Two Little Girls Photographed Fairies, Conan Doyle Believed, and Only Admitted Sixty Years Later That They Were Paper Cutouts

In 1917, in a village called Cottingley in Yorkshire, England, two little girls—sixteen-year-old Elsie and her cousin, nine-year-old Frances—said that while playing by the stream they saw fairies and took photographs of them. In the photos, several small figures with wings were around them, one dancing, one offering them flowers.

It started because Frances kept getting her shoes wet and was scolded when she got home. She explained that it was because she had gone to play with the fairies by the stream. The adults didn't believe her, so the two girls borrowed Elsie's father's camera, saying they would go take a photo to show them. When the negatives were developed, the adults were stunned. Elsie's mother believed it and took the photos to a Theosophical Society gathering.

The story eventually reached the ears of Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes. He believed it very much, and in 1920 he wrote an article in The Strand Magazine saying this was evidence that fairies existed. World War I had just ended, many families had lost people, and everyone was willing to believe, willing to believe that there were invisible things in the world. The following year, he had someone investigate it specifically, and a second batch of photos was taken, five in total.

Later, people always suspected it, saying those fairies looked like illustrations from a children's book at the time, even the hairstyles were similar. Experts examined the negatives and said they couldn't see signs of cutting or editing, but they didn't dare say they were real.

In 1983, both were old women in their seventies or eighties, and they finally admitted that the first four were cut out according to the pictures in the book and pinned to the grass with hat pins for the photos. They said they had just wanted to play a joke at the time, never expecting the adults to take it seriously, and then they encountered such a famous person, making it even more embarrassing to come clean.

But the cousin said one thing: she said the fifth one was real. The fifth photo showed something very blurry in the grass, like a veil illuminated by light; she said that one was what they actually saw at the time, with no fakery. Elsie herself kept saying it was just a game back then and she never expected it to become such a big deal.

The two people involved—one said it was a joke, the other said one of them was real—and in their old age, neither said another word.

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