The incredible story of the "real fairy" photos that have deceived even Conan Doyle

More than a century ago, in 1917, two young Britons came out with their cameras in their hands. Elsie Wright, age 16, and her cousin, Frances Griffiths, age 9, were two ordinary girls looking for idle adventures in a town in Cottingley, West Yorkshire, which then had only 700 people at the time. # 39; era.

14 catches remained in the story. It was the first time that they were photographing mythical fairies who, based on stories and stories, had become beings that challenged the imagination. And those photos were proof of their existence, or at least they believed it at that time.

The story spread like wildfire and deceived the same Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -Being just the father of Sherlock Holmes, declared a spiritualist, has suffered throughout his life from a series of strange deceptions by his great rationalist capacity.

The photos of the Cottingley fairies were taken in July and September 1917 and the story could only be brightened when, a few months later, from Fatima, Portugal, little shepherds baderted that they could see and hear the Virgin Mary. Today, some of these images are auctioned and are expected to reach £ 70,000 ($ 91,141.40).

The girls used a Midg camera made by Elsie's father and with colorful paper cutouts and pins, setting up scenes near the brook in Elsie's garden, techniques that would make Georges Méliès proud. himself.

While the father of Elsie, an enthusiastic amateur photographer who developed the prints, never doubted that they were apocryphal, his wife Polly has always believed in the history of minors. Thus, in 1919, he brought copies of the images to members of the Theosophical Society of Bradford, where they gave a lecture on the life of the fairies.

A year later, Conan Doyle became acquainted with the photographs and wished to use them for an article about the fairies of The Strand magazine. The success, the recognition led them to meet the fairies again and capture three more snapshots.

Elsie and Frances only admitted that the photographs were falsified in 1983; Frances, who until then held the fifth photograph, The Fairy Bower, was authentic.

Frances' daughter, Christine Lynch, said that her mother had always maintained that the image was genuine but that she had inadvertently taken it: "My mother was happy that the truth would be revealed to the end, "said Lynch, 88, who approached. photos that will be on sale at Dominic Winter Auctioneers in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, April 11th.

"He never thought he could take pictures of fairies and saw that the grbad had become a nest in a semicircle." Without thinking, he took out the camera and adjusted the timer, the distance and the exposure and it was only when it developed that he saw the real fairies in it. "

"I'm not sad to sell them and it's time to do it and with the centennial of history, I thought it was the right time for them to leave, it's time to go to a museum where someone else can see them and enjoy them – the view, so it is good for someone else to see them. "

Chris Albury, auctioneer and photography specialist, said, "I think the fairy's contact prints are incredibly meaningful images in the context of this remarkable story.The first of Frances and the Fairy Ring is perhaps to be the most important photo that exists in relation to With this drama, Arthur Wright made a small number of the first two photographs from the negatives of the original glbad plate.It does not seem to have survived.It is the copy of Frances and perhaps the most perfect original example that still exists. "