Fairies are mythical beings of folklore and romance. They are often depicted as diminutive winged humans with magic powers. The tooth fairy exhanges presents, usually coins, for teeth left out or under one's pillow at night. Fairy godmothers are protective beings, like guardian angels.
Fairies should not be confused with gnomes, who are also mythical diminutive humans but are deformed and live underground. Pixies, on the other hand, might be considered a type of fairy known for their cheerful nature and playful mishievousness. An elf might be thought of as a big pixie, often depicted as a mischievous dwarf, such as the Irish leprechaun known for his pranks but also believed to know where treasure is hidden. Elves are sometimes depicted as helpers of magicians, e.g., Santa's helpers.
Belief in such mythical beings seems common in rural peoples around the world. Occasionally, a city slicker who should know better is duped into believing in fairies. The most famous example of this that I am aware of is that of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who was duped by a couple of schoolgirls and their amateur photographs of paper fairies (known as the "Cottingley Fairies") taken in their Yorkshire garden. The faked photos are reminiscent of the most famous Loch Ness Monster picture, faked in a similar fashion by Ian Wetherell, as are many UFO photos, e.g., those of Billy Meier.
Doyle even published a book on the fairies, The Coming of the Fairies. He and a theosophist named Edward Gardner published the photos taken by sixteen year old Elsie Wright of her ten year old cousin, Frances Griffiths, with Elsie's cutouts of fairies, and proclaimed that these were not fakes, but the real thing. The real howler, though, was the debate which ensued over whether these were photos of real fairies or psychic photographs which recorded the thoughts of the girls projected onto the film! Doyle, like many who have come before and after him, longed for any proof of a world beyond the material world. His desire to find support for spiritualism led him to a number of delusions. Even so, he wrote great detective stories and in Sherlock Holmes created a mythical being much more interesting than any fairy.
reader comments
26 May 1996
While I was doing a little "surfing" on the Net, I came across your
homepage here. Wow... aren't you the skeptic.
You definately have a negative outlook on just about everything... or that's how the text files seem to point. I'm not trying to be insulting, by the way. But I mean, you have to believe in SOME things. If life was as black and white as a heavy skeptic might want to believe, life would be very cold.
reply: Actually, we skeptics think more in terms of shades of gray, purple, blue, red, etc. Sometimes its hot, sometimes it's pretty cool, and, yes, sometimes it's very cold.
Tell you what... I have a small story for you. Even I question my sanity when I tell people about it, but I KNOW it happened. Here goes...
When I was about 10 (roughly), I woke up from my sleep for no reason. I heard nothing, but I looked up towards my window. I was quite awake at this point, and saw a fairy! She was at the top of my window between the ends of the top of the curtains. She was basically floating there. You know the fairy that flies around in Walt Disney cartoons? That's close to what I saw! When the fairy looked down and noticed I saw her, she got a surprised expression, covered her mouth with her hand, kinda tucked in her body like a jerky motion, and then vanished.
You probably think I'm just making this up, but I DID see this.
reply: I may be a skeptic but your story just rings with verisimilitude. How could I doubt it?
Just TRY to believe that life is more than logical.
John \"Magnus\" Altinger
reply: No problem. You and your fairy are proof that life is more than logical.
further reading
Gardner, Martin. Science: Good, Bad and Bogus (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1981), ch. 9.
Randi, James. An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural (St. Martins's Press, 1995).
Randi, James. Flim-Flam! (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books,1982).