It's been awhile since I did a 'fairylore in popular media' article, but I thought this one would be worth digging into now. Stranger Things is a cultural phenomenon which I admit I've previously avoided. But at the urging of my 12 year old I've dived in and was pleasantly surprised to see the many echos of fairylore in the show, particularly the first two seasons, although I'm focusing just on season 1 here. I think it's worthwhile to explore the way some fairy themes crossover into this show in ways that may be subtle or obvious and how that can give the show a deeper feel.
In previous articles I've noted what were in most cases obviously intended to be reflections of folklore but in the case of Stranger Things I don't know for certain how many of the below listed things were intentional call backs to fairy beliefs and how much is coincidence, so my approach to this will be to simply present all of the points I've noticed as a fairy focused folklorist. Other people's opinions here might vary, and if I missed anything please suggest it in the comments.
*Spoilers for Stranger Things season 1 Below*
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The Upside Down - A main premise of the show is that there is an alternate reality adjacent to and reflecting the human world but which is very different in nature; this is similar to a foundational premise in fairylore, that the world or reality of Fairy exists adjacent to but separated from the human world. Fairy has neither sun nor moon but exists in a perpetual twilight and the Upside Down also has no celestial bodies illuminating it but exist in a state of endless night. The Upside Down is a distorted, nightmarish counterpart to the human world, where the architecture and wilderness is the same but exist in states of decay; Fairy is sometimes described as identical to the human world but distorted in various ways. Both worlds, Fairy and the Upside Down, have different rules to the human world.
The Stolen Human - a staple in various fairy stories is the stolen human, a person who is taken by the fairies for a range of purposes, usually malevolent. Although popular stories tend to focus on infants the range of anecdotal material includes humans of many ages, with boys being the most common children taken and women the more common older children and adults taken. In the case of Stranger Things we see both as Will, a 12 year old boy, is taken first, followed later by Barb, a teenage girl. Both are taken into the Upside Down, although they meet very different fates there. As in fairylore Will and Barb are taken when they are alone and unprotected.
The Changeling - A common theme in many stories of stolen humans is that of the changeling, an enchanted object or ailing fairy left in the place of a stolen human in order to deceive the person's family into either believing they died or to make it seem the person hasn't been stolen at all. In Stranger Things this manifests as a body left in place of the stolen Will meant to convince his family and the town of Hawkins that he drowned. This fake is revealed when the police chief, suspicious of what has been going on and swayed by the boy's mother who swears the corpse isn't her child, cuts into the corpse only to find that it is a lifelike doll stuffed with cotton. The police Chief keeps this knowledge to himself and the false Will is buried in a public funeral, leaving most people convinced he did actually die.
The Gate(s)- in the show the pathways between the human world and the Upside Down are called gates, and represent tears between realities that beings may pass through. Similarly in folk belief fairies are thought to live in the world of Fairy but access the human world through specific places that act as doorways. These may be hills, caves, trees, or rocks in folk stories; for example the cave of Uaimh na gCait (Tulsk, Roscommon) is said to be an entry to the Otherworld out of which assorted monstrous beings have appeared. In the show we find that the main gate created by one of the characters is underground, in a military complex that has a cave-like aesthetic, while a smaller gate is also shown in the woods as a hole between worlds opened up in a tree.
Inhuman Monsters - a wider trope which is admittedly shared with a range of media including science fiction is the inhuman monster. This is also found in fairy belief where some beings from Fairy may look human but others are notably inhuman and clearly monstrous. These monsters do not follow the rules of the human world, even when they are within it, for example being almost impossible to injure or kill. In both the show and fairy stories these monstrous beings are notably vicious and brutal, while also clearly being intelligent in some way. The Demogorgons of the show, like some beings in Fairy, are superior in strength and speed to humans; like fairy beings who are described missing limbs or with a deformity, the Demogorgons have no apparent eyes, often described within the show as 'faceless'.
They are not clearly fairies, as such, but they fit into the wider range of Fairy beings that can be found in stories.
Electrical Distortions - a key aspect to the first season of the show is Will's ability to communicate with his mother from the Upside Down using lights. Through this he can convey his presence to her and later spell out messages after she creates a clever communication method using a string of lights and letters painted on the wall. Electrical distortions are common features of supernatural encounters including fairy based ones, and the idea that lights appearing indicates the presence of otherwise unseen being is inline with wider fairy beliefs. It also represents in my opinion an interesting take on communication between worlds.
Monstrous Reproduction Via Humans - Fairylore is full of stories of humans taken in order to further the fairies agenda by providing offspring for them; in some stories the stolen human themself is transformed into a fairy. In Stranger Things it is implied in several scenes that the Demogorgons are using the corpses of the humans they kill to make more of themselves, including using the still-alive Will who in a final scene is shown vomiting up a slug-like creature which is revealed in season 2 to be the initial form of the Demogorgon. Through this means the beings reproduce, and their use of humans to do so echoes older ideas of fairies using humans as breeding stock.
The Rescue - in stories of stolen humans there are usually two ways to rescue them, all of which must be done within a very short time limit. One way is, if the changeling left was a fairy, to torment that being until it chooses to either leave - hence returning the stolen human - or admits to its nature with the same result. The second way is to actively rescue the stolen human, usually by going to a place in the human world where the fairies are known to be at a specific time, but also in a few cases by going into the Fairy realm to bring them back, such as we see in Sir Orfeo. Stranger Things echoes this later trope, with Will's mother and the police chief venturing through the gate to rescue him and return him to the human world. This is accomplished in the show and in folklore by fighting through challenges and trials to find the person and win them back to the living world.
Saved But Never the Same - A final note would be that after being successfully rescued Will shows clear signs that his experience has changed him on a deep, preternatural level - he has flashes of vision into the Upside Down and can sense the power that rules that realm. While some people rescued from Fairy in stories do go on to live apparently normal lives we also find tales of people so changed by their experience that they cannot reconcile it and pine away or seek to return to that world. There are also stories of people who would go on to be considered a bean feasa [wise woman] or fairy doctor who were taken into the realm of Fairy for a period of time and return with new abilities beyond the norm for humans and with a connection between themselves and the Otherworld.
