Welcome back to White Rose of Avalon, my Darlings. For today’s Femme Fatale Friday blog post, I want to explore the Cottingley Faery Hoax, which was a famed 1917 hoax perpetrated by two young girls! I have mentioned this hoax before, but I have never deep-dived into it here on the blog, so I thought it was time that I did. Without further ado, let’s get into the story!
The story began in July of 1917 when the first of the Faery photographs were taken by young cousins Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright. Then, they took another photo in September of 1917. This all happened at a beck beneath their home in Cottingley, which is a Village in Yorkshire, England, hence why this is called the Cottingley Faeries or Cottingley Faery Hoax. The two girls took the photos in a desire to prove that they had seen Faeries at the beck, as they had not been believed before. However, this soon spiraled out of their control, as Elsie’s mother was interested in Theosophy and the photos were seen by Edward Gardner, a prominent member of the Theosophical Society! It is stated that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was initially skeptical of these first two photos, as were other experts in Psychic and Occult research of the day. However, this changed when Gardner travelled to Cottingley in the Summer of 1920, and the girls produced three more photos. The next Summer, in 1921, a medium named Geoffrey Hodson spent a good deal of time with the girls, but no more photographs were taken. Yet, he was able to give very detailed descriptions of the Faeries he had allegedly seen along with the girls!
By this time, Doyle was a firm believer that the photographs were real, and he wrote about them multiple times. So, yes, even the creator of Sherlock Holmes was taken in by the fraudulent photos created by two girls! You see, Doyle was just as famous for his belief in the supernatural as he was for his fictional detective. In fact, that is what led to his famed fallout with Harry Houdini, as Doyle was entrenched in the Spiritualist Movement and Houdini regularly proved mediums of the day false (as they used the same tricks he did in his illusions). However, it should be noted that both men wanted to believe, but one came from the view of a skeptic always, and the other from the view of a believer.
In any case, back to the Cottingley Faeries. Doyle wrote about the Faeries with great fervor and excitement. He even compared the whole situation with the photographs to Europeans discovering the Americas. This implied that he thought the girls’ photographs were so groundbreaking that they were like finding a new continent in Spiritualist circles! Doyle’s fierce desire to believe is the desire of many of his age, given that he had lost both a son and a brother in World War I. He wanted to know that there was life after death, and that there were other realms of existence!
This belief in the photographs held by so many powerful and notable men led to Frances and Elsie having to deny the truth to the media for decades. After all, the girls did not want to embarrass the men, especially Doyle! In 1927, a clairvoyant demonstration by Howard Bradley stated that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Faery Photographs (as he called them) had been proven to have been taken from an advertisement, so the truth was known long before the girls confessed. That does not mean Doyle ever believed the skeptics, as he died still believing they were genuine in 1930!
The full truth would come to light in 1981. The girls, now women, had enjoyed teasing the media a bit since Elsie had been found again in 1965, with interviews taking place in 1976. However, it was in September of 1981 that Frances shared the truth of how they created the photographs. She explained how they used pictures of Faeries from advertisements, cardboard, and hatpins to create the images. Yet, she maintained that one of the photographs was genuine, the one called ‘fairy sunbath’ that did not feature either of the cousins in the image! In March of 1983, Elise’s stance was still mysterious, as she had not confessed as her cousin had. However, she did state that she was proud of the photo that her cousin stated was genuine! So, yes, this is the story of how two young girls fooled so many for so long.
I want to finish this post by reminding my readers that the photos came into existence because the girls were not believed when they told their family that they had seen Faeries. So, while we know that four of the photos are a hoax, a fraud perpetrated by two cousins in their youth, the final photo was never stated to be fake. Now, what does that mean? What do I think? As a Faery Enchantress and Witch and a Priestess to Faery Queens, I believe that the girls did see and experience the Fae at the beck in Cottingley. I think they only faked the photos to prove what they knew to be true to their family. Then they got caught up in a much bigger scheme than they ever thought possible when the story gained notoriety. An innocent childhood prank to prove a heartfelt truth became a hoax when overzealous adults took it too far. But, wow, what a story it is!
I hope you have enjoyed my recap of this wonderful story and reading my thoughts on what happened. What do you think of the Cottingley Faery Hoax? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is the photo that was never proven false. I found the image on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cottingley-sunbath.jpg.
LINK TO AVALONIAN ROSE FAERY MYSTERIES PATREON: patreon.com/AvalonianRoseFaeryMysteries
Further Reading/Watching
- Fairies: A Dangerous History by Richard Sugg
- https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-55187973
- Fairy Tale: A True Story (1997)