From Abracadabra to Zombies | View All
fairy
A fairy is a mythical being of folklore and romance. Fairies are often depicted as diminutive winged humans with magical powers. The tooth fairy exchanges presents, usually coins, for teeth left out or under one's pillow at night. Fairy godmothers are protective beings, like guardian angels.
Fairies should not be confused with gnomes, which are also mythical diminutive humans but are deformed and live underground. Pixies, on the other hand, might be considered a type of fairy known for their cheerful nature and playful mischievousness. An elf might be thought of as a big pixie, often depicted as a mischievous dwarf, such as the Irish leprechaun known for his pranks but also believed to know where treasure is hidden. Elves are sometimes depicted as helpers of magicians, e.g., Santa's helpers.
Belief in such mythical beings seems common in rural peoples around the world. Occasionally, a city slicker who should know better is duped into believing in fairies. An infamous example of such a dupe is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who was conned by a couple of schoolgirls and their amateur photographs of paper fairies (known as the "Cottingley Fairies") taken in their Yorkshire garden. The faked photos are reminiscent of the most famous Loch Ness Monster picture, faked in a similar fashion by Ian Wetherell, as are many UFO photos, e.g., those of Billy Meier. Doyle even published a book on the fairies: The Coming of the Fairies. He and a theosophist named Edward Gardner published the photos taken by 16-year old Elsie Wright of her 10-year old cousin, Frances Griffiths, with Elsie's cutouts of fairies. Doyle and Gardner proclaimed that the photos were not fakes, but the real thing. The real howler, though, was the debate which ensued over whether these were photos of real fairies or psychic photographs which recorded the thoughts of the girls projected onto the film! Doyle, like many who have come before and after him, longed for any proof of a world beyond the material world. His desire to find support for spiritualism led him to a number of delusions. Even so, he wrote great detective stories and in Sherlock Holmes created a mythical being much more interesting than any fairy, even if he didn't know the difference between induction and deduction.
Paramount Pictures has made a movie about Griffiths and Wright called Fairytale: A True Story. Harvey Keitel plays Houdini and Peter O'Toole plays Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
See also
Aztec UFO hoax,
Carlos hoax,
Arthur Ford hoax,
Mary Toft hoax,
Piltdown hoax,
Pufedorf hoax,
Steve Terbot, hoax,
and the Sokal hoax.
further reading
books and articles
Bourke, Angela. The Burning of Bridget Cleary (Pimlico, 1999).
Cooper, Joe. "Cottingley: At Last the Truth," The Unexplained, No. 117, pp. 2338-40, 1982.
Crawley, Geoffrey. 1982. The astonishing affair of the Cottingley fairies. (Part 1 of a 10-part series). The British Journal of Photography. December 24, 1982 pp. 1375-1380.
Gardner, Martin. Science: Good, Bad and Bogus (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1981), ch. 9.
Randi, James. Flim-Flam! (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books,1982).
websites
The Case of the Cottingley Fairies by James Randi
The case of the Cottingley fairies by Joe Cooper
The Tooth Fairy by Adrian Barnett
The Debunking of Three Hoaxes by James Opie
video
James Randi and the Cottingley Fairies
Last updated 02/23/09
, 
facilitated communication