Case file · Fairy lore
Cottingley Fairies
Photographs of 'fairies' that fooled even Arthur Conan Doyle.
1917 CE · 53.96, -1.86 · status: hoax
The sceptical view
The cousins later admitted the fairies were paper cut-outs.
The researched reading
A charming hoax that fooled famous people. The fairies were paper cut-outs.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A hoax or fabrication | 92% | Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths admitted in 1983 that the fairies were paper cut-outs from a children’s book held up with hatpins; Frances maintained the fifth photo was real. |
| A cultural story | 4% | Spiritualism and post-war grief made adults like Conan Doyle eager to believe. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 2% | Belief can override obvious flaws in photos. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 1% | Not applicable. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 1% | No evidence. |
Official position: Confessed hoax.
How the account grew
Two cousins' 1917 garden photographs reached the Theosophists and then Arthur Conan Doyle, who published them in The Strand as evidence of fairies. Interest faded and revived, the women denied fakery on television, and in 1983 they admitted using paper cut-outs, while Frances held to the end that the fifth photograph was genuine.
| Year | Who | Added |
|---|---|---|
| 1917 | Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths | Two photographs of Frances with dancing fairies and Elsie with a gnome by the beck; Elsie's father suspects a fake; Frances writes to a friend that fairies must find Africa too hot. |
| 1919 | Theosophical Society, Bradford and Harrogate | Polly Wright shows the photos after a lecture on 'fairy life'; Edward Gardner takes them up and the society's conference displays them. |
| 1920 | Arthur Conan Doyle, The Strand Magazine | The Christmas issue prints the photos as evidence and sells out; three new photos are taken with marked plates Gardner supplies. |
| 1922 | Arthur Conan Doyle, The Coming of the Fairies | The later photos and other fairy sightings in book form; sceptics note the fairies resemble nursery-book fairies with fashionable hairstyles. |
| 1966 | Daily Express | Elsie, traced by a reporter, suggests the fairies might have been 'figments of her imagination' photographed. |
| 1976 | Austin Mitchell, Yorkshire Television | Both women say 'a rational person doesn't see fairies' but deny faking; in 1978 James Randi's team reports visible supports. |
| 1983 | The Unexplained magazine; Geoffrey Crawley in The Times | The cousins admit the fairies were cut-outs copied from Princess Mary's Gift Book, while saying they did see fairies; Frances insists the fifth photo is real; Crawley suggests a double exposure. (dropped: The photographs as genuine, except, for Frances, the fifth.) |
| 1997 | FairyTale: A True Story; Photographing Fairies | Two feature films inspired by the affair. |
| 2009 | Christine Lynch, Antiques Roadshow; Reflections on the Cottingley Fairies | Frances's daughter says she believes, like her mother, that the fifth photograph was genuine. |
Connections in the atlas
- The cousins’ admission that the photographs were faked
- Arthur Conan Doyle
- William Mumler's spirit photographs
- The Cottingley fairy photographs
- James Randi
- Jacques Vallée