Fairies

Yesterday, when I was checking on the meaning of the word hoax, I ran across a few “hoaxes” that have become famous, or notorious, over time. One that I found interesting involves fairies….
In 1917, two yours girls, Elsie Wright and her cousin Frances Griffiths, claimed that they’d played with fairies in the garden of their home in Cuttingly, England. They even produced photographs of the fairies to prove it.
The pictures made headlines around the world and the story was believed by many, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. He became an ardent supporter of the girls’ story.
But 55 years later the girls, now old women, admitted that it had all been a hoax and that they had cut pictures of fairies out of a book and attached them with paper clips to branches and shrubs before taking the photographs. Frances Griffiths expressed her amazement that anyone believed the story, saying, “How on earth anyone could be so gullible as to believe that they were real has always been a mystery to me.”
Imagine what she’d think if she saw the Internet today…..
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