Curious History, Fairies (faeries) - Even though the most popular...

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Fairies (faeries) - Even though the most popular fairy photographs have been admitted as fakes by their creators, there are many people who refuse to believe fairies, including these photos, aren’t real.

Photographs (photo 1) of a mummified fairy supposedly found in Derbyshire have been revealed as an April Fool’s prank. Former Derbyshire resident Dan Baines, 31, who designs illusions for magicians, made the fairy as a prank. The fairy was reportedly found by a dog walker at Firestone Hill near Duffield and pictures of it posted on a website. “Although I’ve said it’s a hoax, people still believe that it’s real,” said Mr Baines. “I’ve had all sorts of comments including people who say they’ve seen exactly the same things and one person who told me to return the remains to the grave site as soon as possible or face the consequences,” he said.

The Cottingley Fairies (photos 2, 3, and 4) : Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed the photographs to be real. The photos were not admitted to be fakes until decades later when the girls who took them finally confessed. They were all proven to be cardboard cut-outs held up by hat pins. At the time of their release, people refused to believe that teenage girls had the “ability” to fake photographs.

The (Not So) Modern History of the Fairy Movement:

In 1846, William John Thomas, who contributed the term folklore to the English language, commented in The Athenaeum that the “belief of fairies is by no means extinct in England”. Antiquarians of the romantic era had begun the quest for fairies, and throughout Victoria’s reign advocates of fairy existence and investigators of elfin origins included numerous scientists, social scientists, historians, theologians, artists, and writers.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, eminent authors, among them Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Arthur Machen, swelled the ranks of those who held the fairy faith and publicized their findings. A surprisingly large number of educated Victorians and Edwardians speculated at length on whether fairies did exist or had at least once existed.

(Source: BBC)