What's interesting about this story for me is that words like "fake" and "hoax" don't really apply. I honestly don't think that anyone was setting out to fool anyone. Some girls were mucking around with a camera and some cutouts, and the whole thing snowballed from there.

@benthejrporter

Жыл бұрын

They never meant it to go that far. They did it for a bit of fun, to cheer up their family and friends who were downcast with wartime blues. But when Conan Doyle got involved it grew legs and before they could stop it it had gone viral, to use modern terminology.

A couple of things not mentioned here: the fairy at 0:07 drew particular suspicion for it's contemporary appearance - fashionable dress, Parisian-style hairdo etc. Also, the 9yr old Elsie was a fairly good artist and painted pictures of fairies frequently. Both of these also helped give the game away.

It isn't mentioned in the video, but Elsie drew and painted pictures of fairies frequently. It seems incredible that some people still believe that the fairies in the photos are genuine!

Magic, adventure, wonder, imagination, and excitement. I love those fairies. I shall never forget, or Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths. Fairies, pixies and sprites are real.

According to my Journalism Professor, we've always been and always will be fooled.

The comments I made earlier - along with gallery118 were that the photo's shown to the public were not the original ones.

Those pictures are amazing considering the technology.

Nice picture though. I like the ethereal effect the long exposure has on the water.

I just read Randi's book Flim-Flam, and Cottingley Fairies are the first chapter. I was pretty floored at the fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed in this nonsense. Just goes to show that anyone can be deluded, I guess.

They are real!!

Does anyone know the name of and can prove the existence of "this popular childrens novel" where the cut outs derived? That would be a good thing to include in a CONCLUSION which relies on debunking the fairy tales.

Wanna have that fairy colouring book...

That's fascinating! I wonder what happened to the original photographs.

@isyourshitfixed

3 жыл бұрын

Auctioned

I rather like the photo of the Gnome. He is looking at the camera too. I wish I had that Gnome cutout.. People have been wondering why Frances' hand looked so long and distorted? I think she had just moved it a bit during the 10 second hold.

It was the lighting and shadows that gave it away for me. But yeah, totally missed the waterfall

@cunnidvd out of the 4 fairies in the picture at least one of them would be fluttering their wings as they appear to be flying. Also, the wings will be fluttering rather fast because of the size of the faires i assume they weigh more than a bee or a fly, which flap their wings extremely rapidly anyway. they r more bird sized, and birds have to flap their wings fast as well to overcome gravity.

those pictures are neat.

How does Randi know faerie wings flutter? Maybe they stay perfectly still

gallery18, thanks for that info. Do you have any other details on this as I'm interested in researching this further. I thought it odd that an intelligent man like Conan Doyle could have risked his reputation, publicly claiming the obvious cut-outs were real but this new evidence makes sense.The originals could have been fake as well but just more convincing.What do you think?

i do too!

@flossy100 That`s weird, because the "success" of the story, relied exactly on that: on showing the photos to everyone

@KCKatheist please see an exchange between gallery118 and myself a year ago just a few comments down.

Oh Nooooooo, every time you say you don't believe in fairies one of them dies. I do believe in fairies, I do, I do, I do!!!!! See loads of them every Friday night when I'm out with me girlfriends, George and Brian.

Super natural even exists bit it's something very special

These things are so obviously drawing I can't understand how anyone could have ever fallen for this nonsense. On the other hand poor Doyle was longing for another reality beyond ours to exist because he lost so many of his loved ones so I sort of can understand why he wanted it to be true so badly.

@bjnboy

10 жыл бұрын

We must remember that photography was a new art then and people were not as experienced in seeing photographs as we are today. Also the images were cleaned up and sharpened for their publication in The Strand. Finally, perhaps we can excuse some of Conan Doyle's gullibility in accepting the images remembering that he had a photographic expert (Snelling) examine the pictures and state they were not fakes. What excuse Snelling might have had is hard to imagine... Another possible reason why people thought the photos were real could be because of how the Fair Folk were perceived at that time. If we consider the idea that their world and they themselves are vastly different from ours and us in almost every way, then it would stand to reason that to human eyes they would look unnatural... like in the photographs. Likewise, we would look just as unnatural to them through their eyes.

People see things like this, whilst under the influence of some substance or whilst in the grip of sleep paralysis, I've had such experiences myself.

The original photographs were not of pretty fairies dancing but something more macabre.

agreed.

Where exactly?

Ken ham is the missing link!

@cunnidvd even if they were beating their wings like butterflys that is still damn fast, so there would be blurring. also, what do u mean they r like ghosts, ghosts don't exhist. no one has ever even seen a real ghost. how can light bounce off of something that is not solid so vividly? ghosts don't exhist. what does it matter about the exact frequency of the beating wings, u can use logic that it will be fast enough to cause a blur

@grandexandi nahh you'd be surprised how things look different in black and white.... those fairies looked somewhat believable back in the day considering the complete lack of color photos.

Oh well, since they said it then it must be truth. Their truthfulness record speaks for itself.

Two fairies woke in the morning. One looked at the other and, smiling broadly, said "Darling, you made my whole night ... " The other grinned back and said " Ah, but you made my whole week".

Just don't let anyone ruin the tooth fairy for you. There's money in those molars!

About what 82mozn?

different how?

i will still beleive...

There is a difference between magicians and con artists. And that distinction is important.

Well the fact that one is clearly depicted as flying/hovering, physics dictates that some upward thrust must be occurring. Not to mention that the (presumably very light and thin) fairy wings are absolutely still for about 10 seconds (very sharp edges = no movement) is rather damning. You don't have to know exactly how a fairy's wings work to know that the laws of physics are being shattered...

According to Pete Townsend, 'we won't be fooled again', but I rather suspect we will.

@SurlyInsomniac youve never met a skeptic that never matches his description because they are very, very rare, most skeptics are merely just like religious fanatics, just the other way around. true open-mindedness is indeed very hard to come by

And with 10 seconds exposure time, they held their posture perfectly on their toes?

@nickharvey7797

5 жыл бұрын

Yep.

lots of people knew they were just cutout drawings... but mr. snelling who examined the photos said that they were not faked and they were untouched, so people started to beleive they were real fairies

Uh... Would you rather fake a picture with an old camera you had to hold still for 10min, or use sophisticated computer programs? I say those girls managed an amazing forgery with such old cameras.

I don't get it. Did people think those were fairies? I mean, really? I know it was before photoshop, but... they were aware of the existence of paper and scissors, weren't they? I really don't get it.

@RantNRavinFection I guess it has more to do with how unfamiliar they were with the process of photographing... Perhaps photos were so new that they still weren't able to imagine ways of playing with it, as improbable as it sounds. Still... sounds very dumb to me. I mean really. I even hope that the statement "people believed it" is just an exaggeration of a somewhat surprised and/or amazed reaction.

finally shutitup, if you read the exchange between gallery118 and myself, you will see that we are discussing the implications that have been made (including documents in the british library) that the fake, cut-out fairies were not the original photographs. I have found, and am still finding, information that suggest there was more to the story than we've been lead to believe.

How could people think they were real? They were so one dimensional.

The creator of Sherlock Homles...wow.

takes one to know one

they do i swear! there not like Tinkerbell though they are different... they are the spirits of nature.. much different than what people think they are to be..... kind of like ghosts or angels

Yeah, you're right. Otherwise a new dicovery could ever be proven to exist.

Spirit, I offer, is thought form consciousness, it is not bound to the material world's current set of restrictions/dogma, quantum physics may change that. Does not mean they don't flutter, but it doesn't necessarily apply here, and James is a full of himself.

They do, and they wear boots. I saw 'em, saw 'em with my own two eyes.

Fairies do exist...just not visible to all. Each time that someone denies their existance, one fairy dies.

Woah, woah, hold up! Trolls exist? Like under bridges and stuff? I knew it!

I don't not believe in fairies, such as how I don't not believe in ghosts. Some people's stories of encounters with them just can't be explained any other way.

masterblackthorn No, that was the problem. Many many people thought it was real. It was never something for imagination. Some people can´t separate imagination from reality

Oh come on now, they're just thumbs down. It's not like anyone's fighting over somethiong this silly.

They are under no obligation to make any sense to you and James Randi who entered this exercise with the pre-conceived notion that wings on a faerie would have to been fluttering in a photograph his brain wouldn't accept as being true in the first place.

they already said they cut them out and placed them there XD

when did they prove it? even though they were fake i will always believe there were real nature spirits in cottingley

fairies are real!

Please read my previous comment and gallery118 response.

Aaaaw, C'mon. How come after all these years, they suddenly come out saying this was all fake! My grandparents (both deceased) believed in these pictures.. May God have pity on you.

I do believe in fairies.

The very first time I got the book about all this was in the 1980's. my first impression of the photos was " those aren't real Fairies they are just cutout drawings". Then I said how could people be so stupid to think any of this was real? I amazed me how people let this go for so long and never saw right of the bat they were cutouts. i know that photographing in those days was not good but it is so stupid.

TOTALLY!! Ignorance is bliss. Keep it up.

I dont believe in fairies. OH SHIT! One just landed on my desk dead.

daymyth~~aww tOo bad huhuhu..now im confuse ahhaha

idk bout james randi but i thought this clip was somewhat biast and harsh becuase b4 i saw this video i checked this out /watch?v=CN3DpHDKFMg&feature=related

(sorry about my bad english i do not speak it well becuase i speak german)no im not delusional there are other things in the world i made the comment sort of sound as if i was delusional but not my friends all see the same things when i was little they would scare me but not anymore because they wont hurt you. but yeah anyone can make fun of me but still i wont give a crap :) me and my friends will always be believers

@faridjabba 1917

i agree they didnt mean for it to become famous...

Do read about the "Cottingley Fairies" on wiki - a hilarious tale of the extremely gullible :-D

It's a pity that Randi lets his background as a stage conjurer get the better of him. Claiming that the first photo is "the most important of all five" is just classic misdirection, when it was the *fifth* photograph that Frances claimed (to her death) was the one they hadn't faked. OK, so the fifth photo is a (probably unintentional) double exposure which just looks more "ethereal" , but explaining that would not have been as clear-cut a debunking for Randi's TV audience, so he ignores it. Pity

So, if you are correct, then they accepted that the first four were fakes, but the fifth was real. And we should believe them even though they admitted to the fake. Yeah, right!

And your central message is what?

Ah, with that logic, I suppose black jokes aren't racist as long as they are puns. Good to know.

C'mon. All those photos are SOO cutout paper.

If you hate James Randi that´s your choice of course. If you like to live in a make belief world again that´s your choice. But most people don´t. This story is about how people were fooled by two little girls and how blind they become to the truth. About how gullible people can be. And you are angry at the one that showed you the truth, not the at the one who fooled you.

They didnt fool them they r real

they beleive because they see them not because of proof or evidence of others.... they are real though.. and i know what your thinking... you are thinking im crazy but i have seen them and so has my friend! there kinda creepy though... sometimes i get nightmares

@jackiechan74 Link them to me!

@masterblackthorn "It truly is fanaticism that is destroying this World.. the Atheistic or the religious kind." What would be an example of atheistic fanatacism?

Yeah we know it's fake since the wings were not blurry. (and also the fact that fairies don't exist)

The "perps" have gone back and forth on that admission. Thank you for the book info. I looked it up trying to find images on the net, should be public domain by now, and I did find but ONE an image of one of the photos next to an illustration purportedly from the book, and yes it was similar, but striking differences - it was a line drawing, lacking the shaded detail that are in the photos,and arm and garment positions.

Credulidad. Elsie ha admitída que las fotos estan falsas (1:03-1:13).

I cant judge you, but I have to add as a side note that this is the reasoning hardcore drug users use. Just a word of caution...

Your basic assumption that the laws of physics have any affect on the spirit world. I failed to explain myself properly, that being Newtonian/thermodynamics do not apply to the world of the Fae, but I thought that might be self evident because Faeries are nature spirits.

The man is a tribute to the Atheist race.

Interesting, I can't find any images of the book, Princess Mary's Gift Book, save for just one, conversely, the Science and Society Picture Library claims exclusive copyright of the Cottingley Fairy images. Convenient. This whole thing smells rotten.

Too much opium!! Sir Connan was a heavy user! He loved to be high! Probably he used to see fairies too! ;-)

Doyle was a dummy.

cool but i still beleive that they saw real fairys..... thats what i was saying

Of course all the five *photos* are real - the subjects (fairies) are not.

ooh fairies! pixies! Gods and Angels are real..but those? lol..

thats ridiculous they might have been just dancing and not using their wings but come on who would fool for this they look as fake as hell I know they fooled a lot of people i'm surprised Randi bothered with this one. i'm a Randi fan by the way

Fanatics typically cannot distinguish between their perosnal view, and an objective one. O'Hair may have personally wanted rid of religion, but she only campaigned for the legal stopping of all children being made to pray to the Christian god. She did not, as many allege, try to stop prayer in school. I take your second point, though I would say that you could be just as anti-religious, and stil believe in a god. I still believe that there is no causal line between non-belief and action.