Something that amazes me about this story is how absolutely bonkers it is that they got away with it for so long, and how if you just read about the story and didn’t see the pictures, you’d be damn near convinced that they actually took photos with actual fairies or something until basically the very end, and even then you might wonder.
Because most written accounts of what happens goes something like this: they took these photos and someone saw them, and BREAKING NEWS! And now suddenly believers and skeptics alike are itching to get ahold of these photos and determine whether or not they are real, because just looking at the photos had them either completely convinced, or else certain that some kind of photographic trickery must have been used. So there were all these experts who examined the photos, the camera, the film/plates, the whatever, to try and find out how they faked these photos (or IF they faked them). Like, expert experts. Like they got the folks at Kodak to examine them. (Over the next few decades they’d also be xrayed and all kinds of stuff.)
And they couldn’t find anything. There was no evidence of early 20th century photoshop. They examined the photos, the negatives, everything, and concluded that they hadn’t been tampered with. Arthur Conan Doyle was LOSING HIS SHIT because he thought they were real and this proved it. Whether you believed in fairies or not all the experts were coming to the conclusion that the photos were totally real, and the skeptics were getting really really mad about it. Because there was no way these photos were real! Except they totally seemed to be! And the girls were sticking by their story. (And actually Elsie and Frances were 16 and 9 respectively, when the first two photos were taken in mid-1917, and the photos became public in mid 1919.)
Doyle was still losing his goddamn mind and so to put the matter to rest, another believer went to them in 1920, bringing cameras and stuff for them to photograph fairies with. The thinking was that if they were using equipment that had been examined and everything beforehand, and then developed not by the girls, then the opportunity for fakery was cut out and they could determine the truth. And lo and behold, the three pictures they girls took (alone, because “the fairies won’t show up if we’re not alone”), were also verified as being real!!! Okay, okay, you don’t believe in fairies, and believe the photos have to be fake, but still, there is the mystery of how did they do it???
And if that is what you read it’s understandable to be thinking that woah, what did these girls capture on film? Were these children just on to some advanced af photo trickery? What advanced technique did these kids figure out that fooled all the experts? Did they really actually capture pictures of something supernatural?
No. They fuckin cut some drawings of fairies out of paper and took pictures with them. There was no trickery detected with the photos or photo equipment because they didn’t have to fake that part. They were genuine photographs….of little girls with propped up drawings. Elsie copied some drawings from a book, added wings, cut them out, and propped them up. You look at these photos today and they look fake as fuck. These are obviously little drawings. They do not look the slightest bit realistic. There are people out there TODAY who will argue that it’s totally possible that these girls took pictures of actual fairies. Because that’s a better story, I guess. But if you hear that version of the story and then see the photos it’s just laughable.
I can only assume that the reason anybody fell for it at all is the same reason that people praised the special effects in old movies that now look ridiculous.
But at the same time….nobody noticed that these fairies looked like children’s book illustrations???? Like it took another fifty years for this to be put to rest, because even if you didn’t believe they were real, NO ONE COULD FIGURE OUT HOW THEY COULD HAVE FAKED THEM. It wasn’t until the fricken 80s when someone tracked down the girls that they admitted to having faked the photos by using little drawings. And even with that admission and the actual book they copied from, plus computer examination revealing that there were little strings and stuff holding the cutouts in place, there are STILL people who will maintain that these photos were real.
For their parts Elsie and Frances disagreed over the veracity of the fifth photogragh (not pictured here). Both claimed to have taken it, and Elsie said it was fake while Frances said it was real. (Even in the 80′s.) The truth is most likely that it was a double exposure and so both girls did take it. Also they apparently kept up the lie because once they had fooled Arthur Conan Doyle they felt too weird about telling the truth. Seriously, EVEN THEY DIDN’T UNDERSTAND HOW THEY HAD FOOLED SO MANY GROWNUPS. THEY WEREN’T EVEN TRYING TO PULL A HOAX.
Read that last sentence again. They really weren’t. They were just trying to take some fun little photos. And ALL THESE GODDAMN ADULTS WERE FREAKING THE FUCK OUT THINKING THAT THEY HAD PHOTOGRAPHED ACTUAL FAIRIES. AND IT WAS SUCH AN AWKWARD SITUATION THAT THE GIRLS JUST WENT WITH IT. They didn’t keep it up for money or fame or pride, they kept up the hoax because it would be too awkward to tell the grownups they’d fooled them.
THEY CREATED A MYSTERY THAT LASTED LIKE 50 YEARS BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO IN AN AWKWARD SITUATION.
Frances straight up 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.”
TL;DR: Two kids were dicking around with a camera and some fairy drawings, accidentally fool top experts in the world with super fake looking photos, feel too awkward at having fooled so many smart people to admit that it was all fake until a few years before their deaths. True. Icons.
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