In 1917 two English girls came home with a photograph of fairies

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Originally published at: In 1917 two English girls came home with a photograph of fairies | Boing Boing

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Unexplained except for all the people who correctly identified the “fairies” as cardboard cutouts, starting with the father of one of the photographers in 1917.

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Photos are so easy to manipulate. Those girls should have come back with pressed fairies instead.

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This story has always made me want to write a Sherlock Holmes story where the eponymous detective analyzes this case and comes to a completely different conclusion as his creator.

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To paraphrase an old sleight of hand (magician) i knew: “The real magic is how credulous the average person is; they want to be fooled” (and then he’d go on about haunted house rides and curio collections)

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Didn’t they make a movie about those two?

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Obviously a Photoshop fake. I can tell by the pixies :grin:

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I see Kim Deal, but which one is Frank Black?

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I can tell I’m really an old fart, because I first read about this event (I’m guessing) 50 years ago. And I note that that movie is 24 years ago.

I guess everyone has to learn these stories for their first time, so thanks Boing Boing for educating the very young? I guess?

Wait, does anyone very young read this blog? or any blog?

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Better than Fairy Tale, imo.

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I’ve had that one for years. It’s hilarious (and a touch sad).

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Laurie R. King did that in her second Holmes book, A Monstrous Regiment of Women, where Sherlock Holmes exists in the same universe as Sir Author Conan Doyle. In that story, Holmes is quite vexed by Doyle’s credulity over the fairies. Unfortunately, King uses this as a way to establish her Holmes’ skeptical bona fides before she introduces “God Did It! With a Miracle!” as the correct and proven conclusion to a central mystery in the book. :frowning:

(I found the book to be an appallingly bad Mary Sue, where the the main character, Mary Russel, is clearly the author. King turns Holmes, Mary’s Mentor and father figure, into her lover, 40 years her senior. Which is just Woody Allen levels of icky, especially given that in the first book in the series the Mary Russel character is 15 when she meets and is mentored by the retired detective, who fills in as a father figure for the orphaned girl. That first book even got a Notable Young Adult book recommendation from the ALA, making the second book, with the emancipated Mary Russel and Holmes as lovers all the more crappy.)

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I must admit I enjoyed Harvey Keitel’s performance as Houdini in that movie.

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