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108-562: The Cottingley Fairies appear in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright (1901–1988) and Frances Griffiths (1907–1986), two young cousins who lived in Cottingley , near Bradford in England. In 1917, when the first two photographs were taken, Elsie was 16 years old and Frances was 9. The pictures came to the attention of writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , who used them to illustrate an article on fairies he had been commissioned to write for

216-567: A materialist orientation and rejected organized religion. In 1854 the utopian socialist Robert Owen was converted to spiritualism after "sittings" with the American medium Maria B. Hayden (credited with introducing spiritualism to England); Owen made a public profession of his new faith in his publication The Rational Quarterly Review and later wrote a pamphlet, "The future of the Human race; or great glorious and future revolution to be effected through

324-459: A "major scientific investigation of the photographs and the events surrounding them", published between 1982 and 1983, "the first major postwar analysis of the affair". He also concluded that the pictures were fakes. In 1983, the cousins admitted in an article published in the magazine The Unexplained that the photographs had been faked, although both maintained that they really had seen fairies. Elsie had copied illustrations of dancing girls from

432-456: A bit. Until 19 August the weather was unsuitable for photography. Because Frances and Elsie insisted that the fairies would not show themselves if others were watching, Elsie's mother was persuaded to visit her sister's for tea, leaving the girls alone. In her absence the girls took several photographs, two of which appeared to show fairies. In the first, Frances and the Leaping Fairy , Frances

540-423: A brilliant man like Conan Doyle – well, we could only keep quiet." In the same interview Frances said: "I never even thought of it as being a fraud – it was just Elsie and I having a bit of fun and I can't understand to this day why they were taken in – they wanted to be taken in." Frances died in 1986, and Elsie in 1988. Prints of their photographs of the fairies, along with a few other items including

648-553: A career out of painting the dead or "spirit portraits". Mina Crandon (1888–1941), a spiritualist medium in the 1920s, was known for producing an ectoplasm hand during her séances. The hand was later exposed as a trick when biologists found it to be made from a piece of carved animal liver. In 1934, the psychical researcher Walter Franklin Prince described the Crandon case as "the most ingenious, persistent, and fantastic complex of fraud in

756-552: A combination of "embarrassment and puzzlement"; though Japanese scholar Kaori Inuma has noted that there were also open and positive assessments. The historical novelist and poet Maurice Hewlett published a series of articles in the literary journal John O' London's Weekly , in which he concluded: "And knowing children, and knowing that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has legs, I decide that the Miss Carpenters have pulled one of them." The London newspaper Truth on 5 January 1921 expressed

864-632: A deep, narrow, rocky channel flowing north to the River Aire. Although the road, railway and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal are on the opposite side of the Aire Valley to Cottingley, Parliament was asked to consider making the Aire Navigable from Cottingley to Shipley. The village lies on Millstone Grit and there are coal deposits, some bands and seams up to 75 feet (23 m) thick. Old mine shafts litter

972-406: A doctor's surgery, nursery and youth facilities and 50 new homes. The project started because a 1960s war memorial had been vandalised, and reports in the press caught the eye of Prince Charles, who came to speak at the grand unveiling. The village has a primary school on Cottingley Moor Road, rated Good by OFSTED, and a secondary school, Dixons Cottingley Academy . Cottingley Town Hall, which

1080-550: A dubious Marie Curie . Thomas Edison wanted to develop a "spirit phone", an ethereal device that would summon to the living the voices of the dead and record them for posterity. The claims of spiritualists and others as to the reality of spirits were investigated by the Society for Psychical Research , founded in London in 1882. The society set up a Committee on Haunted Houses. Prominent investigators who exposed cases of fraud came from

1188-465: A final visit to Cottingley in August 1921. He again brought cameras and photographic plates for Frances and Elsie, but was accompanied by the occultist Geoffrey Hodson . Although neither of the girls claimed to see any fairies, and there were no more photographs, "on the contrary, he [Hodson] saw them [fairies] everywhere" and wrote voluminous notes on his observations. By now Elsie and Frances were tired of

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1296-617: A first edition of Doyle's book The Coming of the Fairies , were sold at auction in London for £21,620 in 1998. That same year, Geoffrey Crawley sold his Cottingley Fairy material to the National Museum of Film, Photography and Television in Bradford (now the National Science and Media Museum ), where it is on display. The collection included prints of the photographs, two of the cameras used by

1404-523: A house believed to be haunted by the ghosts of three murder victims seeking revenge against their killer's son, who was eventually driven insane. Many families, "having no faith in ghosts", thereafter moved into the house, but all soon moved out again. In the 1920s many "psychic" books were published of varied quality. Such books were often based on excursions initiated by the use of Ouija boards . A few of these popular books displayed unorganized spiritualism, though most were less insightful. The movement

1512-589: A letter to Johanna Parvin, a friend in Cape Town , South Africa, where Frances had lived for most of her life, enclosing the photograph of herself with the fairies. On the back she wrote "It is funny, I never used to see them in Africa. It must be too hot for them there." The photographs became public in mid-1919, after Elsie's mother attended a meeting of the Theosophical Society in Bradford. The lecture that evening

1620-591: A long history of exposing the fraudulent methods of mediumship. During the 1920s, professional magician Harry Houdini undertook a well-publicised campaign to expose fraudulent mediums; he was adamant that "Up to the present time everything that I have investigated has been the result of deluded brains." Other magician or magic-author debunkers of spiritualist mediumship have included Chung Ling Soo , Henry Evans , Julien Proskauer , Fulton Oursler , Joseph Dunninger , and Joseph Rinn . In February 1921 Thomas Lynn Bradford , in an experiment designed to ascertain

1728-473: A photographer's studio, he dismissed the figures as cardboard cutouts. Two months later the girls borrowed his camera again, and this time returned with a photograph of Elsie sitting on the lawn holding out her hand to a 1-foot-tall (30 cm) gnome. Exasperated by what he believed to be "nothing but a prank", and convinced that the girls must have tampered with his camera in some way, Arthur Wright refused to lend it to them again. His wife Polly, however, believed

1836-418: A popular children's book of the time, Princess Mary's Gift Book , published in 1914, and drew wings on them. They said they had then cut out the cardboard figures and supported them with hatpins , disposing of their props in the beck once the photograph had been taken. But the cousins disagreed about the fifth and final photograph, which Doyle in his The Coming of the Fairies described in this way: Seated on

1944-460: A series of intense mystical experiences, dreams, and visions, claiming that he had been called by God to reform Christianity and introduce a new church." Mesmer did not contribute religious beliefs, but he brought a technique, later known as hypnotism , that it was claimed could induce trances and cause subjects to report contact with supernatural beings. There was a great deal of professional showmanship inherent to demonstrations of Mesmerism , and

2052-559: A series of letters were written soon after the Cottingley fairy photographs were published claiming further sightings of fairies and proof of their existence. In 2017 a further two fairy photographs were presented as evidence that the girls' parents were part of the conspiracy. Dating from 1917 and 1918, both photographs are poorly executed copies of two of the original fairy photographs. One was published in 1918 in The Sphere newspaper, which

2160-633: A series of séances at Duncan's house and took flash photographs of Duncan and her alleged "materialization" spirits, including her spirit guide "Peggy". The photographs revealed the "spirits" to have been fraudulently produced, using dolls made from painted papier-mâché masks, draped in old sheets. Duncan was later tested by Harry Price at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research ; photographs revealed Duncan's ectoplasm to be made from cheesecloth , rubber gloves, and cut-out heads from magazine covers. Spiritualists reacted with an uncertainty to

2268-402: A similar view; "For the true explanation of these fairy photographs what is wanted is not a knowledge of occult phenomena but a knowledge of children." Some public figures were more sympathetic. Margaret McMillan , the educational and social reformer, wrote: "How wonderful that to these dear children such a wonderful gift has been vouchsafed." The novelist Henry De Vere Stacpoole decided to take

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2376-519: A single Heaven, but rather a series of higher and lower heavens and hells; second, that spirits are intermediates between God and humans, so that the divine sometimes uses them as a means of communication. Although Swedenborg warned against seeking out spirit contact, his works seem to have inspired in others the desire to do so. Swedenborg was formerly a highly regarded inventor and scientist, achieving several engineering innovations and studying physiology and anatomy. Then, "in 1741, he also began to have

2484-605: A study of Indian ghosts in seances: Undoubtedly, on some level spiritualists recognized the Indian spectres that appeared at seances as a symbol of the sins and subsequent guilt of the United States in its dealings with Native Americans. Spiritualists were literally haunted by the presence of Indians. But for many that guilt was not assuaged: rather, in order to confront the haunting and rectify it, they were galvanized into action. The political activism of spiritualists on behalf of Indians

2592-517: A time after they grew up, and yet the photographs continued to hold the public imagination. In 1966 a reporter from the Daily Express newspaper traced Elsie, who had by then returned to the United Kingdom. Elsie left open the possibility that she believed she had photographed her thoughts, and the media once again became interested in the story. In the early 1980s Elsie and Frances admitted that

2700-568: A type of séance in which spirits were said to communicate with people seated around a table by tilting and rotating the table. By 1897, spiritualism was said to have more than eight million followers in the United States and Europe, mostly drawn from the middle and upper classes . Spiritualism was mainly a middle- and upper-class movement, and especially popular with women. American spiritualists would meet in private homes for séances, at lecture halls for trance lectures, at state or national conventions, and at summer camps attended by thousands. Among

2808-838: A variety of backgrounds, including professional researchers such as Frank Podmore of the Society for Psychical Research and Harry Price of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research , and professional conjurers such as John Nevil Maskelyne . Maskelyne exposed the Davenport brothers by appearing in the audience during their shows and explaining how the trick was done. The psychical researcher Hereward Carrington exposed fraudulent mediums' tricks, such as those used in slate-writing, table-turning , trumpet mediumship, materializations, sealed-letter reading, and spirit photography . The skeptic Joseph McCabe , in his book Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud? (1920), documented many fraudulent mediums and their tricks. Magicians and writers on magic have

2916-457: A wood'). Thus the name once meant 'the clearing of the descendants of Cotta'. The village was clustered around the original St Michael's Church, Cottingley Town Hall and the Sun Inn. This village was 2.5 miles (4 km) from Bingley, with Cottingley Bridge a mile closer. In 1917, two girls, 15-year old Elsie Wright and nine-year old Frances Griffiths, claimed to have photographed fairies in

3024-585: Is best known as a chronicler of the movement's spread, especially in her 1884 Nineteenth Century Miracles: Spirits and Their Work in Every Country of the Earth , and her 1870 Modern American Spiritualism , a detailed account of claims and investigations of mediumship beginning with the earliest days of the movement. William Stainton Moses (1839–92) was an Anglican clergyman who, in the period from 1872 to 1883, filled 24 notebooks with automatic writing, much of which

3132-546: Is now grade II listed , celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2015. . Spiritualism (religious movement) Emanuel Swedenborg has some claim to be the father of spiritualism. The movement developed and reached its largest following from the 1840s to the 1920s, especially in English-speaking countries . It flourished for a half century without canonical texts or formal organization, attaining cohesion through periodicals, tours by trance lecturers, camp meetings, and

3240-501: Is shown in profile with a winged fairy close by her nose. The second, Fairy offering Posy of Harebells to Elsie , shows a fairy either hovering or tiptoeing on a branch, and offering Elsie a flower. Two days later the girls took the last picture, Fairies and Their Sun-Bath . The plates were packed in cotton wool and returned to Gardner in London, who sent an "ecstatic" telegram to Doyle, by then in Melbourne . Doyle wrote back: My heart

3348-416: Is undergoing a cycle of evolution, towards increasing "perfection", and Gardner recognised the potential significance of the photographs for the movement: the fact that two young girls had not only been able to see fairies, which others had done, but had actually for the first time ever been able to materialise them at a density sufficient for their images to be recorded on a photographic plate, meant that it

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3456-592: The Parliamentary constituency of Shipley , represented since 2005 by the Conservative Philip Davies . At the 2011 Census, Bingley Rural Ward , which includes Cullingworth , Denholme , Harden and Wilsden , had a population of 17,895. The village is in the Aire Valley between Shipley and Bingley approximately 330 feet (100 m) above sea level with the River Aire to the north. The road through

3564-549: The Spiritualist , attempted to view spiritualist phenomena from a scientific perspective, eschewing discussion on both theological and reform issues. Books on the supernatural were published for the growing middle class, such as 1852's Mysteries , by Charles Elliott, which contains "sketches of spirits and spiritual things", including accounts of the Salem witch trials , the Lane ghost, and

3672-626: The afterlife is not a static state, but one in which spirits evolve. The two beliefs—that contact with spirits is possible, and that spirits may dwell on a higher plane—lead to a third belief, that spirits can provide knowledge about moral and ethical issues, as well as about God and the afterlife. Many believers therefore speak of " spirit guides "—specific spirits, often contacted, and relied upon for worldly and spiritual guidance. According to spiritualists, anyone may receive spirit messages, but formal communication sessions ( séances ) are held by mediums, who claim thereby to receive information about

3780-683: The physicist and pioneering psychical researcher Sir Oliver Lodge , who believed the photographs to be fake. He suggested that a troupe of dancers had masqueraded as fairies, and expressed doubt as to their "distinctly 'Parisienne ' " hairstyles. On 4 October 2018 the first two of the photographs, Alice and the Fairies and Iris and the Gnome, were to be sold by Dominic Winter Auctioneers, in Gloucestershire . The prints, suspected to have been made in 1920 to sell at theosophical lectures, were expected to bring £700–£1000 each. As it turned out, Iris with

3888-649: The 1840s in the " Burned-over District " of upstate New York , where earlier religious movements such as Millerism and Mormonism had emerged during the Second Great Awakening , although Millerism and Mormonism did not associate themselves with spiritualism. This region of New York State was an environment in which many thought direct communication with God or angels was possible, and that God would not behave harshly—for example, that God would not condemn unbaptised infants to an eternity in Hell. In this environment,

3996-478: The 1917 photographs, and sold out within days of publication. To protect the girls' anonymity, Frances and Elsie were called Alice and Iris respectively, and the Wright family was referred to as the "Carpenters". An enthusiastic and committed spiritualist, Doyle hoped that if the photographs convinced the public of the existence of fairies then they might more readily accept other psychic phenomena. He ended his article with

4104-529: The American Civil War was Cora L. V. Scott (1840–1923). Young and beautiful, her appearance on stage fascinated men. Her audiences were struck by the contrast between her physical girlishness and the eloquence with which she spoke of spiritual matters, and found in that contrast support for the notion that spirits were speaking through her. Cora married four times, and on each occasion adopted her husband's last name. During her period of greatest activity, she

4212-524: The Christmas 1920 edition of The Strand Magazine . Doyle, as a spiritualist , was enthusiastic about the photographs, and interpreted them as clear and visible evidence of psychic phenomena. Public reaction was mixed; some accepted the images as genuine, others believed that they had been faked. Interest in the Cottingley Fairies gradually declined after 1921. Both girls married and lived abroad for

4320-500: The Civil War was Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825–1875), a man of mixed race, who also played a part in the abolitionist movement. Nevertheless, many abolitionists and reformers held themselves aloof from the spiritualist movement; among the skeptics was abolitionist Frederick Douglass . Another social reform movement with significant spiritualist involvement was the effort to improve conditions of Native Americans. Kathryn Troy writes in

4428-508: The Fox sisters became a sensation. As the first celebrity mediums, the sisters quickly became famous for their public séances in New York. However, in 1888 the Fox sisters admitted that this contact with the spirit was a hoax, though shortly afterward they recanted that admission. Amy and Isaac Post , Hicksite Quakers from Rochester , New York, had long been acquainted with the Fox family, and took

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4536-555: The Gnome sold for a hammer price of £5,400 (plus 24% buyer's premium incl. VAT), while Alice and the Fairies sold for a hammer price of £15,000 (plus 24% buyer's premium incl. VAT). Doyle was preoccupied with organising an imminent lecture tour of Australia, and in July 1920, sent Gardner to meet the Wright family. By this point, Frances was living with her parents in Scarborough , but Elsie's father told Gardner that he had been so certain

4644-564: The London Spiritualist Alliance, which published a newspaper called The Light , featuring articles such as "Evenings at Home in Spiritual Séance", "Ghosts in Africa" and "Chronicles of Spirit Photography", advertisements for " mesmerists " and patent medicines , and letters from readers about personal contact with ghosts. In Britain, by 1853, invitations to tea among the prosperous and fashionable often included table-turning,

4752-834: The NSA in October 1909, at a convention in Rochester, New York . Then, in October 1944, a ninth principle was adopted by the National Spiritualist Association of Churches, at a convention in St. Louis, Missouri. In the UK, the main organization representing spiritualism is the Spiritualists' National Union (SNU) , whose teachings are based on the Seven Principles. Spiritualism first appeared in

4860-695: The National Science and Media Museum. Cottingley, Bradford Cottingley is a suburban village within the City of Bradford district in West Yorkshire , England between Shipley and Bingley . It is known for the Cottingley Fairies , which appeared in a series of photographs taken there during the early 20th century. The village is first mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Cotingelai in

4968-517: The Rochester rappings. The Night Side of Nature , by Catherine Crowe, published in 1853, provided definitions and accounts of wraiths, doppelgängers, apparitions and haunted houses. Mainstream newspapers treated stories of ghosts and haunting as they would any other news story. An account in the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1891, "sufficiently bloody to suit the most fastidious taste", tells of

5076-436: The U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom. Spiritualists believe in the possibility of communication with the spirits of dead people, whom they regard as "discarnate humans". They believe that spirit mediums are gifted to carry on such communication, but that anyone may become a medium through study and practice. They believe that spirits are capable of growth and perfection, progressing through higher spheres or planes, and that

5184-460: The UK from South Africa – were staying with Frances's aunt, Elsie Wright's mother, Polly, in the village of Cottingley in West Yorkshire; Elsie was then 16 years old. The two girls often played together beside the beck at the bottom of the garden, much to their mothers' annoyance, because they frequently came back with wet feet and clothes. Frances and Elsie said they only went to

5292-656: The United States, Russia and Poland. Palladino was said by believers to perform spiritualist phenomena in the dark: levitating tables, producing apports, and materializing spirits. On investigation, all these things were found to be products of trickery. The British medium William Eglinton (1857–1933) claimed to perform spiritualist phenomena such as movement of objects and materializations . All of his feats were exposed as tricks. The Bangs Sisters , Mary "May" E. Bangs (1862–1917) and Elizabeth "Lizzie" Snow Bangs (1859–1920), were two spiritualist mediums based in Chicago, who made

5400-539: The afterlife. As an informal movement, spiritualism does not have a defined set of rules, but various spiritualist organizations within the United States have adopted variations on some or all of a "Declaration of Principles" developed between 1899 and 1944. In October 1899, a six article "Declaration of Principles" was adopted by the National Spiritualist Association (NSA) at a convention in Chicago, Illinois. An additional two principles were added by

5508-537: The age of 16 when Mr Gardner presented me with a bunch of flowers and wanted me to sit on the platform [at a Theosophical Society meeting] with him. I realised what I was in for if I did not keep myself hidden. The 1997 films FairyTale: A True Story and Photographing Fairies were inspired by the events surrounding the Cottingley Fairies. The photographs were parodied in a 1994 book written by Terry Jones and Brian Froud , Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book . In A. J. Elwood 's 2021 novel, The Cottingley Cuckoo ,

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5616-701: The agency of departed spirits of good and superior men and women". A number of scientists who investigated the phenomenon also became converts. They included chemist and physicist William Crookes (1832–1919), evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) and physicist Sir Oliver Lodge. Nobel laureate Pierre Curie was impressed by the mediumistic performances of Eusapia Palladino and advocated their scientific study. Other prominent adherents included journalist and pacifist William T. Stead (1849–1912) and physician and author Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930). Doyle, who lost his son Kingsley in World War I,

5724-621: The area and each lived overseas for varying periods of time. In 1966, a reporter from the Daily Express newspaper traced Elsie, who was by then back in England. She admitted in an interview given that year that the fairies might have been "figments of my imagination", but left open the possibility she believed that she had somehow managed to photograph her thoughts. The media subsequently became interested in Frances and Elsie's photographs once again. BBC television's Nationwide programme investigated

5832-491: The beck to see the fairies, and to prove it, Elsie borrowed her father's camera, a Midg quarter-plate . The girls returned about 30 minutes later, "triumphant". Elsie's father, Arthur, was a keen amateur photographer, and had set up his own darkroom. The picture on the photographic plate he developed showed Frances behind a bush in the foreground, on which four fairies appeared to be dancing. Knowing his daughter's artistic ability, and that she had spent some time working in

5940-455: The beginning of their movement. On that date, Kate and Margaret Fox , of Hydesville , New York, reported that they had made contact with a spirit that was later claimed to be the spirit of a murdered peddler whose body was found in the house, though no record of such a person was ever found. The spirit was said to have communicated through rapping noises, audible to onlookers. The evidence of the senses appealed to practically minded Americans, and

6048-544: The cameras given to the girls by Doyle. Christine told the expert, Paul Atterbury , that she believed, as her mother had done, that the fairies in the fifth photograph were genuine. Atterbury estimated the value of the items at between £25,000 and £30,000. The first edition of Frances's memoirs was published a few months later, under the title Reflections on the Cottingley Fairies . The book contains correspondence, sometimes "bitter", between Elsie and Frances. In one letter, dated 1983, Frances wrote: I hated those photographs from

6156-509: The case in 1971, but Elsie stuck to her story: "I've told you that they're photographs of figments of our imagination, and that's what I'm sticking to". Elsie and Frances were interviewed by journalist Austin Mitchell in September 1976, for a programme broadcast on Yorkshire Television . When pressed, both women agreed that "a rational person doesn't see fairies", but they denied having fabricated

6264-425: The dell (Cottingley Beck) at the bottom of their garden. This led to the Cottingley Fairies hoax, which still resonates in the village into the modern day. The village has a festival to celebrate the story (Cottingley Fairy Fest), and in 1997, parts of a film inspired by the story, FairyTale: A True Story , were filmed in the village. Cottingley is part of Bingley Rural Ward on Bradford City Council and part of

6372-446: The discrepancy by suggesting that the photograph was "an unintended double exposure of fairy cutouts in the grass", and thus "both ladies can be quite sincere in believing that they each took it". In a 1985 interview on Yorkshire Television 's Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers , Elsie said that she and Frances were too embarrassed to admit the truth after fooling Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes : "Two village kids and

6480-451: The early 1980s Frances said: It was a wet Saturday afternoon and we were just mooching about with our cameras and Elsie had nothing prepared. I saw these fairies building up in the grasses and just aimed the camera and took a photograph. Both Frances and Elsie claimed to have taken the fifth photograph. In a letter published in The Times newspaper on 9 April 1983, Geoffrey Crawley explained

6588-454: The early nineteenth century. Spiritualist camp meetings were located most densely in New England, but were also established across the upper Midwest. Cassadaga, Florida , is the most notable spiritualist camp meeting in the southern states. A number of spiritualist periodicals appeared in the nineteenth century, and these did much to hold the movement together. Among the most important were

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6696-515: The existence of an afterlife, committed suicide in his apartment by blowing out the pilot light on his heater and turning on the gas. After that date, no further communication from him was received by an associate whom he had recruited for the purpose. The movement quickly spread throughout the world; though only in the United Kingdom did it become as widespread as in the United States. Spiritualist organizations were formed in America and Europe, such as

6804-470: The fairy photographs and the girls at face value. In a letter to Gardner he wrote: "Look at Alice's [Frances'] face. Look at Iris's [Elsie's] face. There is an extraordinary thing called Truth which has 10 million faces and forms – it is God's currency and the cleverest coiner or forger can't imitate it." Major John Hall-Edwards , a keen photographer and pioneer of medical X-ray treatments in Britain,

6912-616: The fields either side of Cottingley Cliffe Road shown as either Old Coal Pits or Coal pits on the 1852 map, and one is listed as Cottingley Moor Bottom as having closed in 1860. There are two churches in the village; St Mary and St Monica is the Catholic church and the Church of St Michael and All Angels is the Anglican Church. St Michaels and All Angels was part of a regeneration project that spent £4.5 million, which included meeting rooms,

7020-460: The foundations so that the whole bridge is shrunke." Cottingley Bridge was rebuilt and in the early 19th century, it was a hamlet independent of Cottingley. The A650 road is now to the north of Cottingley after a bypass was built and opened in 2003. The land to the east of the B6269 is mainly flat and to the west rises to a height of 560 feet (170 m) at March Cote Farm. Cottingley beck cuts

7128-515: The girls, watercolours of fairies painted by Elsie, and a nine-page letter from Elsie admitting to the hoax. The glass photographic plates were bought for £6,000 by an unnamed buyer at a London auction held in 2001. Frances's daughter, Christine Lynch, appeared in an episode of the television programme Antiques Roadshow in Belfast , broadcast on BBC One in January 2009, with the photographs and one of

7236-509: The history of psychic research." The American voice medium Etta Wriedt (1859–1942) was exposed as a fraud by the physicist Kristian Birkeland when he discovered that the noises produced by her trumpet were caused by chemical explosions induced by potassium and water and in other cases by lycopodium powder. Another well-known medium was the Scottish materialization medium Helen Duncan (1897–1956). In 1928 photographer Harvey Metcalfe attended

7344-494: The later photographs in 1921 to illustrate a second article in The Strand , in which he described other accounts of fairy sightings. The article formed the foundation for his 1922 book The Coming of the Fairies . As before, the photographs were received with mixed credulity. Sceptics noted that the fairies "looked suspiciously like the traditional fairies of nursery tales" and that they had "very fashionable hairstyles". Gardner made

7452-451: The latter to use the prints in his article. Arthur Wright was "obviously impressed" that Doyle was involved, and gave his permission for publication, but he refused payment on the grounds that, if genuine, the images should not be "soiled" by money. Gardner and Doyle sought a second expert opinion from the photographic company Kodak . Several of the company's technicians examined the enhanced prints, and although they agreed with Snelling that

7560-527: The loss of her son, organized séances in the White House which were attended by her husband, President Abraham Lincoln . The surge of Spiritualism during this time, and later during World War I , was a direct response to those massive battlefield casualties. In addition, the movement appealed to reformers, who fortuitously found that the spirits favoured such causes du jour as abolition of slavery, and equal rights for women. It also appealed to some who had

7668-483: The missionary activities of accomplished mediums . Many prominent spiritualists were women, and like most spiritualists, supported causes such as the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage . By the late 1880s the credibility of the informal movement had weakened due to accusations of fraud perpetrated by mediums, and formal spiritualist organizations began to appear. Spiritualism is currently practiced primarily through various denominational spiritualist churches in

7776-405: The more mainstream churches because those churches did little to fight slavery and even less to advance the cause of women's rights . Such links with reform movements, often radically socialist, had already been prepared in the 1840s, as the example of Andrew Jackson Davis shows. After 1848, many socialists became ardent spiritualists or occultists. The most popular trance lecturer prior to

7884-724: The most significant of the camp meetings were Camp Etna, in Etna, Maine ; Onset Bay Grove, in Onset, Massachusetts ; Lily Dale , in western New York State; Camp Chesterfield , in Indiana; the Wonewoc Spiritualist Camp , in Wonewoc, Wisconsin ; and Lake Pleasant , in Montague, Massachusetts . In founding camp meetings , the spiritualists appropriated a form developed by U.S. Protestant denominations in

7992-400: The photographs must have been faked somehow". The prints were also examined by another photographic company, Ilford , who reported unequivocally that there was "some evidence of faking". Gardner and Doyle, perhaps rather optimistically, interpreted the results of the three expert evaluations as two in favour of the photographs' authenticity and one against. Doyle also showed the photographs to

8100-421: The photographs to be authentic. I am learning French, Geometry, Cookery and Algebra at school now. Dad came home from France the other week after being there ten months, and we all think the war will be over in a few days ... I am sending two photos, both of me, one of me in a bathing costume in our back yard, while the other is me with some fairies. Elsie took that one. Towards the end of 1918, Frances sent

8208-473: The photographs were faked, using cardboard cutouts of fairies copied from a popular children's book of the time, but Frances maintained that the fifth and final photograph was genuine. As of 2019 the photographs and the cameras used are in the collections of the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford , England. In mid-1917 nine-year-old Frances Griffiths and her mother – both newly arrived in

8316-495: The photographs were fakes that while the girls were away he searched their bedroom and the area around the beck (stream), looking for scraps of pictures or cutouts, but found nothing "incriminating". Gardner believed the Wright family to be honest and respectable. To place the matter of the photographs' authenticity beyond doubt, he returned to Cottingley at the end of July with two W. Butcher & Sons Cameo folding plate cameras and 24 secretly marked photographic plates. Frances

8424-645: The photographs. In 1978 the magician and scientific sceptic James Randi and a team from the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal examined the photographs, using a "computer enhancement process". They concluded that the photographs were fakes, and that strings could be seen supporting the fairies. Geoffrey Crawley , editor of the British Journal of Photography , undertook

8532-456: The pictures "showed no signs of being faked", they concluded that "this could not be taken as conclusive evidence ... that they were authentic photographs of fairies". Kodak declined to issue a certificate of authenticity. Gardner believed that the Kodak technicians might not have examined the photographs entirely objectively, observing that one had commented "after all, as fairies couldn't be true,

8640-466: The practitioners who lectured in mid-19th-century North America sought to entertain their audiences as well as to demonstrate methods for personal contact with the divine. Perhaps the best known of those who combined Swedenborg and Mesmer in a peculiarly North American synthesis was Andrew Jackson Davis , who called his system the "harmonial philosophy". Davis was a practising Mesmerist , faith healer and clairvoyant from Blooming Grove, New York . He

8748-477: The publicity of fraud accusations and partly through the appeal of religious movements such as Christian science , the Spiritualist Church was organised. This church can claim to be the main vestige of the movement left today in the United States. London-born Emma Hardinge Britten (1823–99) moved to the United States in 1855 and was active in spiritualist circles as a trance lecturer and organiser. She

8856-423: The ranks of its adherents were those grieving the death of a loved one. Many families during the time of the American Civil War had seen their men go off and never return, and images of the battlefield, produced through the new medium of photography, demonstrated that their loved ones had not only died in overwhelmingly huge numbers, but horribly as well. One well known case is that of Mary Todd Lincoln who, grieving

8964-462: The spiritualist publication Light . Doyle had been commissioned by The Strand Magazine to write an article on fairies for their Christmas issue, and the fairy photographs "must have seemed like a godsend" according to broadcaster and historian Magnus Magnusson . Doyle contacted Gardner in June 1920 to determine the background to the photographs, and wrote to Elsie and her father to request permission from

9072-717: The theories of evolution in the late 19th and early 20th century. Broadly speaking the concept of evolution fitted the spiritualist thought of the progressive development of humanity. At the same time, however, the belief in the animal origins of humanity threatened the foundation of the immortality of the spirit , for if humans had not been created by God, it was scarcely plausible that they would be specially endowed with spirits. This led to spiritualists embracing spiritual evolution . The spiritualists' view of evolution did not stop at death. Spiritualism taught that after death spirits progressed to spiritual states in new spheres of existence. According to spiritualists, evolution occurred in

9180-422: The two girls into their home in the late spring of 1848. Immediately convinced of the veracity of the sisters' communications, they became early converts and introduced the young mediums to their circle of radical Quaker friends. Consequently, many early participants in spiritualism were radical Quakers and others involved in the mid-nineteenth-century reforming movement . These reformers were uncomfortable with

9288-417: The upper left hand edge with wing well displayed is an undraped fairy apparently considering whether it is time to get up. An earlier riser of more mature age is seen on the right possessing abundant hair and wonderful wings. Her slightly denser body can be glimpsed within her fairy dress. Elsie maintained it was a fake, just like all the others, but Frances insisted that it was genuine. In an interview given in

9396-520: The village has been changed at least twice. Originally, to exit south from Bingley, travellers had to cross Ireland Bridge then Beckfoot Bridge and approach Cottingley on the south side of the river. The bridge across the River Aire leading towards Bingley was built by 1649, when it appears in the Book of Bridges in the Session Rolls of Wakefield. It was recorded in 1664 that "a great floode hath taken away

9504-463: The visible, audible, and tangible evidence of spirits escalated as mediums competed for paying audiences. As independent investigating commissions repeatedly established, most notably the 1887 report of the Seybert Commission , fraud was widespread, and some of these cases were prosecuted in the courts. Despite numerous instances of chicanery, the appeal of spiritualism was strong. Prominent in

9612-507: The wapentake of Skyrack and the lands of Erneis of Buron. The first element is the personal name Cotta (the origin of which is unknown), and the second the suffix -ingas denoting a group of associated people. Thus the Cottingas were a group descended from or otherwise associated with someone called Cotta. This group name was then compounded with the Old English word lēah ('open land in

9720-745: The weeklies the Banner of Light (Boston), the Religio-Philosophical Journal (Chicago), Mind and Matter (Philadelphia), the Spiritualist (London), and the Medium (London). Other influential periodicals were the Revue Spirite (France), Le Messager (Belgium), Annali dello Spiritismo (Italy), El Criterio Espiritista (Spain), and the Harbinger of Light (Australia). By 1880, there were about three dozen monthly spiritualist periodicals published around

9828-421: The whole fairy business. Years later Elsie looked at a photograph of herself and Frances taken with Hodson and said: "Look at that, fed up with fairies." Both Elsie and Frances later admitted that they "played along" with Hodson "out of mischief", and that they considered him "a fake". Public interest in the Cottingley Fairies gradually subsided after 1921. Elsie and Frances both eventually married, moved away from

9936-404: The words: The recognition of their existence will jolt the material twentieth-century mind out of its heavy ruts in the mud, and will make it admit that there is a glamour and mystery to life. Having discovered this, the world will not find it so difficult to accept that spiritual message supported by physical facts which have already been put before it. Early press coverage was "mixed", generally

10044-471: The world. These periodicals differed a great deal from one another, reflecting the great differences among spiritualists. Some, such as the British Spiritual Magazine were Christian and conservative, openly rejecting the reform currents so strong within spiritualism. Others, such as Human Nature , were pointedly non-Christian and supportive of socialism and reform efforts. Still others, such as

10152-409: The writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) and the teachings of Franz Mesmer (1734–1815) provided an example for those seeking direct personal knowledge of the afterlife. Swedenborg, who claimed to communicate with spirits while awake, described the structure of the spirit world. Two features of his view particularly resonated with the early spiritualists: first, that there is not a single Hell and

10260-482: Was a particularly vigorous critic: On the evidence I have no hesitation in saying that these photographs could have been "faked". I criticize the attitude of those who declared there is something supernatural in the circumstances attending to the taking of these pictures because, as a medical man, I believe that the inculcation of such absurd ideas into the minds of children will result in later life in manifestations and nervous disorder and mental disturbances. Doyle used

10368-467: Was also a member of the Ghost Club . Founded in London in 1862, its focus was the scientific study of alleged paranormal activities in order to prove (or refute) the existence of paranormal phenomena. Members of the club included Charles Dickens , Sir William Crookes, Sir William F. Barrett , and Harry Price . The Paris séances of Eusapia Palladino were attended by an enthusiastic Pierre Curie and

10476-428: Was also strongly influenced by the socialist theories of Fourierism . His 1847 book, The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind , dictated to a friend while in a trance state, eventually became the nearest thing to a canonical work in a spiritualist movement whose extreme individualism precluded the development of a single coherent worldview. Spiritualists often set March 31, 1848, as

10584-478: Was before the originals had been seen by anyone outside the girls' immediate family. In 2019, a print of the first of the five photographs sold for £1,050. A print of the second was also put up for sale but failed to sell as it did not meet its £500 reserve price. The pictures previously belonged to the Reverend George Vale Owen . In December 2019, the third camera used to take the images was acquired by

10692-433: Was extremely individualistic, with each person relying on his or her own experiences and reading to discern the nature of the afterlife. Organisation was therefore slow to appear, and when it did it was resisted by mediums and trance lecturers. Most members were content to attend Christian churches, and particularly universalist churches harboured many spiritualists. As the spiritualism movement began to fade, partly through

10800-488: Was gladdened when out here in far Australia I had your note and the three wonderful pictures which are confirmatory of our published results. When our fairies are admitted other psychic phenomena will find a more ready acceptance ... We have had continued messages at seances for some time that a visible sign was coming through. Doyle's article in the December 1920 issue of The Strand contained two higher-resolution prints of

10908-409: Was in front of the camera at the time". Gardner had the prints "clarified" by Snelling, and new negatives produced, "more conducive to printing", for use in the illustrated lectures he gave around the UK. Snelling supplied the photographic prints which were available for sale at Gardner's lectures. Author and prominent spiritualist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle learned of the photographs from the editor of

11016-453: Was invited to stay with the Wright family during the school summer holiday so that she and Elsie could take more pictures of the fairies. Gardner described his briefing in his 1945 Fairies: A Book of Real Fairies : I went off, to Cottingley again, taking the two cameras and plates from London, and met the family and explained to the two girls the simple working of the cameras, giving one each to keep. The cameras were loaded, and my final advice

11124-525: Was known as Cora Hatch. Another spiritualist was Achsa W. Sprague , who was born November 17, 1827, in Plymouth Notch , Vermont. At the age of 20, she became ill with rheumatic fever and credited her eventual recovery to intercession by spirits. An extremely popular trance lecturer, she traveled about the United States until her death in 1861. Sprague was an abolitionist and an advocate of women's rights. Another spiritualist and trance medium prior to

11232-459: Was on "fairy life", and at the end of the meeting Polly Wright showed the two fairy photographs taken by her daughter and niece to the speaker. As a result, the photographs were displayed at the society's annual conference in Harrogate , held a few months later. There they came to the attention of a leading member of the society, Edward Gardner. One of the central beliefs of theosophy is that humanity

11340-483: Was possible that the next cycle of evolution was underway. Gardner sent the prints along with the original glass-plate negatives to Harold Snelling, a photography expert. Snelling's opinion was that "the two negatives are entirely genuine, unfaked photographs ... [with] no trace whatsoever of studio work involving card or paper models". He did not go so far as to say that the photographs showed fairies, stating only that "these are straight forward photographs of whatever

11448-436: Was said to describe conditions in the spirit world. However, Frank Podmore was skeptical of his alleged ability to communicate with spirits and Joseph McCabe described Moses as a "deliberate impostor", suggesting his apports and all of his feats were the result of trickery. Eusapia Palladino (1854–1918) was an Italian spiritualist medium from the slums of Naples who made a career touring Italy, France, Germany, Britain,

11556-442: Was that they need go up to the glen only on fine days as they had been accustomed to do before and tice the fairies, as they called their way of attracting them, and see what they could get. I suggested only the most obvious and easy precautions about lighting and distance, for I knew it was essential they should feel free and unhampered and have no burden of responsibility. If nothing came of it all, I told them, they were not to mind

11664-518: Was thus the result of combining white guilt and fear of divine judgment with a new sense of purpose and responsibility. In the years following the sensation that greeted the Fox sisters, demonstrations of mediumship (séances and automatic writing , for example) proved to be a profitable venture, and soon became popular forms of entertainment and spiritual catharsis. The Fox sisters earned a living this way and others followed their lead. Showmanship became an increasingly important part of spiritualism, and

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