The Cottingley fairies story is one of the first cases were real proves about mystery creatures has been introduced to the world. It all happened in the year 1917 at the afternoon; two girls played in the forest and took five pictures of real fairies.
Frances Griffiths and Elsie were children who used to play together in the garden at Cottingley village. One day they told Elsie’s father that they want to use his camera so they will be able to photo the little fairies they meet everyday deep in the woods. Of course he didn’t believe them, but still they asked very nicely so he lent the camera and showed them how to operate it. Few hours later the girls came back home with the camera and the father develop the films. He could see clearly that there are real fairies in the pictures, however they didn’t looked in three dimension so he thought that it’s just a little trick he couldn’t understand.
But the girls didn’t stopped, every once in a while they came back with fairy pictures and the father just save them in a notebook and forget about it. But Polly the mother couldn’t stop thinking what if it is for real? She always has been a huge fan of psychic mysteries and she wanted to share these fairies pictures and to prove the father that it is not a hoax. And so she gave the pictures to a respectable man in the community who had spiritual organization in that time. Then a special photographer has examined the information and concludes that they are real and not fakes. From that very moment everyone knew about this psychic mystery and the pictures have been published in magazines and newspapers.
As you might guess, many people were skeptics and argued that the fairies look is one dimensional like cartoon or a piece of paper hanging in the middle of the landscape. Other criticized the mimic of the girls face; they don’t look so surprised in this extra ordinary experience, in fact they don’t look on the fairies at all. To dismiss this claim, the girls stated that they are used to be near them all the time, it is something usual for them to be surrounded with this magical paranormal. More claims against the truth of these evidences are that some of the fairies didn’t have wings at all, and their clothing is very similar to the contemporary wardrobe.
So why so many English people believed in Cottingley fairies story? The rational explanation is that after World War One they wanted to feel something gentle, to have some hope, to see little fragile lives blooming honestly and untouched. It is a human need to search for good things after the bad situations that were created by the war. It is a good way to escape from the daily horror.
In the end someone found that the fairy pictures looks exactly as the drawing in the book: “Princess Mary’s Gift”. After few years a confession was made by one of the girls and she explained exactly how she copied these little fairy figures to a paper. The fairies were placed and attached in different positions with simple instruments such as strings and glue. There are many variations and conspiracies about this mystery until today. But even if it is not true story it can teach us a lot about ourselves and how we want to live our life. And beside that maybe after all real fairies do exists!