In 1917, two girls, 16-year-old Elsie
Wright and her 10-year-old cousin Frances Griffiths, presented a local English
newspaper with photographs of themselves in the company of fairies and a gnome.
In modern parlance, the story went viral: the media and the public nationwide gobbled
it up with fascinated delight. More pictures followed. ‘Spiritists’ – a period term
alluding to spirit mediums, clairvoyants and the like – including the New
Zealander Geoffrey Hodson, who died in 1983 at the age of 96, converged on the
girls. Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, wrote a letter
expressing belief in the girls’ account.
