In 1922, the writer Arthur Conan Doyle published the book “The Phenomenon of Fairies”, which caused a huge scandal and cost the author the respect of many people. Conan Doyle investigated the story of photographs of fairies taken in the first decades of the 20th century by two girls from the remote English village of Cottingley – Elsie Wright and her cousin Frances Griffith.
Elsie Wright was born in 1900. From the age of 13, she attended art school, where she was reputed to be a very gifted student. She painted with passion in watercolor, including, according to her father’s memoirs, she completed several sketches depicting dwarves and fairies. During the First World War, she worked in the college’s photographic laboratory. Her duties included making collages in which fallen soldiers found themselves surrounded by loved ones.
Frances Griffith met her cousin in 1917, when she moved to live in Cottingley. The relatives often spent time playing by the stream, which their mothers did not like. One day, Polly Wright, Elsie’s mother, dissatisfied with her daughter’s appearance (her dress was soaked through), asked why they visited the stream so often. The girls suddenly announced that they were going there to play with the fairies. Elsie and Frances also talked about some fabulous people they had seen. The adults, of course, did not believe them. Then Elsie asked her father to give her a camera to take photos proving the reality of fairies. The father agreed, and after developing the film and printing the photographs, he was surprised to see Francis surrounded by a dance of fairies. Suspecting that the figures had been cut out of paper and then hung by strings, the man searched the streambank, the bedroom, and even the girls’ trash can, but found no scraps or scraps of paper anywhere. Soon, Elsie and Francis once again asked the adults for a camera. In the new photo, Elsie was already captured, and next to her was a small dwarf.
In 1919, a theosophical meeting was held near Cottingley, and Elsie’s mother went there. The woman showed the photos taken by her daughter and niece. The pictures aroused the interest of Edward Gardner, the head of the Theosophical Society. He sent them to photography expert Harold Snelling. The specialist, having carefully studied them, came to the conclusion that “the two negatives are completely authentic, not forged photographs.” At the same time, he did not dare to declare that there were real fairies in the pictures. Instead, Harold reported that “these are direct photos of what was in front of the camera at that moment.”
The case became so famous that even whole excursions to Cottingley were organized. Clairvoyant Joffrey Hodgson was asked to come to the village to try to “see” these “beautiful stream girls,” as they were called. Hodson actually showed up and confirmed that he had seen one of them on the astral level. He described all this in his book “Fairies at work and Play.”
At the same time, Arthur Conan Doyle was collecting material for a large article about fairies. The material about fairy-tale creatures for the Christmas issue was commissioned by the Strand Magazine. The sensational story with the photographs attracted the attention of the writer. In the summer of 1920, he received the first copies of the images from Gardner and sent them for examination to Oliver Lodge, one of Britain’s leading physicists. Lodge’s response was disappointing: he categorically stated that the photos were fake and the fairies were portrayed by a group of dancers.
However, Doyle did not believe Lodge’s conclusions. Probably, the author of the Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson stories was influenced not only by the opinion of his friend Gardner, who was confident in the authenticity of the photographs, but also by the assurances of several Kodak specialists, who allegedly also found no signs of forgery. At the same time, the company’s employees said that the photos cannot be considered as convincing evidence of the existence of fairies.
Conan Doyle was fond of spiritualism and believed that if there are souls of people with whom it is possible to come into contact through a seance, then there may be beings who were previously considered fabulous. It was important for the writer to prove their authenticity, because he was sure that if people recognized the reality of fairies, they would begin to believe in other mystical phenomena. “Recognizing their existence will pull the material mind of the twentieth century out of its heavy rut in the mud and force it to recognize that there is charm and mystery in life,” Conan Doyle wrote in an article published in December 1920. The creator of Holmes saw no reason why girls could and should lie.
Despite the fact that the names of the sisters in Conan Doyle’s article were changed, the journalists were able to recognize them very quickly. Elsie and Francis said they were ready to take new photos. Edward Gardner even gave the girls two cameras. The sisters asked the adults not to follow them, explaining that the fairies would hide and not show up if they saw anyone other than Elsie and Frances. Soon three more new pictures appeared, and after that there were no more photos with fairies. The girls explained this by saying that the fairies no longer wanted to be photographed. Arthur Conan Doyle had a theory about this. He believed that the youngest of the girls, Frances, was able to release some kind of ectoplasmic energy, thanks to which the fairies became visible. However, puberty led to the disappearance of this energy.
The writer believed in the authenticity of the pictures to the last, even though some friends stopped communicating with him because of this. Members of the Society for the Study of Psychology, where Doyle had been a member since 1891, tended to believe that the photos were fakes, and asked that the conclusions of “gullible Conan Doyle not be confused with the opinion of the majority of society members.”
Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930, and half a century later, in 1981, Elsie Wright admitted that fairies were not real. She explained that the images of the magical creatures were based on the pictures they found in the “Princess Mary’s Gift Book” from 1915. The fairies were redrawn, colored, and cut out of paper. The paper figures were attached to branches and grass with hat pins. The gnome in one of the photos was made of clay. Elsie admitted that they wanted to tell the truth, but after the story took on an unexpected scale, they had nowhere to retreat to. “We didn’t admit to our deception because at first we were afraid of parental anger, and then we didn’t want to let down Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, our favorite writer. Two village kids and an outstanding man like Conan Doyle… well, we just had to keep quiet. But at our current age, it’s time to tell the truth. I know many children still believe that we were lucky – Frances and I were in a fairy tale. It didn’t happen! Unfortunately,” Elsie confessed.
