Creatures, Myths & Legends

Infamous Cottingley fairies photographs to be sold at auction

By T.K. Randall
July 28, 2025

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths - two young cousins who would often play next to a stream at the bottom of their garden - repeatedly claimed that they had seen fairies there.

To prove it, Elsie borrowed her father's camera and the girls set about capturing some photographs.

To everyone's surprise, the pair had managed to produce a set of very convincing (for the time) images showing what appeared to be actual fairies, often with one of the girls sitting beside them.

The images were so convincing, in fact, that they quickly went public and became headline news.

Many believed the fairies to be real, including author and spiritualist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who included the photos in a magazine article he'd written. The mystery of the Cottingley fairies would go on to endure for over 60 years until finally, in 1983, the two cousins admitted that the photographs had been faked using cut-out illustrations from a book.

Both, however, remained adamant that they had genuinely seen fairies at the bottom of the garden.

Now, more than 100 years after the photographs were taken, two copies of the originals are set to go up for sale at auction in England and both are expected to sell for thousands of pounds.

The photographs had originally been gifted to Mary Anderson - a school friend of Frances.

She had believed in their story her whole life and was shocked when it was revealed that the pictures had been faked. She had wanted to throw them out, but her family stopped her.

It's just as well that they did, as the photographs are now worth a small fortune.

Source: Lincolnshire World

Tags: Cottingley, Fairies