What Were The Cottingley Fairies?

The Cottingley Fairies became famous through a number of photographs taken by two young girls in 1916-17 which appeared to show the girls interacting with fairies. Several eminent people, including most notably Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the character Sherlock Holmes, became convinced that the fairies were real and went public with these beliefs. Doyle published an article and later a book on the subject and endured much ridicule as a result.

Britain continued to be fascinated by the story of the Cottingley Fairies for many decades. In 1976, however, someone stumbled on an old children's book which had clearly served as the basis for the fairy images in the photographs. In the 1980s the girls admitted that they had faked the photographs by using paper cut-outs. They still insisted that there really were fairies in Cottingley, however, even if the photographs were not what they appeared to be.