The Cottingley Fairies Photographs

Record summary

In 1917, cousins Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths produced photographs appearing to show fairies near Cottingley, Yorkshire. The images gained wider attention after Arthur Conan Doyle used them in support of spiritualist ideas, while photographic experts and investigators disputed their authenticity. Decades later, the women acknowledged that the figures were constructed, although Frances maintained that one image represented a genuine experience. The episode is valuable for studying belief formation, photographic authority, spiritualism, and retrospective confession rather than as evidence of nonhuman entities.