In 1917 two young girls, cousins Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright, took several pictures of fairies outside their home in Cottingley, Yorkshire in order to prove to Elsie's parents that such creatures exist. The father wasn't convinced. His reaction, upon seeing the first picture, was to ask Elsie why there were "bits of paper" in it. But the mother was more impressed. Through her the pictures came into the hands of the spiritualist community, which included Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle was very much taken with the images and proceeded to promote them as proof that fairies are real.

As controversy about the pictures grew, the girls took three more pictures in 1920, in order to provide further proof of the existence of fairies. All five pictures are shown here in the order they were taken, from earliest to latest.

Skeptics noticed many problems with the photos (in addition to the obvious one that the fairies look like bits of paper). For instance, in the first photo why is Frances not looking at the fairies? (The girls claimed they were so used to the fairies that they often paid them no attention.) And why does the second fairy from the left not have wings? In the second photo, why is Elsie's hand bizarrely elongated? (Frances attributed this to "camera slant.") In the fourth photo, why is the fairy dressed in the latest French fashions?

Despite these problems, the photos continued to attract believers. It wasn't until the early 1980s, when Frances and Elsie were old ladies, that they finally confessed. Elsie, the older of the two, had been the brains behind the hoax. Having some talent as an artist, she had sketched the fairies. Then they had cut out the figures and held them in place with hatpins. In the second photo (of Elsie and the gnome) the tip of a hatpin can be seen in the middle of the creature. Doyle had seen this dot, but interpreted it as the creature's belly button, leading him to argue that fairies give birth just like humans!