’s Curious Carnival.
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There are many cautionary tales about the Fair Folk. Warnings to neither eat nor drink the food of the Fae, to keep one’s name secret, and to be very careful of making any bargains. By royal decree of the Queen of the Fae as agreed upon by all relevant fae courts, unions, and alliances, fairy festivals are places where humans need not fear the Fae. Safe passage for humans does not necessarily mean that all the Fae are welcome.
Sometimes the two fairy courts, Seelie and Unseelie just can’t seem to get along. At such times the only Unseelie permitted in the Seelie Court are the appointed ambassadors, and only the appointed Seelie ambassadors are permitted at Unseelie events. The Seelie Court rules in Summer and is often associated with Sunlight. The Unseelie rules in Winter, during the Darkness. Folk often forget that these two courts are not one good and one bad, nature isn’t like that and there are dangerous creatures in both of the two courts.
The Shepherdstown Fairy Festival is the domain of a third group: the Wild Fae. The Wild Fae are a loose alliance of folk who belong to neither Seelie Court nor Unseelie. Neither Summer nor Winter. Neither this nor that. Wild Fae are the creatures of Spring and Autumn, of dawn and twilight, of the in-between. Where the Wild Fae hold sway, there is truce between Seelie and Unseelie, which is why the Wild Fae host the Passing of the Crown Ceremony each Spring and Autumn. This autumn, the Passing of the Crown ceremony will be held during The Shepherdstown Fairy Festival.
About the Organizer: Emma Casale
Emma Casale has been a small business owner in Shepherdstown WV for the past 9 years.
Her shop Creative Procrastinations and Whimsical Necessities, on West German St., sells an eclectic mix of fairy, fantasy, and pop culture inspired items. The locals know it as “The Fairy Shop” and Emma is known as The Fairy Lady. At her shop in pre-Covid times, she hosted many Fairy Tea Parties for children, with fancy china, crafts, games and fairy lore.
She has run the children’s craft tent at Spoutwood, organized and managed author appearances at FaerieCon East, and initiated the communal kitchen at Festival of Legends, where she now holds the position of Fairy Foster Mother and Director of the Children’s Glen.
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She tried her hand at character performance as Kitty O’Donnell, Fae Journalist and Backyard Fairy Breeder at New York Faerie Festival, where
she discovered she’s better at ideas and fictional journalism than performing.
Before starting her brick and mortar shop, she was a traveling artist-vendor for ten years and has vended at a number of large festivals including Spoutwood Faerie Festival, Maryland Faerie Festival, New York Faerie Festival, Festival of Legends and Faeriecon East.
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Emma was a bookseller for sixteen years at The Children’s Bookstore in Baltimore, MD, from 1997 until 2013. She managed The Children’s Bookstore Stage and Tent at The Baltimore Book Festival from 2000-2012 where she recruited, scheduled, and hosted major authors as well as moderating panel discussions with them.
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A voracious lifelong reader of Fantasy, Fairy Tales and Folklore, Emma graduated from The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars in 2000, realizing that more than anything, she wanted to tell fantasy stories to young people. She introduced the Harry Potter* Generation to the beloved series while bringing a young group of insatiable readers of fantasy together to form The Children’s Bookstore Fantasy Club, reading and discussing the newest and best Young Adult fantasy being published at the time. They continued meeting for ten years, in the process publishing two journals of their own fantasy art and writing. At the same time she also ran occasional weeklong writing workshops for middle school students in the Baltimore City Public Schools. (*I am no longer a fan but we didn't know back in 2003)
Since she has yet to find her own way into Faerie, Emma Casale has decided to bring Faerie into the Real World through The Shepherdstown Fairy Festival. Hosting and organizing her own large Fairy Festival has been part of her long term dream for more than a decade.
