Old hoax story on Fairies (long)
What a Hoot
The Case of the Cottingley Fairies
Frances in the first photo.
Nine-year-old Frances Griffiths was in trouble. She had been playing
down near the stream called Cottingley beck and had slipped on wet
stepping stones, falling into the water soaking her shoes and
stockings. Her mother would not be pleased. Especially since her mother
had told Frances to stay away from the stream.
In that year, 1917, Frances Griffiths had just arrived in England from
South Africa and she and her mother were staying with Frances's aunt.
Frances and her cousin, sixteen-year-old Elsie Wright, often played
together near the beck to the annoyance of their mothers.
When Frances returned from the stream that day with wet feet, her
mother persisted in asking her why she constantly returned to that
forbidden place. The girl's answer precipitated a strange affair that
lasted nearly 70 years and involved one of the greatest literary minds
of the day. She told her mother she went to see the fairies.
Her mother and aunt greeted this statement with disbelief. Frances's
cousin Elsie added that she had seen the fairies too, and suggested to
Frances that they borrow Mr. Wright's camera and take some photographs
of them. Within a half hour of taking the camera, they were back
begging Elsie's father to develop the film plates for them. After tea,
Mr. Wright (with Elsie at this side) developed the film in his
darkroom. He was astonished when the picture showed Frances looking
straight at the camera while a group of five fairies danced before her
on an earthen bank.
After the initial surprise, Mr. Wright dismissed the fairies as
cardboard cutouts. He knew his daughter was a talented artist who
enjoyed drawing fairy figures. Eventually Mr. Wright stopped loaning
his camera to his daughter and niece after they took another photo with
Elsie posed next to what appeared to be a gnome.
Except for a few copies of the pictures given to friends and family the
whole matter might have stayed a private affair. In 1919 the mothers
Polly Wright and Annie Griffiths attended a meeting about Theosophy.
Theosophy was philosophy that included in its teaching the possibility
of nature spirits. After the meeting was over the women approached the
speaker about the pictures. This brought the photographs to the
attention of Edward Gardner, a well-known leader in the Theosophical
movement. He wrote to Polly Wright telling her that the photographs
were "the best of its kind I should think anywhere." Gardner obtained
from the Wrights the original negative glass plates and sent them to
photographic expert Harold Snelling. It was said of Snelling, "What
Snelling doesn't know about faked photography isn't worth knowing."
After examing them Snelling concluded, "This plate is a single
exposure. These dancing figures are not made of paper nor any fabric;
they are not painted on a photographic background-but what gets me most
is that all these figures have moved during the exposure."
What Snelling meant by his last sentence was that the camera's shutter
speed must have been set very low (something that can be confirmed by
the movement of the blurred waterfall behind Frances in the first
picture) and that the fairies appeared to be blurred as if the exposure
had caught them moving in their dance.
Gardner showed the pictures to his cousin, who in turn brought them to
the attention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle was author of the
Sherlock Holmes stories as well as several novels including The Lost
World.
Conan Doyle was a member of the Spiritualist movement and believed that
the living could communicate with the dead through psychics and
seances. He was very open to the idea of fairies and welcomed the
photos as evidence of a world beyond physical reality. Conan Doyle
considered going to Bradford himself to interview the family, but was
too busy preparing for a trip to Australia. He asked Gardner to go
instead.
After talking to the girls, Gardner reported to Conan Doyle that he
believed they were telling the truth. Conan Doyle then used the
pictures in a story he was writing about fairies for The Strand
magazine and suggested that more photographs be taken while the girls
were being observed by a "disinterested witness."
The article received much criticism. Major Edward Halls, a radium
expert, wrote:
"On the evidence I have no hesitation in saying that these photographs
could have been faked. I criticize the attitude of those who declare
there is something supernatural in the circumstances attending to the
taking of these pictures because, as a medical man, I believe that the
inculcation of such absurd ideas into the minds of children will result
in later life in manifestations and nervous disorder and mental
disturbances..."
Elsie with the Gnome
In 1920 Edward Gardner returned to Bradford with a new cameras and
persuaded the girls to try to get some more fairy pictures. In a few
weeks they had taken several additional photographs with fairies in
them. This made a total of five.
In 1921 a well-known clairvoyant, Geoffrey Hodson ,was brought to
Cottingley to see if he could detect the spirits. He claimed that he,
like the girls, could see them.
For many years the debate continued as to whether the girls had
actually captured fairies on film. Meanwhile the world lost track of
Elsie and Frances. In 1966 Peter Chambers of the Daily Express decided
to do a follow-up on the stories and located Elsie. She told him in an
interview that the fairies might have been "figments of my
imagination," but it was unclear if she meant that she had indeed faked
the photographs or somehow believed she had photographed her thoughts.
Five years later the BBC-TV program Nationwide approached Elsie for
another interview. Elsie seemed very evasive on whether she had
actually photographed real fairies and the BBC crew came to the
conclusion that the pictures had been paper cutouts made to stand up
with hat pins.
Finally in 1981 and 1982 Joe Cooper interviewed Frances and Elsie for
an article in The Unexplained. Elsie admitted that all five of the
photographs had been faked. Frances claimed that the first four had
been faked, but the fifth was real. Both ladies contended they had
indeed seen real fairies near the beck.
The hoax had been carried out by using the cutout and hatpin method as
many people had suspected. Elsie had some art training and drew the
characters based on drawings by Arthur Shepperson in Princess Mary's
Gift Book of which Frances owned a copy. Using a sharp pair of scissors
owned by Frances's mother, they cut them out and secured them to a bank
of earth with hat pins. After the photographs were taken, they dropped
the evidence into the stream and brought the camera back to Elsie's
father so that he could develop the pictures. Though some had suspected
Mr. Wright of being in on the hoax, the girls deny he knew anything
about it.
Looking at the photographs now, it seems amazing anyone could not see
that the figures are one-dimensional cardboard or paper cutouts. In a
careful examination of the gnome picture, it is possible to see where
the pin passes through the paper. Elsie herself in 1982 expressed
surprise that so many people were fooled by what seemed to her an
obvious fake. Still, we must remember that photography was a new art
then and people were not as experienced in seeing photographs as we are
today. Also the images were cleaned up and sharpened for their
publication in The Strand. Finally, perhaps we can excuse some of Conan
Doyle's gullibility in accepting the images remembering that he had a
photographic expert (Snelling) examine the pictures and state they were
not fakes. What excuse Snelling might have had is hard to imagine..
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Daniel Ross
Fairies. Or were made... or something... heard about it last year and maybe
they've come and gone already.
Daniel
What a Hoot wrote
magpie
one called 'Photographing Fairies' but that is only loosely based on the story.
Fairytale is a much better movie. They came out a couple of years ago so you
should be able to get them on video.
magpie
Daniel Ross
Daniel
magpie
magpie
Daniel Ross
"Brassed Off" or the "Commitments" trilogy. :o)
Daniel
magpie wrote
magpie
parochial.
Can you understand the accents ok or do they have subtitles? :o)
Daniel Ross
Stallone in them .;o) I understand them just fine. Scottish accents in movies
like the "Trainspotting" gets a bit iffy when they're talking real fast... The
original Mad Max which was filmed in "Austrailian" was re-dubbed into a less
twangy English that could actually be understood by people outside of Austrailia.
LOL
Daniel
magpie wrote:
> Art house movies? LOL Well, I suppose that's about right. They are a little
> parochial.
>
> Can you understand the accents ok or do they have subtitles? :o)
magpie
magpie
Daniel Ross wrote:
> Yeah, they are considered Art movies because they don't have Aahhhhnold or
> Stallone in them .;o) I understand them just fine. Scottish accents in movies
> like the "Trainspotting" gets a bit iffy when they're talking real fast... The
> original Mad Max which was filmed in "Austrailian" was re-dubbed into a less
> twangy English that could actually be understood by people outside of Austrailia.
> LOL
> Daniel
>
> magpie wrote:
>
> > Art house movies? LOL Well, I suppose that's about right. They are a little
> > parochial.
> >
> > Can you understand the accents ok or do they have subtitles? :o)