I used to side with daeda in regards to Terence and the way people hold to Terence's descriptions, however in light of some recent experiences over the past couple months, I have come to disagree. I've been encountering this one elf in particular lately. Whatever you think an elf sounds like is exactly what this guy's voice sounds like. It's got that compressed, nasal, pip-squeak voice. I've gone into this in detail in several other threads, but being that this one is specifically designed to talk about the elves themselves, and our experience of them, perhaps it bears repeating.
The elf I encounter appears to be different in a number of ways from the majority of other entities I encounter. For one, practically every other entity I've encountered (I think without exception) is made of the same light and energy that all the rest of hyperspace including all its landscapes and objects are made of. When touched, they feel like concentrations of magnetic energy. The elf on the other hand does not present itself to me in a similar fashion. For one, he appears rather solid and physical. If he jumps on my body, he feels very much real and physical, and not so magnetic.
Sometimes he doesn't even seem to be sharing the same space as the rest of hyperspace as if he somehow has some kind of unique "outsider" perspective. It's hard to describe, but he just doesn't seem to fall on the same plane(s) as everything else sometimes.
Then there's also the exception of the way he speaks to me. Unlike most other entities (with the exception of the Godhead), this entity uses sound to communicate as opposed to the more regular telepathic communication from the others. Often times the telepathic communication will be in languages I can't understand, or if it is in English, it's just gibberish; all the words are in English, it's just that when you put them together like that it doesn't make any sense. The elf however sounds like he's talking like a physical entity. If he's off to the left of me, I can hear and feel the sound coming in my left ear more than the right. He speaks in perfect English with good grammar, and with sentences that not only make sense, but in my last encounter, he was fully narrating what was going on in my rapid vision in real-time, which I continue to find intriguing considering that I had no clue what was going on, but he was doing a damn good job of letting me know.
So to get back to daeda's point, I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot of people who end up being so influenced by Terence, that they just end up naming any old mechanical shape shifting entity from hyperspace a Machine Elf, and without a doubt, many who encounter entities will never encounter the elves, but nonetheless I believe that they are very much a real phenomena, and not as poetic as we sometimes claim them to be. On one encounter, I literally felt like I was in an elf factory. All the aesthetics were just so loopy, silly and cute, like out of a Christmas movie.