The Cottingley Fairies Photographs

Record summary

Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths produced photographs in which apparently winged fairies and a gnome appeared beside them at Cottingley. The images attracted Arthur Conan Doyle and became influential in twentieth-century debates about spiritualism, photography, childhood testimony, and belief. The case is especially useful as a controlled comparison with haunting imagery because the photographs were presented as evidence of anomalous beings but were later acknowledged by the participants as staged, though one participant maintained that a final image was genuine. The precise production history should be checked against primary interviews and later assessments.