The Harvester Ghost Figurine - Elias

The Harvesters appear only after the first grain has been cut.

Old Lammas records speak of pale figures emerging at dusk from the newly shorn fields, where the standing wheat had concealed them throughout the growing season. They are seldom witnessed before the final cart has departed. By then, only stubble, scattered husks and the long shadows of the harvest remain.

Earlier custodians believed the Harvesters kept account of all that had been gathered and all that had been left behind. They were treated neither as omens nor intruders, but as quiet witnesses to the turning year: spirits of labour completed, stores replenished and the first promise that winter might yet be endured.

Their appearance marks the opening of the harvest season at Lammas. They remain only briefly, vanishing as the fields are cleared and the late-summer nights begin to lengthen.

Elias was first recorded in a field where a narrow strip of grain had been left standing along the eastern boundary.

The farmer called it an oversight, though the older hands insisted the final row belonged neither to scythe nor granary. Elias appeared beside it for three evenings, and the grain remained untouched until every neighbouring field had been cut. Old records associate him with the custom of leaving a portion for wandering spirits, and with the warning that abundance should never be gathered down to the final stalk.

Elias the ghost figurine is just short of 9 cm in height.