10 Great Hoaxes - The Cottingley Fairies

Throughout history, there have been some hilarious, controversial, and confusing hoaxes that have been created. Hoaxes are different from urban legends, rumors, pseudoscience, or even jokes since a hoax is a deliberate and intentional attempt to create something that is false but present it as the truth. We will look at ten of the most interesting hoaxes that fooled a lot of people.

7. The Cottingley Fairies

The best hoaxes are the ones that have unforeseen results, and this one is no exception. This hoax began in 1917 as just some fun for two girls and ended up being an international hoax that lasted for 65 years.

In 1917, two girls (ten-year-old Frances Griffiths and her cousin sixteen-year-old Elsie Wright) had just moved from South Africa to England, specifically to the village of Cottingley. The two of them often played outside by a stream called Cottingley Beck, much to the annoyance of their parents (since they were always coming in wet and dirty). They claimed they enjoyed playing by the stream because that's where the fairies and gnomes were. Naturally, the parents thought of this as nonsense. Elsie's father was a photographer (with a darkroom inside his house), so to prove what the had claimed to see, Elsie and Frances took a camera near the stream. They brought the camera back and when Elsie's father developed the photograph, it showed Frances by a bush with a couple fairies dancing on it. Her father immediately dismissed it as a fake. A couple months later, the girls brought the camera back with a picture of Elsie holding out her hand to a foot high gnome. Her father was so annoyed that he refused to let them borrow the camera anymore. On the other hand, Elsie's mother saw the photos and thought they were authentic.

In 1919, Elsie's mother attended a meeting of the Theosophical Society that discussed fairies. After the meeting was over, she showed the photos to the speaker, who was so impressed with them that the photos made their way to the large conference of the Theosophical Society which was held a few months later. It was there that the photos gained the attention of a head member of the Society: Edward Gardner. He thought the photos were important for the future of the Society and for the future life of humanity in general. He took the photos to a photography expert who authenticated the photos as being real and unfaked.

First photo. Frances with the fairies.

It was around this time that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (most known for being the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories) became aware of the photos. Doyle was an avid spiritualist, and he desired to view the photos to see if he could figure out if they were fake or not. Gardner invited Doyle to view the photos, which Doyle ended up feeling had to be authentic. Once the photos had Doyle's approval, then they must be real in the minds of those involved. Doyle and Gardner went on to find other expert opinions, such as to have the Kodak company look at the photos. Kodak agreed that the photos weren't faked, but the company also said that they couldn't be real photos of fairies and that photographic interpretation shouldn't be the only way of authentication. Doyle showed the photos to a physicist friend who said they had to be faked.

In 1920, Gardner went to meet the family and try to get more photos. He found the family respectable, even though Elsie's father still believed the photos to be fake (although he couldn't prove it). Gardner brought his own equiptment. Frances and Elsie took three more photos, each one having fairies. Doyle wrote a few articles over the next year, publishing the photos from the girls (but changing their names to Alice and Iris). The public's reaction was mixed, with some believing the photos to be real and others believing they were fake.

Fourth photo. Elsie with the fairy.

In 1921, Gardner went to visit the family one more time. This time he brought equiptment and a clairvoyant, named Geoffrey Hodson. The girls weren't able to create any more photos of fairies, but Hodson claimed to see fairies everywhere. Gardner published the event. Frances and Elsie were tired of the whole thing by that time. Public interest also soon faded, however they were never quite gone from the public consciousness. In 1966, Elsie was interviewed and she said that they were photographs of her imagination, but she didn't say whether the photos were real or not.

In the early 1980's a scientific study was done on the validity of the photos. The results came back that they had to be fakes. The largest criticism of the photos was that the fairies looked like fairies from nursery rhyme books. That criticism was still around in the 1980's when the study was performed. In an article published in 1983, Frances and Elsie finally admitted that the photos were fake, and they couldn't understand why anyone would have believed such a silly story, although once Doyle announced they had to be real, then they felt they couldn't tell the truth.

Frances died in 1986, and Elsie died in 1988. They both claimed to have seen fairies, but admitted that the photos were faked using copies from a book called "Princess Mary's Gift Book". The two cousins quickly grew to hate the fairies when they were children, mostly because of the media circus that they created. They fairy pictures still exist and sell for high dollar amounts.

Bet you didn't know that!