The Coming of the Fairies

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In the 1970s, an author named Fred Geddings was doing some research for a book he was writing about 19th century illustrations. He came across a drawing that looked familiar in an old children's book called Princess Mary's Gift Book. It was of three dancing fairies, and it looked almost exactly like a photograph he'd seen before. Around the same time, the magician James Randy, also known as The Amazing Randy, had the photographs analyzed with an image enhancer used to detect fake UFO photographs. And he identified what he thought was a very important giveaway.

In the summer of 1917, 16-year-old Elsie Wright took a photograph of her 9-year-old cousin, Frances Griffiths. It was the first photograph she’d ever taken — and it became the source of a mystery that lasted for most of the 20th century.

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