Ingenious Hoax? 9 9
When developed, one clear photograph showed a fairy poised on a
bush offering Elsie a flower. The other showed a fairy gaily leaping up
in front of Frances's face. Elsie reported that the leaping fairy had
jumped up several times in front of Frances but that when she took the
snap it had jumped so near that Frances tossed her head back "to nearly
spoil it all."
Of the third picture, Elsie explained that it had been a chance shot,
taken among the grasses at the fringe of a pool near the beck where the
girls had spotted movement in the grass. Hoping for the best, they had
taken the snapshot of a "tallish figure."
This third photograph proved most interesting. It showed a dense
mixture of grasses and harebells with intertwined fairy figures and
faces, and Gardner recognized that its features could be extremely
valuable for testing. It also showed a fairy bower, or arch of flowers,
something rarely reported in the annals of fairy watching. Professed
fairy watchers told Gardner the photo appeared to have caught the
fairies indulging in a "fairy bath."This they described as a special co-
coonlike restorative vessel used after lengthy spells of dull and misty
weather.
Gardner immediately took the negatives back to the Illingsworth
manager, who, upon careful examination, declared them to be from
the plates delivered to Gardner. The manager added that he could not
commit himself as to the authenticity of what had appeared on the
first two plates, but about the third he was emphatic: "An impossibil-
ity to fake."
Extra-sized enlargements were made from the plates and subjected
to rigorous analysis for any sign of paper, canvas, paint, or anything that
could have been used to represent fairy figures. An exhaustive search
was made with high magnification to see if any supporting thread
could be distinguished to account for the leaping fairy. Nothing was
found amiss.
With this new evidence, Gardner wrote again to Doyle: "It is not
easy to convey the sense of integrity I felt at the end of the investiga-
tion: to share it properly one would have to meet the parents and the
children as I did. Here I can only register my own personal conversion
to the acceptmce of the five photographs as genuine in every sense of