Cottingley Fairies

The Cottingley Fairies may not be "ghosts," per se, but their tale bears telling in any account of photographic trickery involving the supernatural. In 1917, Elsie Wright and her cousin Frances Griffiths were two young girls who spread the story that they had seen fairies. They presented a series of photographs of themselves frolicking with wee pixies in Cottingley Glen, England.

The pictures were stunningly fake. The fairies were paper cutouts taken from a popular children's book, Princess Mary's Gift Book. But what is truly amazing is that the pictures caused a huge sensation, and untold numbers of people thought the fairies were real.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an irrepressible Spiritualist, championed the pictures as authentic, and brought them vast publicity almost single-handedly. It is reported that Conan Doyle believed they were real as soon as he heard about them, without even wishing to visually inspect them first. In her adult life, Elsie Wright expressed disbelief that their "little joke" could have possibly fooled so many people for so many years. Even today, there are those who will claim that the fairies are genuine.

The Cottingley Fairies are proof of only one thing: that a faked photograph can carry profound ramifications, even beyond what its fabricator intended.