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How Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Was A Real-Life Fairy Hunter
Oct 15, 2025
If modern movie and TV versions of the world’s most famous detective have taught us anything, it’s that the popularity of Sherlock Holmes is forever ingrained in our collective pop-culture memory. Even Star Trek told tales of Holmes and Watson through the lens of the 24th century. But the man who brought Holmes to the world—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—was a bit of a detective in his own right. And in the early twentieth century, he became involved in a supernatural investigation of his own that would give Sherlock a run for his money.
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If modern movie and TV versions of the world's most famous
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detective have taught us anything, it's that the popularity of Sherlock Holmes
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is forever ingrained in our collective pop culture memory. Even Star Trek told tales of Holmes and Watson
0:15
through the lens of the 24th century. But the man who brought Holmes into the world
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was a bit of a detective in his own right
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And in the early 20th century, he became involved in a supernatural investigation of his own
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that would give Sherlock a run for his money. So today, we're investigating Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's obsession
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with a supernatural hoax. The tale of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Fairies
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begins with his growing interest in spiritualism. It all began with a strong belief in his nanny's psychic abilities
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and increased from there. A belief that the dead are able to communicate with the living
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through some earthly medium, spiritualism became a beacon for Doyle in his later life. He would even spend the last 14 years
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of his life dedicated to the cause. But there was more to it than that. The sad death of his brother
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and his son Kingsley in 1918 served as a catalyst for these beliefs. These deaths and a few other
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factors piqued his curiosity in the subject. So he decided to go into business for himself
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Cue the Ghostbusters theme. Armed with a strong sense of spiritualism and his own
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investigative skills, he took on The Curious Case of the Cottingly Fairies
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The story of Doyle's investigation into the Cottingly Fairies begins with a popular British
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magazine called The Strand. In the winter of 1920, the magazine published a curious story
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with the headline, Fairies Photographed, an epoch-making event described by A. Conan Doyle
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Regular readers of the magazine knew Doyle's work well. His Sherlock Holmes stories were often published in the magazine prior to any other publication
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This headline probably came as a bit of a shock, to say the least. Whenever readers opened up the brand new issue of Strand featuring Doyle's work
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they expected to read the latest Holmes adventure. But instead of a harrowing tale of Holmes versus Moriarty
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or the latest Professor Challenger escapade, readers were treated to a serious supernatural expose
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It's like getting casserole recipes in popular mechanics. It doesn't make any sense
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This time, however, readers were dumbfounded by Doyle's fairy hunt. How on earth could the creator of the world's greatest detective believe in such supernatural nonsense
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What was he thinking? To Doyle the story made sense Never one to shy away from an investigation he applied his intelligence to a unique case
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While Strand readers may have thought Doyle had a screw loose, it was actually quite the opposite
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Doyle wasn't shy about writing about his beliefs in fairies and spirits. When he first heard of the news of the Cottingly fairy photographs
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he decided to dig a little deeper. He began by reaching out to experts at the George Eastman Kodak Company
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After examining each of the first two fairy photos, the experts came to a consensus
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There was no evidence of photo doctoring. Their discovery came with one caveat, however
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While there was no evidence of photo manipulation, the experts insisted someone who knew enough
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about photography would be able to fake the pictures. But the pictures were, in fact, faked
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And that was years before Photoshop was even a gleam in some developer's eye
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Following his discussion with the experts at Eastman Kodak, Doyle made a decision
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He felt the two Yorkshire village girls who took the fairy photos couldn't possibly have faked them
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Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths were working class girls whom Doyle felt lacked the skill to do so
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He wrote, I argued that we had certainly traced the pictures to two children of the artisan working class
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and that such tricks would be entirely beyond them. Such short-sightedness does not make a good detective
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but it didn't stop Doyle from continuing his investigation. After ruling out Wright and Griffiths as possible photo manipulators
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Doyle went straight to the source of the fairy photo shoot. He sent someone on his behalf
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Enlisting the aid of one Edward Gardner, he wanted to investigate the scene itself
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An ardent believer in fairies himself, he wrote to Wright's mother in an attempt to
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convince her to take more photos. In one letter he wrote, I know quite well that fairies exist
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and that they are very shy of showing themselves or approaching adults. And it is only when one
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can obtain the help of their friends that one can hope to obtain photographs and hence lead to a
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better understanding of nature's ways than is possible otherwise. Gardner had already spoken
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with several people who told him the girls often played with fairies and elves. When he finally
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arrived in Cottingley, he didn't suspect there was anything strange about the photographs at all
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As Gardner interviewed Elsie Wright's parents, he received nothing but genuine responses
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Her parents had no idea whether or not the photos were fake. They told Gardner about the origin of the photos
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Surprisingly enough, it did not involve a hidden fountain or playing some kind of flute
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Elsie took her father's camera to a small valley behind her cousin Francis' house
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While there she took a few pictures in an area where Francis was convinced she seen fairies Afterward they took the negative to Elsie home where her father developed it in his darkroom room The result was the first fairy photo that eventually caught Arthur Conan Doyle attention in the first place
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But it was all based on some artwork and artistic cutouts. Photography was not a new hobby for Elsie
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She desired to be an artist for some time. She regularly painted watercolor fairies
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Then she'd stick them to hat pins or arrange them in the yard. Though she had considerable talent
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and Gardner saw her watercolors on display, he reasoned she didn't quite have the skills
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to draw the fairy seen in the photos. You can see where this is going. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of course
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believed Gardner's assertion. He praised Elsie's family for their honesty and simplicity
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and told Doyle he was convinced the photographs were 100% genuine. For his part, Gardner appreciated the opportunity
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to interview Elsie in person. She described the fairy's colors as the palest of green, pink, mauve, and showed him the exact spot where she snapped the pictures
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She also shed some light on the gnome from the second photo, telling him the markings on the
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gnome's wings were actually musical pipes. She further explained that one could hear their faint
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high music on a still day. When Elsie Wright took the first Cottingley fairy photograph
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she did so using a complicated old-fashioned camera. The result was a strange, haunting image
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the likes of which most folks rarely see. So of course, Gardner asked Elsie's parents
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to have her take a few more photos. Elsie refused, citing the requirement
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for Frances to be present. Having moved to Scarborough recently, that simply wasn't going to happen
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But Gardner wouldn't let it go. He convinced Frances's parents to allow her
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to spend a portion of the summer in Cottingley. That dude really wanted some fairy photos
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With the heat on to produce new fairy pictures, Frances and Elsie concocted a plan
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When the two girls were alone, they came up with a plan to fool Gardner
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Elsie prepared two additional cutout fairies, placing them in the valley behind Francis' former
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home. Basing their illustrations and cutout figures on Alfred Noyes' A Spell for a Fairy
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they were prepared to put their plan into action. They took two more fairy photographs and another
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picture of the area. After that, they swore to never take another fairy photo again in their
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lives. Gardner, for his part, was thrilled at the reception of the two new fairy photographs
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But he was more enamored with the third photo, the one Elsie didn't fake. It showed a small
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sampling of the area's foliage, including a bird's nest, rainwater, and a few stray shadows
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So of course Gardner believed he saw fairies in that photo too And then things got a little weird With Gardner help Doyle doubled down on asserting the fairies were in fact real In March of 1921 Strand published a new piece
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The Evidence for Fairies by A. Conan Doyle, with new fairy photographs
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Doyle spent a significant part of the article praising Gardner's investigation and geeking out
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over the new fairy photo. He called it a fairy bower. Whatever that's supposed to mean, it's evident
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he wasn't referring to the Australian beach of the same name. The piece also included a new quote from Gardner, stating
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We have now succeeded in bringing this printout splendidly. In 1922, Hodder and Stoughton Limited published a new Arthur Conan Doyle book
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The Coming of the Fairies. It combined the two Strand articles and Doyle's optimistic belief that the existence of fairies
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would prove that other invisible beings interacted with our world. He believed it would take time for everyone else to see it his way
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He wrote, year. Well, at least he was right about cameras. As for the fairies, it remains to be seen. But a
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man can dream. While we now know the true nature of the photos, Doyle never knew they were faked
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Elsie and Francis deliberately chose not to reveal the secret of their photographs until
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long after Doyle's passing. Part of their reasoning was to spare him any embarrassment
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Elsie had seen him skewered in magazine cartoons and knew he desperately wanted to believe in the
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existence of the fairies. The secret of the illustrated fairy cutouts and their unique
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placing in the photographs certainly fooled Gardner and Doyle. Even after a candle company
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Price and Sons published a notice that the fairies in the photos were identical to the
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ones they used in their advertisements, it didn't faze them one bit. In 1983, Elsie admitted to the
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public that the photos were a hoax, although her cousin Frances maintained the fairies seen in the
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fifth photo were genuine until the day she died. Arthur Conan Doyle was not the cold, rational
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real-life parallel to his famous detective. His dedication to spiritualism, interest in seances
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and his work pertaining to that field are often ignored by biographers and researchers alike
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But they are vital parts of who he was in life. Doyle's belief in the Cottingley Fairies
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for better or for worse, serves to demonstrate an aspect of humanity we all experience at one
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time or another. And that's what dreams are all about
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