Online Reference For Body, Mind & Spirit

Term: Cottingly Fairies

DEFINITION:
In 1917, in Cottingly, England, two young girls claimed that they not only played with fairies in their yard, but took photographs of them. People such as Sir Author Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, investigated the girls and the photos and proclaimed that the girls were honest and the photos were real. One of the girls, late in her life, finally admitted that the photos were fakes, and one investigator actually discovered the source of the images: double-exposed photos using cut outs from a children’s book. The movie Fairy Tale—A True Story, directed by Charles Sturridge and released in 1997, was based on these events.