Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [13]
Now the investigators are excited. Experts have been favorable in their opinions and the critics have been confounded. Doyle is off to Australia for some seances, and he leaves Gardner to try the Great Experiment: Can the girls produce more photographs? He is not hopeful, since they have not taken any in three years, but worse than that, the pangs of puberty would by now have taken hold of Elsie, and it is well known that girls aware of the birds and bees lose contact with sprites and elves. "I was well aware," he wrote, "that the processes of puberty are often fatal to psychic power." But a great surprise is announced to Doyle while he is in Australia. The girls have produced "three more wonderful prints"—a "complete success!" The new photos were taken in late August, several months after Doyle's entry into the controversy, and he is impressed: "Any doubts which had remained in my mind as to honesty were completely overcome, for... these pictures were altogether beyond the possibility of fake." However, expressing a note of caution, he remarks that "it is a curious coincidence that so unique an event should have happened in a family some members of which were already inclined to occult study." But he concludes this observation with, "Such suppositions... are, as it seems to me, far-fetched and remote.
Fairy offering a posey to Elsie ("photo number four"). Kodak Museum, UK
Frances and the leaping fairy ("photo number three"). Kodak Museum, U.K.
Gardner's detailed report tells Doyle that only three photos were possible because the weather in the area had been "abominably cold" and rainy, and on only two days were the cousins able to get to the fairy glen to take photographs. According to Gardner, he supplied the girls with two Cameo cameras—a folding type using single plates, and quite different from the Midg used earlier. Doyle reports that only one camera was used. Snelling, the expert who had vouched for the authenticity of the 1917 photos, says that these bear "the same proofs of genuineness as the first two," declaring further that at any rate the photo known as number five is "utterly beyond any possibility of faking!"
One of the new photographs—called number three and featuring a leaping fairy—is particularly interesting. Frances, whose face is shown in the photo, is somewhat blurred. Elsie has explained to Gardner that the fairy leaped up at the instant the photo was snapped (at 1/50-second) and that Frances "tossed her head back" in fear that the fairy was going to touch her face. Again, experts swear that the photos were not faked.
Fairies and their sunbath ("photo number five"). Kodak Museum, U.K.
Photo number four is quite attractive. It seems to be of a fairy in very modish costume offering a flower to Elsie. Elsie, reports Gardner, is not looking directly at the fairy figure; she seems to be looking a bit sideways. Says Gardner, "The reason seems to be that the human eye is disconcerting... If motionless and aware of being gazed at then the nature spirit will usually withdraw and apparently vanish. With fairy lovers the habit of looking at first a little sideways is common."
Later, in a more extensive report to Doyle, Gardner says that on August 26, 1920, "a number of photographs were taken, and again on Saturday, August 28. The three reproduced here are the most striking and amazing of the number." Gardner now says that he had twenty-four plates supplied to the girls and that they were marked secretly at the factory so that no switching of plates would be possible.
There is a final attempt, in August 1921, to take more photos. Stereo cameras and a motion-picture camera are supplied. There are no results, but one experiment is a resounding success. It involves a Mr. Hodson, who has a reputation for seeing fairies and other "elementals," though he has never photographed them. Sitting in the fairy glen with the girls, Hodson compares his