A famous set of black and white photographs show two young girls in a forested glend, posing

with what appeared to be some winged fairies. For most of a century, the caughtingly fairies

fooled some people who believed in them wholeheartedly, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, while

at the same time leaving others smiling politely at the girl's obvious prank photos.

How can a hoax be both obvious and persuasive to so many at once? The caughtingly fairies

are today unskeptoid.

Decoder Ring is Slates podcast about cracking cultural mysteries. In each episode, host

Willa Pascon takes a cultural question, object, or habit, examines its history, and tries

to figure out what it means and why it matters. The latest season is full of juicy topics

like, remember the viral phenomenon in optical mind-blower known as the Dress. What can we

learn from the rise and fall of one of the most well-known personal injury law firms in

America? Listen to these episodes and more on Decoder Ring, wherever you get your podcasts.

For listening to Skeptoid, I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com. The caughtingly fairies,

analysis of a famous hoax.

My first exposure to the caughtingly fairies was as a young boy when I eagerly read about

them in my book Vampires, Zombies, and Monster Men. Two young girls who had been about the

same age I was when I read about it had taken a series of photographs between 1917 and

1920 showing themselves in the woods with little six-inch tall, winged fairies dancing around

and posing with them. I always thought the pictures looked a little odd. The fairies seemed

flat and white, compared to the shaded three-dimensional girls and forest foliage. However, the book

also contained what was to me absolute proof that these photos did indeed show real fairy

creatures, and that's that the experts at Kodak had examined the negatives and found no evidence

...