Elsie Wright, 16, and Frances Griffiths, 10, took photos of each other with what looked like fairies in July 1917. They took the photographs by a beck in the village of Cottingley, West Yorkshire. Elsie borrowed her father's Midg quarter-plate camera to take the photographs. Upon discovery of the photos, her father would not allow the girls to continue using the camera.

Mr. Wright doubted the authenticity of the photographs. He searched his house, the trash and the beck for evidence to disprove the girls' story. Mrs. Wright, on the other hand, was skeptical at first, but later believed that the photos truly captured fairies with her daughter and niece.

Many people, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (author of the Sherlock Holmes stories), believed that the girls really did see and play with the fairies in the photos. It wasn't until later in their lives that Elsie and Frances confessed that the photos were not true. The girls actually drew two dimensional pictures of fairies and a gnome and secured the cut-outs in front of the lens with hat pins while the photographs were being exposed.