The Fair Folk of Mullarkey Inspiration - Wind Phones

This is a discussion article for Black Annis Year. If you haven’t read the book yet, please skip this article  for now. There will be spoilers. 

Wind Phones

The idea of a wind phone actually brought all the elements of Black Annis Year together for me. I knew I wanted to write a story about the amazing plow horse who defied the odds (see Sadie's article), and I wanted to set it on a farm with a mysterious fae living in the woods (see Black Annis article). What I didn’t know was who Elenna would be. When I first read about wind phones in a news article in a local newspaper, the idea of Elenna using one to overcome grief and come out of her shell sort of solidified the whole plot in my mind. 

Nina shows Elenna how to upload her phone’s location to a searchable database. I haven’t actually found an app that shows where to find wind phones, but I think there should be one. I did find https://www.mywindphone.com which is suppose to have a map and a blog that features wind phones sent in from users. 

I have done some geocaching in my time, and wind phones seem like an of extension of that hobby. I think it would be fun to stumble upon one while hiking, and that’s exactly what happened to my amazing editor Elaine Jackson, shortly after she’d done her initial read-through of Black Annis Year. She was hiking the Nokiida Trail in Ontario when she came upon a wind phone. She had just been telling her hiking friends about the book too, so it was a serendipitous find. Here's a picture of the Nokiida Trail wind phone.

In Black Annis Year, the wind phone is an important healing tool for Elenna. At first she mocks the idea of talking to a dead phone. But soon she sees others using it—even the old General. It becomes a cathartic exercise as she lets her anger and grief flow out to infinity through the phone.

Have you ever seen a wind phone in the wild? Would you use it? If so, who would you call?