GaryJJSpate: Create Cottingley Fairies as a Cases page

2026-08-05T14:13:36Z

Create Cottingley Fairies as a Cases page

New page

{{InfoboxCase
|name=Cottingley Fairies
|type=Purported evidence photographs / hoax
|subject=Fairies
|region=Cottingley, near Bingley, West Yorkshire, England
|date=1917 (first two photographs); three further photographs taken in 1920
|first_report=1917 (privately); publicised nationally from December 1920
|investigator=Geoffrey Crawley; Joe Cooper
|related=[[Arthur Conan Doyle]]
|outcome=Confirmed hoax; both photographers admitted fabrication in 1983
|status=Explained
}}

The '''Cottingley Fairies''' are a series of five photographs taken between 1917 and 1920 by cousins Elsie Wright, then 16, and Frances Griffiths, then 9, in the village of Cottingley near Bingley, West Yorkshire, England, purporting to show the girls in the company of fairies.<ref name="si2021">{{cite web |title=The Cottingley Fairies: A Photographic Case for Wishful Thinking |url=https://skepticalinquirer.org/2021/12/the-cottingley-fairies-a-photographic-case-for-wishful-thinking/ |website=Skeptical Inquirer}}</ref> The photographs became internationally famous after being championed as genuine by author and prominent Spiritualist [[Arthur Conan Doyle]], and are now among the best-documented photographic hoaxes in the history of paranormal claims.<ref name="si2021" />

== The photographs ==

The first two photographs were taken in mid-1917 using Elsie's father's camera: one in July showing Frances apparently surrounded by four dancing fairies, and a second in September showing Elsie with a winged gnome.<ref name="si2021" /> The girls' families had differing reactions — Elsie's father, an amateur photographer himself, was sceptical from the start and believed the images were faked, while Elsie's mother became convinced of their authenticity after attending a Theosophical Society lecture on fairy life.<ref name="si2021" /> Three further photographs were taken in 1920, after the case had drawn wider outside attention, showing similar fairy figures around Frances and Elsie.<ref name="si2021" />

== Arthur Conan Doyle's involvement ==

The photographs came to wider attention through [[Arthur Conan Doyle]], who at the time was deeply engaged with Spiritualism, in part following the death of his son during the First World War.<ref name="si2021" /> Doyle learned of the images through Theosophist Edward Gardner and arranged for them to be examined by Kodak's technical staff and by photographic expert Harold Snelling; the examiners found no evidence of double exposure or obvious studio trickery but stopped short of certifying the photographs as showing genuine supernatural beings.<ref name="si2021" /> Doyle wrote an article on the photographs for ''The Strand Magazine'' in its Christmas 1920 issue, and expanded his case in the 1922 book ''The Coming of the Fairies'', bringing the photographs to a large public audience and considerable ridicule.<ref name="si2021" />

== Public reception and scepticism ==

Many contemporary observers were sceptical from the outset. Critics noted a strong stylistic resemblance between the photographed fairies and illustrations in ''Princess Mary's Gift Book'', a popular children's annual published in 1914, as well as the flat, static, two-dimensional appearance of the figures compared with the girls themselves.<ref name="si2021" /> The case nonetheless remained a subject of public fascination and periodic debate for decades.

== The 1983 confession ==

A detailed technical investigation of the photographs was carried out by Geoffrey Crawley and published across a series of articles in the ''British Journal of Photography'' between 1982 and 1983.<ref name="si2021" /> Around the same period, researcher Joe Cooper interviewed Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, by then elderly women, and in 1983 both publicly admitted that the first four photographs had been faked using cardboard cutouts of fairies copied from illustrations in ''Princess Mary's Gift Book'', coloured in and supported with hairpins.<ref name="si2021" /> Both women, however, maintained until their deaths that the fifth and final photograph was genuine, a claim that has never been independently corroborated. Frances Griffiths died in 1986 and Elsie Wright in 1988.<ref name="si2021" />

== Legacy ==

The Cottingley Fairies remain a frequently cited case study in the evaluation of photographic evidence and in the psychology of wishful thinking and belief, illustrating how a well-regarded public figure's endorsement — in this case Conan Doyle's — could lend apparent credibility to an otherwise simple hoax.<ref name="si2021" /> The story has been dramatised in film twice, in ''FairyTale: A True Story'' and ''Photographing Fairies'', both released in 1997.

{{VaultEvidence
|rating=☆☆☆☆☆
|classification=Explained (confirmed hoax)
|summary=The Cottingley Fairies photographs were confirmed as a hoax by both photographers in 1983, after decades of public fascination fuelled substantially by Arthur Conan Doyle's public endorsement.
|supporting=At the time, examination by Kodak and photographic expert Harold Snelling found no evidence of conventional double exposure or darkroom trickery; the photographs were publicly championed by a prominent contemporary literary and Spiritualist figure
|counter=A strong stylistic match between the photographed fairies and illustrations in the 1914 children's book ''Princess Mary's Gift Book''; the flat, static, two-dimensional appearance of the fairy figures; a full public confession by both Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths in 1983, describing the use of cardboard cutouts supported with hairpins; Geoffrey Crawley's independent 1982–83 technical investigation reaching the same conclusion
|conclusion=The case is fully resolved as a confirmed hoax, though the photographers' shared insistence, maintained until their deaths, that the fifth photograph was genuine remains an unresolved footnote to an otherwise settled case.
}}

== See also ==

* [[Arthur Conan Doyle]]
* [[TheVault:Photographic Evidence]]
* [[TheVault:Physical Evidence]]

== References ==

{{Reflist}}

== External links ==

* [https://skepticalinquirer.org/2021/12/the-cottingley-fairies-a-photographic-case-for-wishful-thinking/ Skeptical Inquirer — The Cottingley Fairies: A Photographic Case for Wishful Thinking]

[[Category:Cases]]
[[Category:West Yorkshire]]

Cottingley Fairies - Revision history

GaryJJSpate: Create Cottingley Fairies as a Cases page