Misty Visions

Captions

Left: a fairy offering flowers to Elsie, 1920. Elsie Wright said that the flowers were tiny harebells, and that the colours of the fairy's dress were pastel shades of mauve and yellow. This particular Cottingley photograph prompted widespread criticism: the fairy has a suspiciously contemporary appearance, with its bobbed hair and fashionable dress.

Above: the `fairy bower' long believed by some fairylorists to exist, but, as Conan Doyle exclaimed, `Never before, or other where [sic], has a fairy's bower been photographed!' The cocoon-like structure is said to be used by fairies to bathe in after long spells of dull and misty weather.

Below: Cottingley as it was in the 1920s.

Above left: a map of the Cottingley area, showing the `beck' where Elsie and Frances claimed to have photographed the fairies.

Above: Geoffrey Hodson, a clairvoyant recommended by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, pictured here with Elsie, aged 20, and Frances, 14, in 1921. He had personal experience of fairies and gnomes and was to publish his Fairies at Work and Play in 1922.

Left: Bernard Partridge's famous caricature of the aging Conan Doyle. Though still chained by public opinion to his great fictional character Sherlock Holmes, he is seen with his head in the clouds of Spiritualism.

The Cottingley fairies revisited

Ever since two young girls took `fairy photographs' in the 1920s controversy has raged over their authenticity.

THE FIRST PHOTOGRAPH of fairies taken by Elsie Wright of Cottingley, near Bradford, in 1917 has threatened to become overexposed in the occult-conscious late 20th century, for the photograph of the sprites pictured in front of a pleasant-faced Frances has been reproduced so often that it is in danger of becoming a sort of visual cliche. It is especially irritating to those who find the whole fairy business distasteful, even fraudulent; they object, shrilly at times, to the strangely artificial look of the fairy dancers–although they are less vocal on the other four photographs that were subsequently taken. The believers, as always, believe, and speak of `more things in Heaven and Earth �?

The position of critics on the one hand and champions on the other may be summed up thus:

The `prosecution' points out that Elsie painted and drew well, that she had always seemed immersed in drawing fairies, had been fascinated by the art of photography and had worked at a photographer's, and seemed suspiciously evasive in the 1971 BBC-TV Nationwide interview. Both Elsie and her cousin Frances admit to a strong sense of humour; both admit to having deceived the medium Geoffrey Hodson during the 1921 investigation (in terms of giving overgenerous endorsements to his descriptions of teeming fairy life in and around the beck). No third party was ever present when the five photographs were taken. The girls spent hours together playing down at the beck, which was well away from the house and concealed, by 40-foot (12-metre) banks, from public view. They shared a fair-sized attic bedroom in which they could have hatched their plots. In 1978 the `Amazing Randi' (a professional American stage illusionist and self-appointed debunker of all paranormal phenomena) and a team from New Scientist subjected the photographs to `enhancement'–a process used to bring out greater detail from Moon photographs–and thought they could see strings attached to some figures. Randi also pointed out that the figures in the first photograph bore a resemblance to those in an illustration in Princess Mary's Gift Book, published in 1914.

The `defence' asserts that Elsie's job at the photographer's lasted only six months and amounted to running errands and cleaning up prints. She drew fairies because she saw them often and, anyway, her drawings were no better than might be expected from a fairly talented 16-year-old. As for the Gift book illustrations–fairies dancing around are bound to resemble each other and the ones in the Christmas 1914 publication lack wings. The string in the report in New Scientist of 3 August 1978 may be printing streaks, and even real figures would not stay absolutely motionless in the breeze that usually blew gently down the beck; and where might they be hung from? And what variety of invisible `string' was used at the time? By the time Hodson came they were bored and nodded confirmation for the sake of peace and quiet. Elsie prevaricated because she wanted the matter to be forgotten. They did not have the motivation, materials, time, privacy, or expertise to fake the photographs. And, most significantly, they have always maintained they saw fairies and photographed them.

Newspapers, magazines and television companies have become increasingly interested in Elsie and Frances since Peter Chambers of the Daily Express discovered where Elsie lived in 1966. He quotes Elsie as saying that the fairies might have been `figments of my imagination'. She may have made this rather bald statement simply to rid herself of unwelcome publicity. On the other hand she may have implied that she had successfully photographed these `figments' of her `imagination'. Significantly, in the years since the Cottingley fairies were photographed, research into `thoughtography' (notably Dr Jule Eisenbud's work with Ted Serios in the United States) and experiments in Japan have indicated that thoughtforms may indeed be photographed.

Elsie and Frances interrogated

For five years Elsie managed to avoid publicity; then, in 1971, BBC-TV's Nationwide programme took up the case. For 10 days she was interrogated, taken back to Cottingley and subjected to this sort of thing:

(The interviewer points out that, since the original fairy investigator, E. L. Gardner, died the year before, Elsie might wish to be more explicit.)

Elsie: I didn't want to upset Mr Gardner�?I don't mind talking now�?

(It is then suggested that Elsie's father had a hand in matters.)

Elsie: I would swear on the Bible father didn't know what was going on.

Interviewer: Could you equally swear on the Bible you didn't play any tricks?

Elsie (after a pause): I took the photographs�?I took two of them�?no, three�?Frances took two�?

Interviewer: Are they trick photographs? Could you swear on the Bible about that?

Elsie (after a pause): I'd rather leave that open if you don't mind�?but my father had nothing to do with it I can promise you that�?

Interviewer: Have you had your fun with the world for 50 years? Have you been kidding us for 10 days?

(Elsie laughs.)

Elsie (gently): I think we'll close on that if you don't mind.

More objective was Austin Mitchell's interview for Yorkshire Television in September 1976. On the spot where the photographs had allegedly been taken, the following dialogue took place:

Mitchell: A rational person doesn't see fairies. If people say they see fairies, then one's bound to be critical.

Frances: Yes.

Mitchell: Now, if you say you saw them, at the time the photograph was taken, that means that if there's a confidence trick, then you're both part of it.

Frances: Yes–that's fair enough–yes.

Mitchell: So are you?

Frances: No.

Elsie: No.

Frances: Of course not.

Mitchell: Did you, in any way, fabricate those photographs?

Frances: Of course not. You tell us how she could do it–remember she was 16 and I was 10. So, then, as a child of 10, can you go through life and keep a secret?

The Yorkshire Television team, however, believed the `cardboard cutout' theory. Austin Mitchell duly appeared on the screen, personable as ever, with a row of fairy figures before him set against a background of greenery. He flicked them around a little (perhaps to reassure viewers that elementals had not invaded the prosaic surroundings of Kirkstall Road, Leeds).

`Simple cardboard cutouts,' he commented on the live magazine programme. `Done by our photographic department and mounted on wire frames. They discovered that you really need wire to make them stand up–paper figures droop, of course. That's how it could have been done.'

But quite apart from the pronouncements of critics and champions, tapes, letters and newspaper cuttings are now available for anyone who would delve deeper into the fairy photographs. Understandably, Elsie and Frances would rather people kept away and respected their privacy after the passage of so many years.

The critics–Lewis of Nationwide, Austin Mitchell of Yorkshire TV, Randi, and Stewart Sanderson and Katherine Briggs of the Folklore Society–all these are fair-minded individuals interested in balancing probability on the available evidence. This extremely delicate balance did seem to have shifted in favour of the ladies' honesty during the 1970s but, obviously, many points could still be elucidated by further research.

Austin Mitchell said `a rational person doesn't see fairies', and there are some sociologists who would say that rationality might be socially constructed. One's `rationality' mostly depends on one's personal experiences and one's reading. There are, believe it or not, hundreds of instances of people claiming to have seen fairies. A perusal of Conan Doyle's book The Coming of the Fairies, or Visions or Beliefs by Lady Gregory and the poet W. B. Yeats, should prove that more than a handful of such claims have been made.

The author has now met seven people who claim to have seen nature spirits. One of them, an ex-wrestler of powerful build–an unlikely figure to consort with sprites–is adamant in his assertions. It is interesting to note how many are prepared to listen to him with an unusual degree of tolerance.

It is usually possible to demolish individual accounts; taken collectively, however, some patterns begin to emerge. F. W. Holiday in his book The dragon and the disc likens the appearance of the Cottingley gnome to that of lcelandic Bronze Age figures, and William Riley, the Yorkshire author, puts the five fairy pictures into perhaps the most relevant context: `I have many times come across several people who have seen pixies at certain favoured spots in Upper Airedale and Wharfedale.'

Captions

Above: the young Elsie Wright's watercolour Fairies flying over a cottage. She often painted fairies, because, she said, she often saw them.

Left: an illustration from Princess Mary's gift book, which was very popular in 1914. These fairies bear some resemblance to those allegedly seen and photographed at Cottingley.

Below: Fairies by a stream, a watercolour by Elsie Wright. She and her cousin were obsessed with fairies when they were young and this obsession is used by both the `defence' and the 'prosecution' to explain the photographs. The sceptics use it to explain the motivation behind the `fakes' explicitly and the believers claim that the obsession arose quite naturally because the girls saw fairies all the time.

Above: a rare `cup and ring' stone, found in Cottingley Glen, close to the beck. Such strangely marked stones are traditionally associated with supernatural activities and have often been linked with fairy sightings.

[page 65]

Most people do not believe in fairies and therefore, to them, any alleged fairy photographs must be fakes. To sceptics there is no question about it: the Cottingley fairies were cut out of a children's book and superimposed, very cleverly (for no one has conclusively proved that they were faked) on photographs of the cousins, Elsie and Frances.

There was no shortage of material had they wanted to search for fairy `models'. Fairies were common enough in children's books around the turn of the century. Most girls of their age, living at that time, could have described a fairy, for most illustrations reflected a similar, traditional fairy image.

In fact, Elsie and Frances's fairies were, if anything, slightly more fashion-conscious than, say, those pictured in the popular Princess Mary's gift book of 1914. The Cottingley fairies had up-to-the-minute bobbed hair and beaded Charleston dresses (although Elsie's gnome remained traditionally grotesque).

When psychical researcher E. L. Gardner visited Cottingley in the 1920s he claimed mediumistic powers for both girls, but especially for Frances. He believed that the elemental spirits–fairies–used loosely-knit ectoplasm emanating from the girls with which to form visible bodies, visible, that is, only to the girls and the eye of the camera. The exact form they took was, he hazarded, `chosen' by the subconscious minds of the girls, hence the strange mixture of traditional and contemporary. But, for whatever reason, both girls stopped seeing fairies after 1921.

Captions

Several critics pointed out that the Cottingley fairies looked suspiciously similar to those featured in the advertisement for Price's night lights (above right). One sceptic, William Marriott, produced this deliberate fake (above left) by superimposing the `night light' fairies on a picture of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Some fairies of the era: Left: fairies dancing, by E. Gertrude Thomson from William Allingham's The Fairies (1886)

Above: a ring of fairies from Florence Harrison's In the fairy ring (1910)

Above right: a girl with fairies, from Princess Mary's Gift Book (1914)

Cottingley: at last the truth

Were there really fairies in the woods at Cottingley? And did two children succeed in photographing them? In an exclusive interview with JOE COOPER, Elsie and Frances reveal the truth about the famous Cottingley pictures.

THE COTTINGLEY FAIRY photographs made a journalistic sensation when they first appeared, in an article in the Strand Magazine, towards the end of 1919. And ever since they have been regarded as perhaps the most convincing evidence ever presented for the existence of fairies and the spirit world. But, in late 1981 and mid 1982 respectively, Frances Way (née Griffiths) and Elsie Hill (née Wright), who took the photographs–now, of course, old ladies–admitted that the first four pictures were fakes. Speaking of the first photograph in particular, Frances has told the present author on more than one occasion: `My heart always sinks when I look at it. When I think of how it's gone all round the world–I don't see how people could believe they're real fairies. I could see the backs of them and the hatpins when the photo was being taken.'

How was the hoax set up? It started, as both ladies agree, with the best of intentions. Frances, she says, was able to perceive many forms of fairy life at the beck at the bottom of the garden of the Wright household and was, understandably, continually drawn back to the stream. Occasionally she fell in and wet her clothes, and was severely told off.

Elsie was much moved by the tears of her cousin, and sympathised with her when she blurted out to the adults that the reason why she went so often to the bottom of the garden was because there were fairies to be seen there. Although Elsie lacked Frances's keen perception of fairy life, she was sensitive to atmosphere and had a fine appreciation of the mysticism of nature.

Partly to take Frances's mind off her troubles, and partly to play a prank on grown-ups who sneered at the idea that fairies could be seen, but who cheerfully perpetuated the myth of Santa Claus, they conspired to produce fairy figures that they could photograph convincingly. Frances had a copy of Princess Mary's Gift Book, and the girls used a series of illustrations by Arthur Shepperson as a model from which Elsie–who had received some art training from the college in nearby Bradford–constructed the fairy figures. They cut the figures out using sharp tailor's sissors borrowed from Frances's mother, who worked as a tailoress in Bradford; they secured them to a bank of earth using hatpins. The girls took the famous photographs, dropped the cut-out figures into the swirling brook, and went home. How they gave the film to Mr Wright, and his surprise at seeing the fairy figures develop on the prints, is history.

The attitude of Elsie and Frances to the whole question of the fairy photographs is a typical Yorkshire one–to tell a tall story with a deadpan delivery and let those who will believe it do so. Indeed, Elsie has often said as much: `I would rather we were thought of as solemn faced comediennes.'

About a month after the first photograph was taken Elsie felt that she, too, would like to be photographed with a nature spirit of some kind. She made a gnome cut-out, which was duly hatpinned into the ground. Frances was a less expert photographer than Elsie and, according to her, the elongated hand in the picture is due to `camera slant'; believers in the authenticity of the photographs have, however, attributed it to `psychic elongation'.

If the second picture is examined, it is easy to see the point of a pin in the gnome's midriff. But Conan Doyle, after examining the print, concluded that the point was an umbilicus and that therefore birth in the fairy kingdom might be a similar process to human birth!

The two photographs were printed and circulated among the girls' friends in the autumn of 1918, and the matter gradually languished, with neither girl admitting to the truth of the affair, rather preferring to keep people guessing.

The following year Polly Wright, Elsie's mother, went to some Theosophical meetings, and so the prints came to be circulated at the Society's conference in Harrogate in the summer of 1919. By early 1920, they were in the hands of Edward Gardner, photographic and slide specialist of the Theosophical Society in London and president of the Blavatsky lodge, and he tried to persuade Polly to ask the girls to take more photographs. She, however, ignored his letters–and it was not until Doyle declared his own interest in the subject in June 1920 that matters began to develop in public.

In the summer of 1920, Gardner at last succeeded in persuading the girls to take a further series of photographs. These three last photographs were believed by both Gardner and Conan Doyle to constitute proof that it was possible to photograph fairies.

Frances, on the other hand, has always marvelled at the fact that anyone could believe them to be genuine. The flying fairy in the third photograph was pinned to the branch behind it; it was drawn freehand by Elsie, and seems to Frances to be out of proportion. The fairy offering flowers to Elsie in the fourth photograph was attached to a branch in a similar way, and sports a fashionable hairstyle that has attracted much comment.

The two cousins are divided about the authenticity of the fifth picture. To the casual eye, it looks very much like the result of a simple overlapping of photographs, but Frances insists that it was a genuine photograph of fairies. `It was a wet Saturday afternoon and we were just mooching about with our cameras and Elsie had nothing prepared,' she says. `I saw these fairies building up in the grasses and just aimed the camera and took a photograph.' Elsie, on the other hand, insists that all five photographs are of cut-outs. It must be borne in mind that Frances has often said that it is as if some psychological blockage prevents her remembering events surrounding the photographs with any accuracy; yet this discrepancy in the cousins' accounts of taking the photographs remains curious.

The second set of photographs was hailed with joy by Gardner. And, trapped by their first trick, Elsie and Frances had no choice but to remain silent; the consequences that would have resulted from any disclosures must have seemed terrifying to them.

Looking for fairies

In 1921, Conan Doyle asked the clairvoyant Geoffrey Hodson to go to Cottingley to check the girls' observations–essentially, to see if he, too, could see the fairies. His lengthy descriptions of fairy life, endorsed by the overawed Elsie and Frances–who saw nothing while Hodson was present, as they disclosed in a television interview in 1975–appeared as key pages in Doyle's The Coming of the Fairies in 1922. Hodson went on to become a distinguished writer on clairvoyance; it is impossible to rule out the possibility that his experience may actually have been genuine.

This author once asked Elsie point blank whether she could still endorse her statements to Hodson as reproduced in Conan Doyle's book. `You'll have to make your own mind up about that, Joe,' she said–again with a suspicion of that deadpan Yorkshire humour.

What conclusions are there to be drawn? Four of the five pictures, for certain, are hoaxes. Both Elsie and Frances, however, insist that the fairies themselves were real. Frances saw them particularly often:

The first time I ever saw anything was when a willow leaf started shaking violently, even though there was no wind, I saw a small man standing on a branch, with the stem of the leaf in his hand, which he seemed to be shaking at something. He was dressed all in green.

Gradually, she began to see more and more of the elves. And in the summer of 1918, Frances saw fairies as well as elves:

They were real fairies. Some had wings and some not�? They were once sitting in a patch of sunlight on a low bank�? It all seemed so peaceful and friendly�? Sometimes they came up, only inches away, but I never wanted to join in their lives.

Finally, she says, `I became so used to them that unless they did something unusual I just ignored them.'

Do fairies exist? Can they be photographed? What is certain is that the Cottingley photographs cannot be regarded as proof of the existence of fairies. It is up to each of us to decide whether those people who report seeing fairies actually see them or whether they merely imagine them.

Captions

The Cottingley fairy photographs were, their originators now admit, copied from illustrations in Princess Mary's Gift Book. Their champion, Conan Doyle, should have realised this–his story 'Bimbashi Joyce' (below) appeared in the same book.

Below: the second Cottingley picture, which shows Elsie Wright playing with a gnome, was taken in August 1917. The point of the hatpin on which the paper cut-out figure was supported can plainly be seen as a protusion on the gnome's stomach. Conan Doyle interpreted this as an imbilicus–a clear indication that birth in the fairy kingdom might be similar to human birth.

Encouraged by Edward Gardner, the photographic and slide specialist of the Theosophical Society in London, Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright took three more photographs at Cottingley during the summer of 1920. The third picture (above left) shows Frances with a fairy in flight; this was drawn freehand by Elsie, and attached to the branch behind it with a hatpin. Both Frances and Elsie admit that the fourth picture (far left) was taken in a similar way–but Frances maintains that the final picture (left) is genuine: `I saw these fairies building up in the grasses and just aimed the camera and took a photograph.'

The banks of the beck at Cottingley–where, Frances still maintains, she saw fairies. So, even if the Cottingley photographs are fakes, whether or not fairies exist remains an open question.

Source: Cooper, Joe. "Cottingley: At Last the Truth." The Unexplained, No. 117, pp. 2338-40, 1982. This document was scanned from the original publication, and is reproduced here