You are listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart Podcasts.

Folks, it's a hug sound no one, I haven't seen.

What us have a look to see the.

Welcome to Hoax a new podcast or is it it is?

Every episode we sort through the lies we wish were true and truths sound like lies.

This is not just another scam and scandal podcast.

Oh no.

These are stories of pranks and griffs throughout history, so big and bold they make us question why we believe.

I'm the ghost of Danish Schwartz and I'm the evil twin of Lizzie Logan.

Welcome to the show, Lizzie.

I am so excited that we're doing this podcast.

I'm thrilled.

It's like the highlight of my schedule.

Same and also just an opportunity to talk about one of my favorite things, which is historical hoaxes.

So just a bit about what this show is.

If you're just joining us, whichever one is because it's our first episode.

If you've been here before, how time travel I guess future.

This show is going to be me, Danish Wortz and Lizzie Logan YEP, talking through historical and modern hoaxes every episode we'll focus on a new hoax.

I'm Dana.

I'm a writer and a podcaster.

I host the podcast Noble Blood, which is about royals throughout history, also with iHeartRadio and the podcast Very Special Episodes.

I've also written six books occasionally write television.

I just love researching weird areas of history and talking about them, usually into a microphone.

Lizzie, who are you?

Who am I?

I'm Lizzie.

I'm a comedy writer.

By day.

You can find me writing for Glamor Magazine.

By night, I'm on places like McSweeney's.

I contributed for a very long time to Reductress.

And I love a joke.

I love a scam.

I love a prank that goes far too far.

I love lies in slim flams.

And we're also real life friends.

It's true.

That's just like a thing that people should know going in that we are real life human friends.

It is.

And is this just an excuse to hang out more?

Possibly, if you decide maybe this podcast is the biggest hoax of all, I will do the research and bring the story one week.

And I'll do the research and bring the story the next week.

We are not investigators so much as we are storytellers and compilers, so.

Well, should we get started on our first hopes?

I think we should.

I I'm very very excited.

I think the first hoax that we focused on was really important to me, and it's one that's sort of a like a hoax classic.

We're talking about the Cottingly Fairies, Lizzie.

What do you know about the Cottingly Fairies?

To begin with?

Okay, so everything I know about the Coddingly Fairies is from a movie that I caught on TV when I was a child in the nineties.

Oh what movie and starring how.

I don't remember, and I didn't look it up because I wanted you to do all the research.

I remember is it was back in the days of the olden turn of the century times, and it was the era of like spirit photography, and people did not particularly know what a photograph was like supposed to look like.

And you know, your average Victorian or whatever.

I'm sure you'll tell me the time period.

I'm sure you'll tell me the time period.

But your average Joe Schmo had no idea what like a double exposure could be because they're just weren't that many people making photographs and So these two little girls, who I believe were sisters, figured out a way to like super impose like a drawing of a fairy maybe, or a photograph of someone dressed up I don't know, onto a photograph, and they would show them to people, and nobody knew what a photo was like supposed to look like.

So they're like, I guess it's real, because you can't take a photo of some that's not real.

Okay, you're like sixty percent of the way there.

Okay, I'm very excited to talk to you about it because these are perfect misconceptions.

The other pieces of information I believe are somewhere in my brain yeh yeah.

Or that maybe one of the sisters admitted it was fake and the other one admitted that like all but a couple of them were fake, and maybe died insisting that she had taken a photograph of a ferry.

And I'm also I'm picturing this in like the Secret Garden Time.

Yes, well, that you're accurate about it, So it is secret Garden Vibe.

It's Speacretgarden vibes.

Yes, one is Secret Garden Times.

Secret Garden Times is in Little Princess Times and the.

Little Princess times is there's like a war going on.

There's definitely colonialism going on.

I feel like it's like a long war type situation.

Yeah, well, let's get into it.

Let's get into it.

So it's nineteen seventeen.

Sure, we're after Queen Victoria, we're after Edwardian.

Where are we?

So little town called Coddingly near Bradford, which is slightly bigger town in the top middle of England.

And it's two cousins, okay, one is named Elsie Wright and the other is Francis Griffiths.

Elsie is six team this summer.

Francis is nine years old, and Francis and her mom they had been living in South Africa and so they moved to back to England and they were staying with their cousins like while they got situated.

So these little girls are living together.

Well when sixteen you said, yeah, okay, so there's a little girl and then like an adult in those Yeah yeah.

A girl who actually like was no longer in school and was working.

Yeah okay, but it's they're still her cousin and the two little girls like to go play at the beck and a beck is like a little stream onto the bottom of her v near their house.

Sure, because there's no like TikTok.

It's seventeen.

What are you gonna do?

The mom was like, they made a picnic lunch and went down to the beck.

That was a day they're kill a day doing.

That, honestly, kind of a good day.

I would do that now.

I wouldn't but have fun.

You wouldn't have a picnic by a stream.

I would maybe, I don't know.

It seems like there would be a lot of bugs.

Yeah.

Well, and also you would get wet, because what happened is Francis the nine year old would come back and her pants and shoes would be wet, and her mom would be mad because in those days laundry was like a huge hassle, probably, but her mom was annoyed.

And Francis, when her mom got mad at her, said, it's not my fault.

I was playing with the fairies.

Typical nine year old excuse.

Yeah, And the mom is like, very funny, go to your room or whatever the punishment was.

And Elsie, the sixteen year old, said, will show them.

They borrowed Elsie's dad's camera, which was a Midge camera, and we'll get a little bit into the details of the camera.

I'm picturing a big box on a tripod with a hood that you put over your face.

We're a little past that.

It's a little smaller and a little easier than you think.

Okay.

But her dad, Arthur, was an amateur photographer and he had his own dark room, and so Elsie, the sixteen year old, said, let's borrow my dad's camera and show the grownups what's what.

And they come back and say, look, we took a picture of a fairy.

And I'm going to text you a picture and I want you to maybe describe what you see.

That's really cute.

Okay.

So there's a girl posing in front of what looks like a waterfall, and she's sort of resting her elbows on some moss, and right in front of her are four fairies who are little women with big butterfly wings, and the girl maybe has a flower crown.

Yeah, that looks and it says Alice and the Fairies.

And it's dated July nineteen seventeen.

So it's actually Francis who's in this photo.

We'll get to the name change a little later.

When they published the photos, it was for their anonymity to protect the innocent.

But it's a photo that Elsie took of her cousin Francis on this Midge camera on photographic plates.

It's not on film.

This is just sort of the difference.

It's kind of boring, but basically, it's a light sensitive mixture of silver salts coated on a thin glass plate and then when light hits them, it imprints the image really quick.

Sure, so it's not film, but it's not like one of those old giant cameras that requires a whole room.

Okay, but they take this photo and they go back to the grown ups and they're like, see, we did see fairies.

And the grownups reaction is, no, you didn't.

That's very funny.

How did you do that?

And that causes the girls to want to double down.

They're like, no, we did see fairies.

And a few months later they come back with a second photo and I'm texting you the second photo.

Now, see this is the type of picture I would take.

She's interacting with the fairy.

This is the older girl.

This is Elsie, the sixteen year old.

And this is actually Elsie and a gnome.

Yes, it is labeled Iris and the gnome.

Yeah, And she So it's like a meadow and there's a woman in a hat and she is sort of leaning forward, she's sitting down, she's leaning forward, and there's like a little a little silly man who has a pointed hat and a rough about his neck and I think a feather in his cap and he's he also maybe has wings and he's doing like a little jig.

Yeah, they're having fun.

Yes, So at this point they come back with this photo and again their parents are like, stop messing with the camera.

We don't know how you're doing it.

But the dad says, give me my camera back.

You can't use it anymore.

But Elsie's mom, Polly, kind of believes it a little bit.

Polly is a little more woo woo.

She's casually a member of this thing called the Theosophical Society.

Have you ever heard of that?

No, I have a couple questions.

We can put a pin in them.

Yeah, no, give me questions please.

So, okay, do the adults ever think, well, why don't I go down to the beck and see four myself?

Yes, and adults will continue to do that, but only children can see fairies.

Oh of course, I'm like, actually a little embarrassed.

I had to explain that to you.

I'm a stupid woman.

And then my other thing is more of a common Yeah, if it were like me and I had gotten caught doing this, would maybe like at this point, I would advise them to pivot to just like being cool artsy photographer, Like they have a talent.

Yeah, but it's like they have a skill.

But it's that thing of when someone's not falling for your trick, you want to double down.

I know.

But they could just like make money as party photographers who then like make it look like you had fairies at you're party.

Anyway, Well, it's a good theory if that's how they're taking these photos.

Maybe they're just taking photos.

If they're not just liars.

They had a skill, but maybe they're just taking photos of fairies.

Lizzie.

This is another thing hoax listeners should be aware of.

I'm a skeptic.

I'm the scully in this relationship.

As opposed to me.

I actually think they're fairies.

That's the thing about me.

I believe you do it.

They're Yeah, boiler alert fully confessed, I do believe there are fairies.

But yeah, so Polly is a little more woo woo.

A member of this thing called the Theosophical Society, which is this weird quasi religious movement that started in eighteen seventy five.

That's kind of a combination of like philo occultism, and comparative religion.

And basically, I'm going to quote what like one of their fundamental beliefs is, it's quote forming a nucleus of universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, cast or color.

And then they also believe in human evolution on Earth, but also a spiritual hierarchy of evolution, where like there's a potential for humans to become advanced spiritual beings.

And fairies just sort of like fit into this mythology.

Okay, it's now nineteen twenty, so it is two and a half years later.

Okay, Polly goes to a talk of the Theosophical Society in the nearby town and the talk is on fairies, and afterward is just chatting with people and being like, you know, my daughter got a picture of fairies.

And so far it's just these two photos.

So far.

It's just they took the camera away.

Yeah, the dad was like, stop messing with my camera and she's chatting and tells people her daughter took these pictures, and the woman who's doing the lecture was like, well, can I see those pictures.

She's like, sure, Polly sends the pictures to that lady.

They kind of get around and they reach a man named Edward Gardner, who's a very prominent member of the Theosophical Society.

Another version of the story I've read is that he saw the photos on display at an annual like Theosophical conference.

Okay, but he sees these photos and he is thrilled about them.

I'm gonna quote from him, and he says, quote the fact that two young girls had not only been able to see fairies, which others had done obviously, of course, but had actually, for the first time ever, been able to materialize them at a density sufficient for their images to be recorded on a photographic plate meant that it was possible that the next cycle of evolution was underway.

Sure, So his thing is less like, oh, fairies exist.

It's like, oh, we know fairies exist, but not everyone is able to perceive them as solid in such a way that a flash bulb would.

Yes, and now that we well, now that we have photographic evidence of them.

So that's something big is happening.

Okay, He you know, as you do, sends the photos to an expert, a photography expert.

Oh okay, I think I've a I was like, I feel like these people are the Okay, he sends them of true photography.

He sends them to a photography expert named Harold Snelling, and he says, the thing you can see about this photo is it actually has not been tampered with it after the fact.

Can I posit a theory?

Yeah, I'm not going to tell you if you're right or wrong though.

Okay, but I just want on the record, if the photos haven't been tampered with after the fact, did they just draw pictures of fairies?

And like I'm thinking, like basically the old timey version of cardboard cutouts.

I mean, that's that's an interesting theory.

But according to Gardner, mister Snelling's report on the two Negatives says that he is perfectly certain of two things connected to these photos, namely, quote one exposure only, so not a double exposure.

And two, all the figures of the fairies moved during the exposure, which was instantaneous.

And then this is Gardner I'm quoting again.

As I put all sorts of pressing questions to him, relating to paper or cardboard figures and backgrounds and paintings and all the artifices of the modern studio, he proceeded to demonstrate by showing me other negatives in prints that certainly supported his view.

So they're okay, So I.

Have the same brain as an old timey skeptic.

Yeah, but he's like, don't they look like fairies to me?

I don't know about it.

Okay, here's a key point.

Gardner wants these photos that he can display when he's giving lectures, and so he has Snelling clarify them.

He basically has Snelling photoshop them.

And the photos that I showed you, basically, any time you ever see any of these photos, the ones that are online because they are the ones that have been published, are ones that Snelling has clarified.

Okay, so the blurry version is the one that was convincing these people exactly.

So anytime now that anyone is looking at these photos, it's like a rudimentary photoshopped version of them.

Are the originals like on display somewhere?

Not on display, but a museum does have them so maybe they're on display if you live near the Science and Media Museum in Bradford.

I know they have a camera or two cameras that these girls used and some of the original negatives and report back because I am curious everything they have.

Yeah, if you could take a pic and send it to Hoax the Podcast at gmail dot com.

So that's the key point here is that he intensifies.

Okay, the photos intensified is in air quotes.

I'm using his word, and that's what people are looking at when they're like, oh, fairies, I'm.

Thinking of time making oj Blacker on the cover.

Yeah, being like I'm just intensifying it.

They're just intensifying that they're like deeply.

Changing the meaning of the image.

So word of these photographs gets around the spiritualist community, which brings us to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Okay, love this guy, yea, love this guy.

Makes perfect sense that he is in these times as I also think of them as Sherlock time.

Yeah, he's butt in his head and everywhere.

Okay, so we're with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Ladies Man Man's Man Man about Town.

Man About Town, a Scottish author and physician and a doctor born in Edinburgh.

This is nineteen twenty right now, he's sixty one years old, already very famous, very successful, very rich, already knighted.

It's kind of devastating.

He wrote Sherlock Holmes when he was the first Scherlock Holmes, when he was twenty seven.

And that's all anybody ever liked.

Yeah, and this is by the time that this is happening, it's been thirty three years since Sherlock Holmes came out, and like he's already killed Sherlock and brought him back.

He's so famous.

But he's also a spiritualist and really interested in psychic and paranormal phenomenon which I actually find very endearing.

Again, this is like the as he said, the turn of the century.

And he's a scientist, and I think the idea that there's a lot out there that we don't understand is very scientific.

He actually writes, I'm gonna quote him here.

It definitely speaks to like a curiosity about the state of the world.

Yeah, but the problem is when you're bad at the science part of figuring out what's actually real.

Like the curiosity is good, but then you have to examine things empirically.

People think that he became a spiritualist after the death of his son in World War One.

That's sort of like the conventional knowledge his son died and then became interested in spirits.

That's actually not true because he had been writing about spiritualism years before his son died.

But spiritualism does have these spikes during times of senseless death, especially among young people, like as you mentioned, spirit photography, which is like the practice of taking a photo and someone being like, ooh, look behind in the photo, there's a spirit, which was a simple double exposure.

Usually, I will say, if you ever look up spirit photographs, those to me are so much more convincing because it's just like blurs behind you, and I'm like, maybe that is a ghost.

Maybe it is a ghost.

Those started after the Civil War, those I came into the main prominence.

And then this is happening after World War One, indeed, So it's like these moments of like trauma and death and trying to make sense of it all.

But yeah, so even though he had been interested in spiritualism before, there are like a lot of tragedies happening around his life right now where you're like I understand why this man wants to think there is life behind the veil because his son Kingsley died in nineteen eighteen of pneumonia.

His only brother, Andes died in nineteen nineteen.

He had a bunch of sisters but only one brother.

And then in nineteen twenty his mother Mary died, So it's like son, brother, mother, all quick succession, and then his dad.

His dad did die earlier, but is another whole tragedy that I will get into later in the episode.

So it's like this man is deal with sad stuff, okay, and he sees these photos and he is delighted, and like Edward Gardner and like Lizzie Logan, he's like, I'm going to go get an expert opinion.

And so Doyle goes to Kodak the photo people, Oh my god, and the thing I've heard of Yeah, and he says quote, they examined the plates carefully, and neither of them could find any evidence of superposition or other trick.

On the other hand, they were of opinion that if they set to work with all their knowledge and resources, they could produce such pictures by natural means, and therefore they would not undertake to say these were preternatural.

So basically Kodak is like, we can't immediately see how this happened, but fairies aren't real, and we could probably figure out how to do.

That, right.

There's like a lot of steps between these photos are real and fairies are real exactly.

Doyle also, i think, very charmingly, reaches out to a friend of his he's a clairvoyant to ask if the photos are real, and the is like, I think these photos were faked because I'm not seeing little girls.

I'm seeing like an old bald man taking these photos.

And Doyle's like, well, that if that settles that, until Gardner's like, no, that's snelling.

That's the guy who clarified the photos.

That's who the psychic is picking up on.

So cross that off your list.

That one is solved.

That is how all of these fake psychics work.

Yes, that they say something so vague that it ends up making sense because it doesn't particularly mean anything.

The other main criticism that people are bringing up is like, why do these fairies look like stereotypical fairies?

Yeah?

Like, why do they look like the fairies that like a child would imagine?

And the answer at least Conan Doyle brings up as a theory is that these fairies are quote thought forms, that they're manifestations of these children's imagination.

And he has another theory, maybe we are just right about how fairies look.

Maybe our cultural knowledge of how fairies work comes because that's that's how fairies actually are.

So that's intrination, he says, you know, if they are conventional, it may be that fairies have really been seen in every generation and so some correct description of them has been retained.

See that's like using logic to back up something that is fairies.

It's the reason that I think smart people sometimes are the most susceptible to drink cults and stuff.

Yeah, because you can justify things in a smart way, because that's like a pretty smart explanation.

Actually, I think.

It's somewhat smart.

I mean, the truly smart take would be like, yeah, these little girl's made.

Of the faeries.

Well, that's what Conan Doyle kind of concludes.

He basically says it is clear that it was the character and surroundings of the children upon which the inquiry must turn, rather than upon the photos themselves.

Basically, like experts can look at these photos and definitively prove they were faked.

So the question is could these girls have taken those photos?

And that brings us to I think the big headline reason why Gardner and why Conan Doyle fundamentally believed that these photos were real, which is a combination of like classicism and sexism, because basically, in a letter, Conan.

Doyle's these girls aren't smart enough to fake photos.

Yeah, he says, quote we had certainly traced the pictures to two children of the artisan class, which means like their dad is working class and such photographic tricks would be entirely beyond them.

Conan Doyle basically is like, well Snelling looked at these pictures and he thought they were real.

So how could two little girls from a village have the plant and the scale to turn out a fake which could not be detected by an expert in London.

And also it was the first they said, it was the first photo of these the girls had ever taken, so they're like, they couldn't do it.

Yeah, people don't want to believe that they've been duped.

Yeah.

Also people don't like to believe that young girls are capable of things.

I mean hashtag believe women, but not when they talk about fairies.

Well, there's also the idea, as you said, that she had just drawn these fairies on cardboard and like, you know, stuck them on the ground.

People go to look at Elsie's art because guess what everyone's like.

Elsie's really artistic.

She's always drawing a lot.

She's studied at a local art college.

Ok.

But Doyle wrote, quote, while she could do landscapes, the fairy figures, which had attempted in imitation of those she had seen, were entirely uninspired and bore no possible resemblance to those in the photographs.

And then later a journalist will come to investigate and he'll say, quote, as to whether she could have drawn the fairies when she was sixteen, I am doubtful.

Lately she has taken up watercolor drawing, and her work, which I carefully examined, does not reveal that ability in a marked degree.

Though she possesses a remarkable knowledge of color for an untrained artist, but a condescension.

She's good at colors.

This is so like the level of investigating they do on like a TV show.

I'm going to send you a quote from uh charlot Combe from charlot Comb's from Conan Doyle.

This was his sort of conclusion, and I would love you to read out loud his idea.

Okay, granting the honesty of the father, which no one has ever impugned, Elsie could only have done it by cutout images which must have been of exquisite beauty, of many different models, fashioned and kept without the knowledge of her parents, and capable of giving the impression of motion when carefully examined by an expert.

Charley, this is a large order.

Yeah.

See again, it's like, okay, but it's still more likely than fucking fairies.

Yeah, you.

Accurately described something very plausible.

Like again, I my, it's like, well, there's no way these girls could have done it.

It's like, okay, so someone helped them.

Like there's so many logical leaps that either these girls did it all on their own or there's fairies.

Just I want to point out, by the second there's going to be more photos taken and by the time that Arthur Conan Doyle is involved, Elsie is nineteen.

She says she could draw something.

She's out of school, she's studying at a local art college.

She's working as an illustrator for a local jewelers, and she's a production assistant at a local photography studio, and also she does post photo coloring work at a local Christmas card fact.

Well, she's good at colors, rudimentary colors for an untrained artist.

But this is not some like people sometimes say when they're the cuttingly fairies.

I think they're picturing like children, children, And this is a nineteen.

Years girly picturing like a twelve year old and a ten year old.

And this girl is a teen.

So Doyle is excited about these two photos and sends Gardner.

Doyle is off in Australia doing a lecture tour, so he goes, you go visit the family, and Gardner gives them two new cameras, Butcher and son w Butcher and son cameo folding play cameras, which are fancier, one for each of them, and he's like, take photos.

And now this gentleman and this very very famous man have given you two very expensive cameras and told you to go take photos of fairies.

Okay, at what point can the nineteen year old not see fairies anymore?

Though?

Because only kids can see fairies.

Everybody knows that, Dana, Lizzie.

That is such a good point.

And I'm so glad you brought this up because, as Gardner is describing this to Doyle, he says, quote, but two children such as these are are rare, and I fear now that we are late, because almost certainly the inevitable will shortly happen.

One of them will quote fall in love and then hey, presto.

Hey presto, she can't see fairies.

See applying that if you have sex, you can't see fairies obviously, So I guess that's uh, I guess that's what he said.

Say.

I would think it would be like getting your period, you can't see fairies anymore.

But I don't want to speculate on this child's but like she's nineteen.

Yeah.

And also at this point, I remember how I said, like Francis the little girl, they were only living with them because they had like just moved back.

Okay, have they moved away.

They've moved a little bit away now, and of course they write Arthur Conan.

Doyle says, like, one of our difficulties is that the associated aura of the two girls is necessary.

Quote this joining of auras to produce a stronger effect than either can get singly is common enough in psychic matters, and so we need the combined power of both the girls to see.

That actually does make sense to me, because I don't know if you know this, but you and I, Dana, when we get together, we are so stupid that we cannot figure out how to use a slot machine or find a car.

That is uh completely accurate.

Our combined auras are Belma's Hilldmazell.

Well.

So, now now that Elsie is nineteen, she goes to with these brand new cameras and takes three more photos for Sir Arthur, Conan, Doyle and Gardner.

And I just sent you two of the photos.

Oh you know what this reminds me of.

And here's the third photo.

A little bit when you were talking about people underestimating women is when Taylor's wife had to write a whole album by herself to prove that she wrote her own music.

Yeah.

Yeah, these are the speak now, the speak now speak now.

It is enchanted.

I actually do think these photos.

Are these better than the original?

Yes?

Okay, So there's Fairy offering flowers to Iris.

And that's I'll see the older girl.

Yes, a girl sort of gazing at a branch, and on the branch stands a woman wearing like a very cute dress.

It's like also a very chic of nineteen twenties, so it's like a little flapper.

It's got a drop waist for sure, and she.

Has a little flapper cut.

Yeah.

You could say, well, maybe the fairies see human fashion and are I like this?

Yeah, Or of course, if you're giving them form by imagining them, you give them a good outfit.

Yeah, Okay.

Then there's Alice and leaping fairy, which is the younger girl, and she's in a thicket, and there is a fairy who is indeed leaping near her shoulder.

All right, fairy sunbath, Comma, elves, comma, et cetera.

This one is the realist looking to me, because it's blurry and it's kind of hard to tell what's going on.

There are no girls in it.

There's no humans in it.

There's just like a bramble and some flowers, and then one woman and she's wearing like a flowy dress.

And then I guess like some more floey fabric is maybe caught in the branches.

So obviously Conan Doyle sees these photos, He's like, yeah, these are real.

He's like, these are real.

He publishes an article December nineteen twenty in the Strand magazine, which is like a general interest magazine that had also published Sherlock Holmes stories, and the headline is Fairies Photographed and epoch making events described by a Conan Doyle.

The first article is just the first two photos, and he changed their names to Alice and Iris to protect their anonymity.

Good names.

And then in March nineteen twenty one, he publishes these next three photos, The Evidence for Fairies, with more fairy photographs, and then.

Oh, I have a question, Yeah, are these second batch of photos also touched up by mister mister Snellling.

Yes, they are, okay, just to make sure, you know, touched up for display and for resale.

Then he publishes a book called The Coming of the Fairies, A whole book, A whole Well, here's what I'll say.

I read this book.

You're a good woman, Dani.

No, no, it's a very very short book, okay.

And also you're like, man, you could just write a book so fast, because this book is very very short.

B A big old chunk of it is just the full text of the article he wrote for the Strand.

And then also a lot of this book is just letters from Gardner.

And then part of this book is a full article that someone else wrote criticizing the fairies.

And then he was like, this is an accurate critique, which is like a.

Good criticizing the existence or being like these fairies aren't very good role.

Models, criticizing the photos, saying the photos are a hoax.

Basically like he that's who I want to hang out with.

Yeah, he was giving the book the coming Up of the Fairies does do both sides things, but so it also has this long article by someone kind of pointing out that it possibly is a hoax, but that Conan Dout was like, these are fair points.

And then at the end is just a lot of letters from people saying like I've also seen fairies.

So it's like he wrote a book, but like he wrote a.

Book, Okay, it's more like the collected works of people who believe the fairies.

It's more just like who doesn't.

It's more just like a research dossier for this episode fantastic.

It was very helpful.

But yeah, so he writes this book and basically at the end, even with his like just asking questions vibe, he clearly thinks they're fairies, seem fairies.

But he does say quote, I do not myself contend that the proof is as overwhelming as in the case of spiritualistic phenomena.

So he's like other, there's other proof that's better.

It's like ghosts, for sure.

Fairies probably far from being resented.

Such criticism, so long as it is earnest and honest, must be most welcome to those whose only aim is the fearless search for the truth just asking questions.

The response to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle publishing a book about fairies and an article about fairies is not entirely positive.

Instead, I'm going to show you a political cartoon that I would love you to describe.

Okay.

So it's a it's an old man, I guess Arthur.

That is Arthur.

Okay.

So it's he's very large, and he's sitting on a stool, and he has smoke about his head.

He has his head in the and he has shackles on his ankles, and the chain is being held by a guy in like us like a robe, and he's smoking a pipe and he has an intense widow's peaking.

I don't know Satan, he's.

Sherlock Holmes, my friend.

A poor Sherlock Holmes has to be shackled to this dodo.

I mean, there are certain characters who I wish existed apart from their authors, So I kind of get it.

And this headline from the San Francisco Examiner, A Buzzy's from San Francisco A says poor Sherlock Holmes hopelessly crazy.

That's a very nice headline.

Conan Doyle, who has been victimized by transparent spirit frauds now offers photographic evidence that fairies really exist just like the story books.

Hey, listen, there's authors I wish would stop listening to certain crazy people.

I mean, the public response is not, oh my god, fairies are real, it's look at this stupid author.

Yes, people are mostly embarrassed and making fun of Doyle, sure, which I do think is public.

Yeah.

And I think is also an important point in hoaxes that we think if someone said, you know, Cottingly fairies, Oh what a hoax, that you're like, oh, they fooled the world.

But that's really not the case.

They just fooled some people, sure, and that happened all the time.

And they're the one article that I told you that he Conan Doyle in his own book published like a very long article critique and it ended with a really good burn, which is knowing children and knowing that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has legs, I decide that the miss Carpenters have pulled one of them.

Cute.

Carpenter's was also like the name that he changed from right for his article, and the London newspaper Truth wrote for the true explanation of these fairy photographs, what is wanted is not a knowledge of a cult phenomena, but a knowledge of children.

So it's kind of like you said right at the beginning.

One guy, Major John Hall Edwards, who was also was a photographer and a pioneer of medical X ray, was like, I have no hesitation in saying these photos could have been faked.

And also it's dangerous because putting such absurd ideas into the minds of children will result in later life in quote manifestations and nervous disorder and mental disturbances.

So he's taking it even a little far.

I have a question, Yeah, are the girls at this point, are they like getting rich off of this?

Like, what are they getting out of this other than I would assume having fun duping people.

No, what they're getting out of this is annoyed.

The main reporter who wrote this long takedown comes to Elsie's job, and to quote the article, he says, like her parents, she just said she had nothing to say about the photographs and singularly enough used the same expression as her father and mother.

I am fed up with the thing.

So you know, journalists keep coming to them and they're just done.

And also no money.

Because Arthur Conan Doyle did right when he first heard about the photos.

He wrote separately to Elsie, the older girl and her dad and sent Elsie a book which like she loved and was like really honored by, and he said, can I buy the negatives?

And the dad just gave it to him for free because he's like, Okay, if this is like a prank my daughters are doing, I don't want to benefit financially, like ooh, we're not trying to hoax anyone, We're not trying to scam anyone.

And if fairies are real, then like we don't want to profit from that, so they just gave the negatives for free.

So the girls are getting nothing except annoyed and embarrassed at school.

If you're not even making money, like just say you why, like just give it up?

You know.

Like we're going to get to the later legacy.

But I want to take one brief, tiny detour back to Arthur Conan Doyle's dad.

Okay, I mentioned that there was a tragedy.

Yes, his dad fairy kill him.

His dad, Charles Altmont Doyle was an illustrator and he went to a quote lunatic asylum.

He was an artist that like drank himself into oblivion and was in and out of asylums.

Died in a lunatic asylum in eighteen ninety three.

But he was always even by the time he was like institutionalized drawing ethical creatures, including fairies.

Okay, and did they look like these fairies?

They did?

Kind of, I mean, because kind of this is just like how people draw fairies, stereotypical fairies.

But people, I think, like to make something of the fact that like Doyle's poor mad father had seen fairies, and now Doyle is like really trying to convince the world that they were real and there's an article from Lapham's quarterly, like a very short article, but at the end of that talks about Arthur Conan Doyle's dad, And at the end it says, I'm no Doyle expert, but here's where my mind goes.

Conan Doyle's belief in fairies was an act of revelation and forgiveness, a veiled acknowledgment of his father's secret world.

That's so sweet that he didn't want to He was like, my dad wasn't crazy.

He just saw these things no one else could see.

It's so sweet.

And like, if we were making a biopic and like bennettict Cumberback, like I think like starring a cumber batche there'll be a scene where like he's reading the criticisms of everyone being like Doyle is an adult, like fairies aren't real, and then he like goes to visit his dad in the asylum and sees the fairy drawings.

I it's sweet, but I don't actually think it's true because his dad died twenty five years before this.

So and he also like was never close with his dad and like didn't have a relationship with the dad.

So maybe, well maybe here's what I'll say.

Yeah, if you go to the Mulin Rouge in Paris and you drink absent, you can see a fairy and she is Kylie Minogue, and she is Kyler Minogue, and these are sort of Kylie Minogue genre ferry.

They could totally be played by Kylie Njogue.

So later, after all this conan do you know, writes his articles, Gardner visits the girls in Coddingly one more time with more cameras and more photographic plates, and also brings like an occultist friend of his, and he wants more photos and the girls are like, oh no, can't no more this time.

The weather's not cooperating, and as he said, as Arthur Coundoyle writes, the fates were most unkind and a combination of circumstances stood in the way of success.

But the girls are like, oh no, yeah, we can still see the fairies.

And the occultists that Gardener brought was like, yeah, I see fairies everywhere here.

There are definitely fairies here.

Or he has glaucoma, and so for the next kind of few decades people more or less forget about this.

Occasionally people will interview the girls and they sort of hint at the fact that it wasn't real.

They don't come out and say it was a hoax, but they say things like, oh, it was just we were photographing our thoughts.

That's cute.

I also wish they would say how they did it.

Yeah, So that's sort of where we're at for the next few decades until the eighties, the nineteen eighties and nineteen eighties, and we're introducing a man named Jeffrey Crawley who's the editor of the British Journal of Fatahography.

Are the girls dead at this point?

They are not, but they're really old.

They're seventies and eighties, okay, And Jeffrey Crawley is like, look, I'm going to start from square one and examine this scientifically, and he writes a ten part series for the British Journal of Photography from nineteen eighty two to nineteen eighty three exposing them as fakes, incredibly methodically, using the exact same cameras and the exact same lenses, figuring out exactly objectively how you would have made the photos look like that.

And he's kind of the first one who goes back to the original negatives and sees the way they're blurry, in the way that they were before Snelling clarified them and figures out painstakingly that they were in fact hoaxes.

This is the type of stuff I love.

I love the scene in Apollo thirteen where they have all this stuff that the astronauts have on board and they have to figure out how to make an air filter.

I love when you just like get the gear and try to make that.

Is exactly what he's doing.

He gets the original cameras, yes, and figures it out.

I love that he's gone where I'm going to go through the explanation.

But I just think it's very very sweet that the New York Times in his obituary, he was just so nice about it.

In this takedown he like, isn't mean or he's an expert who's not.

It sounds like he was impressed.

He was like, you did a really good job faking these photographs.

And then his New York Times obituary headline is Jeffrey Crawley eighty three dies semi colon gently deflated a fairy hoax, and at the end of his article he wrote, of course there are fairies, just as there is Father Christmas.

The trouble comes when you try to make them corporeal.

They are fine poetic concepts taking us out of this at times too ugly real world.

At least Elsie gave us a myth which has never harmed anyone.

And he also gives Elsie her props, which no one else has, and says, how many professed photographers can claim to have equaled her achievement with the first photograph they ever took.

That's so nice.

This podcast is not that nice.

Yeah, he's so nice.

And Crawley receives a letter dated February seventeenth, nineteen eighty three from a woman named Elsie Hill maiden name right, who was eighty one years old, Okay, and she says, I am going to send you a quote and please read.

This is way more heartwarming than I thought it would be.

Dear mister Crawley, thank you for your letter revealing so much depth and understanding of the pickle.

Francis and I got ourselves into that day when our practical joke fell flat on its face, when no one would believe we had got pictures of real fairies.

Just imagine if they had, the joke would have ended there and then.

But instead the laugh was on us both feeling rather silly, we let our joke life flat on its face till some years later when Conan Doyle came into it.

Which is basically what happened with these kids got annoy they figured out how to fake these fairy photographs, wanting to fool their parents, and when their parents didn't even pretend to be fooled, not even like, oh my god, fair the girls would have been like, we tricked you, yeah, because that's how but instead they were like, no, they're real.

And all this because they wouldn't stop getting wet.

Because they wouldn't stop playing in this flashing in the stream.

I mean, who hasn't been there, but right.

It's like they just wanted to be able to like put their hands up and say like I fooled you, yeah, and that their parents didn't let them do that, and so then they were like, well, now what The answer, which you figured out right away, is she was an amazed She was a really good artist, and she just copied fairies from a book onto cardboard, drew them and used hat pins to plant them around the.

Girls, and then they maybe wiggled in the wind, and suddenly the fairies were flying.

And also the originals were blurry.

The negatives were later clarified, so when people see movement, they're probably like seeing things that are kind of confusing.

And what's also kind of happening is like it's a simple trick that then is layered on this clarification.

So like even experts are like, oh, it kind of looks weird in a way I can't quite put a finger on.

To be clear, if you haven't looked these up yet, they look extremely two dimensional.

Yeah, they do not in any like if you had made a little a little like figurine, it would have more depth than shadowing.

Yes, it they look like pictures.

But people, it's a classic case of people believing what they want to believe.

This situation where I think people like people today like the fallacy that people in the past were dumb and that like we look at these photos and you're like, oh, it's so obvious they're two dimensional.

But if you have this religious worldview and these photos validate that worldview, you're gonna want to see the evidence of that.

But yeah, she just use hatpins and then threw it all in the stream.

And I also want to point out that something that you said at the beginning of this episode, which is true to some degree, which is like, well, cameras were kind of news, so people just saw a picture and were like, that's real.

Yes, yes, to some degree, but I guess now if people just believe AI slop on Facebook no matter what.

And but also the idea that like people were rubs about cameras is also kind of a misconception because double exposure was like a known thing, like in advertisings, cameras were being advertised for their abilities to take trick photographs, like it was a known thing that you could do.

I am wrong.

No, it's like it's a nuanced thing.

Because also people aren't mamoliths.

Some people are gullible, some people aren't.

I mean, there is that quote that's like any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic.

Yeah.

The one I still think everyone who believed this is stupid.

The one little like fun tidbit that I do love is that the illustrations that Elsie copied were from a popular children's book called Princess Mary's.

Book, and she's really good.

It's like an anthology of stories for children with illustrations, and one of those stories in the anthology book was by a mister Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Oh my god, he didn't even Recognie.

If he had bought that book, he would have been like, hey, he.

Has his own book.

See this is the.

In the Sherlock version of this.

That's how someone would convince it and be like, you, stupid man, this has been on your shelf the entire time.

You never read it because it was for girls.

It was dumb and for girls so basic.

I mean, what had happened, like we said, was like these girls wanted to fool their parents.

When their parents weren't fooled, they got mad and they doubled down.

And then this like really rich, famous, impressive man came to them and they were sixteen and embarrassed and didn't know what to do, felt like they were in too deep.

And also when the articles come out, people are like making fun of them, and Elsie and Francis get together and they decide that they're going to wait until Conan Doyle and Gardner die before they tell anyone, kay, because they felt they felt bad.

Literally, in the letter that Elsie wrote to Crawley, she goes I was also feeling sad for Conan Doyle.

We had read in the newspapers of his getting some jarring comments, first about his interest in spiritualism, now laughter about his belief in our stories.

He had recently lost his son in the war, and the poor man was probably trying to comfort himself with unworldly things.

So they just feel bad for him.

So they decide that they're going to wait until they die before they tell the story.

Conan Doyle dies in nineteen thirty when he's seventy one.

Gardner the Theosophist doesn't die until he's ninety nine years old, literally almost one hundred until nineteen sixty nine.

We went to the moon in nineteen sixty nine, but they don't reveal themselves afterward.

They wait another decade.

They wait.

Basically, it's this awkward thing where then and Elsie wants to confess, and Francis doesn't want to disenchant her daughter and grant and then granddaughter because they believe in fairies.

But they're giving, and also people kind of just don't have interest at this point, so they don't want to, like do some big expose.

In nineteen eighty two, Francis talks privately to this man named Joe Cooper for a series in The Unexplained, and then without Francis's permission, he publishes it I Guess the Confession, and then Francis admits in the Times of London the hoax.

But Francis, who was the younger girl at the time, you were entirely correct.

She maintained until the end of her life that she did see fairies and actually that the last photo, that sort of one that you found the most convincing, that mysterious blurry photo does show real fairies.

And she says that she took it.

Well okay, and Elsie, the older girl, says all of the photos were faked, and also she took the last photo.

And they both might be right because Crawley, the investigator thinks that one was a double exposure.

They accidentally they just took half a photo.

That was his theory.

So I mean.

Francis dies in nineteen eighty six, Elsie dies in nineteen eighty eight.

There's a very charming segment on Antique's Roadshow where Francis's daughter and granddaughter bring in the original camera and photos and are like, yep, our mom and grandma believed till the end of her life that she saw fairies, which is sweet.

The National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, which I mentioned, has the original prints and three cameras and letters and watercolors sketches of fairies.

So if you live near there, visit it and let us know.

I there are a few takeaways from this that I just want to kind of point out.

First, the thing that we sort of established is that, like, we think people are dumb in the past, but they're not.

Some people are gullible, some people aren't always.

But the reason that this hoax has stood to be fair?

Can I just say, yes, I do believe people were done in the past.

I just also think they're dumb.

Now that's very fair.

Thank you what I mean, thank you for that clarification.

Continue.

The reason that this hoax has like lasted for one hundred years isn't because people believed it so much, but kind of for the opposite reason.

I think the reason that the Conningly Fairies hoax has lasted so long is it's because isn't it crazy that the guy who wrote Sherlock Holmes believed this?

So that's that's like why this is a famous hoax.

Sure, not that it's so plausible.

So and the other thing that I do think is a good like reminder for this episode and just hoaxes in general, is people think of hoaxes as kind of like mean tricks, but this hoax only ever was an act of kindness.

Like the reason that Elsie made the fairies in the first place was because her little cousin was getting in trouble from her mom.

Her mom was mad at her for falling in the stream, and so she's like, we'll show her, and then they felt bad for Conan, Doyle and Gardener.

They were embarrassed, so like it was a hoax out of like British politeness you had brought up before.

Benefiting financially, the girls did not, but the men involved absolutely In a book in a lecture series, reproductions of the photos were made for sale at a cost of two shillings sixpence, and the profits from that sale was divided between three men, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edward Gardner and Harold Snelling, and apparently, quote Doyle seems to have stuck out for his rights to a larger share in any profits, since, as he pointed out, the exercise really rested on the article in this strand that's from Crawley's expose.

He does seem to be the one making this a thing.

There is zero profit for Elsie and Francis.

Allegedly, Doyle gave them each twenty pounds in bonds, which is not that much.

So not only did Elsie profit, it was actually actively bad for her.

She gets fired from her job at the card factory because there's always there's too many calls from interviewers, and also possibly she refused to let them use one of the photographs on a Christmas card.

And also she loses confidence in her own art because remember all of these expose as about people arguing whether these photos are real or not?

Is all people being like and yeah, we've seen her art and it's kind of shitty, so I wouldn't believe it.

She's probably not capable of it.

Like the people defending and believing the hoax, it rested on her own art being shitty.

See again, this is why, And I totally understand the altruistic reasons that they didn't where I'm like, ladies, demand credit for the thing you're good at, which is making these photos, like you are good at art.

She even sort of sassily writes in that nineteen eighty three letter to Crawley, This large nursing home was built by the Theosophist Association entirely from the proceeds of money from copy photos of the Coddingly Fairies booklet, costing half a million pounds.

Francis is a widow, and I expect she thought it a bit ironical as I sat mending flaws in cloth in a weaving mill far across the seat, because she moved to the United States, while at the same time, mister Gardner, who was a Theosophist, was on a fully paid tour of the universities all over the USA telling our fairy story.

So even when Elsie kind of tried to profit, she couldn't.

In nineteen seventy two, she tried to sort of like break the news and sell her mementos to Sutheby's in London, but they declined because they only dealt with quote, very ancient documents.

So even when they tried to make some money, they couldn't.

And I paus it to you, then, who is the real scammer here?

Well?

Did they only ask Suthebys.

I feel like Ripley's would have bought it like there's more than one place that buys old stuff.

You really should have advocated for them.

I just say, like, I feel like I just want to give them so much advice.

Yeah, Okay, who is the real hoaxter?

I guess it was like the society that turned it from like a prank to into a hoax by trying to disseminate this as like real information.

Yeah, but I also just don't think that people should lie.

So like that's why I'm slightly less generous towards the girls, even though they had such nice aims where I'm just like, but it's a lie.

It's a lie.

But it's like, isn't that what little girls do to their parents?

Yeah, but then when you're not a little girl anymore, you say, oh, by the way, I made that up?

Yeah yeah yeah.

But then I think they were just embarrassed and into deep which like imagine if like a famous, like the most famous acclaimed author you like, told a lie and then he was like defending you, and who's like the the equivalent of a sir at the Conan Doyle, like a popular and also like esteemed author.

I don't know, I mean, I get being embarrassed imagine if I was twelve.

Imagine if you made a little prank when you were twelve and then Anne patch it was like, oh my god, Lizzie, this is this is brilliant.

Thank you for reinforcing my worldview.

I'm going to write a whole book about how right you are.

I would be like, someone needs to help and patch it.

I'm also honest to a fault.

Like in circles where I am known, I am known as being rather blunt.

Which is I think is a good thing.

I really relate to being too embarrassed to tell the truth.

The difference I think with us is I very much am so scared of confrontation that if I did get caught in a lie, it would be really hard for me to admit the truth.

But that's why I wouldn't lie in the first place, because the thought of it makes me really anxious.

Yeah, these days, I only lie for fun.

Well that's what they were doing.

Were trying to get out of trouble.

Well, also fun.

The older one was definitely also having fun.

She was borrowing her dad's camera.

Yeah, drawing fairies.

I mean again, they had no TikTok.

What were they supposed to do?

They were drawing fairies on cardboards and sticking them into the ground with happens.

It sounds fun.

So, uh, Lizzie, we you've seen a movie about this.

They've made at least two, one called fairy Tale a True Story starring Peter O'Toole, and then one called Photographing Fairies with Ben Kingsley.

You presumably saw one of those.

Feel like I saw the first one.

When did the First Time come out?

Nineteen ninety seven?

That sounds right?

Who would you cast in this movie?

Okay?

Well, in my movie they are sisters, okay, And we're making Simplify, Simplify five to simplify.

And in my movie, we're making this fifteen years ago.

Oh it's like it's a modern like and not not Secret Garden Times.

No, it is secret.

What I'm trying to say is the Fanning sisters, but I need them to be younger.

Oh that's great, Okay, Like I.

So I made this movie fifteen years ago.

I said it in Secret Garden Times.

I made both the girls young, and I cast the Fanning sisters.

I'm casting if we can do young, I'm casting young.

Kristen Dunst as the older sister cute because I think that era Kirsten Dunst is kind of perfect for this.

Yes, who else You need a gardener and you need an Arthur Conan Doyle and I need a snelling.

I'm doing a Conan Doyle as Benedic Cumberbatch as a Sherlock nod.

I feel like Kristin Wigg as Polly.

Yeah, like a little kookie, like she's like, I don't know, maybe John c Riley is snelling.

Sure, John c Riley is snelling.

Kenneth Branna as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Oh, that's good.

That's good.

And yes, I lifted that from his proro but it worked.

Do you think you would have fallen for this?

No?

But I also I'm scared of conflict in the way that I don't like to call people out for lying.

No, you would have been dunking on Conan Doyle on Twitter maybe, but.

I would have only if everybody else was doing it too.

Like I never I would never be the person to be like whistleblower.

I would just be like, oh, like cool pictures, I don't know, you know what I mean?

Like, I would never because if it turns out that it was real, I would feel so stupid.

That fairies exist.

The world order has been upended.

I don't know.

Yeah, no, I mean absolutely correct.

You don't want to be the one person who doesn't realize that fairies aren't real.

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for listening to our pilot episode.

You should follow me on Instagram at Danish Schwartz with three z's at the end, and follow the shows Instagram at Hoax the Podcast.

If you have any questions, comments, photos of you with fairies at this museum with the camera, you should email Hoax Thepodcast at gmail dot com.

Lizzie where can the people find you?

They can find me online at l i zz zz zie l g a n across most, if not all platforms.

Send us your hoaxes, send us your pictures of fairries.

Please, thanks for listening.

More hoaxes to come.

Byey Hoax is a production of iHeart Podcasts.

Our hosts are Danish Schwartz and Lizzie Logan.

Our executive producers are Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, with supervising producer Rima L.

K Ali and producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk.

Our theme music was composed by Lane Montgomery For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for listening.