Do you believe in fairies? The camera never lies…
Have you ever had a fairy encounter? Many people have believed they have over the years, including Arthur Conan Doyle who was famously a firm believer in the Cottingley Fairies, until the girls who took the fairy photos admitted their prank.
More recently, Manchester Met professor of Art Research, John Hyatt, made headlines when he apparently photographed fairies in Whitaker Park, Rossendale, in Lancashire.
"I was just taking [photos of] sunset through the trees and when I enlarged the photographs later in the studio, I saw these figures," he told the Manchester Evening News back in 2014. "They are not doctored apart from I increased the size of a detailed section of a larger photograph along with the DPI to stop them being just large pixels -- normal size enhancement techniques."
Some swore the tiny creatures with long legs were indeed fairy folk, while others, such as Erica McAlister, an expert in ‘small flying things’ from The Natural History Museum, was more circumspect, albeit in a rather charming way: “My first impression is that they can’t be fairies because there is no wand. But that’s like saying mosquitoes aren’t flies because they don’t look like ordinary house flies. So I had to approach this more taxonomically. Hmmm… maybe they are not fairies at all but rather insects. Small swarming winged insects. Small swarming midges such as chironomids.”
Hyatt replied that “People can decide for themselves what they are. The message to people is to approach them with an open mind," he said. “I think it’s one of those situations where you need to believe to see. A lot of people who have seen them say they have brought a little bit of magic into their lives and there’s not enough of that around.”
We think we can all agree with that. But maybe put that fly swat down… it might be a fairy!
You can see the Rossendale fairies/flies on the Natural History Museum’s website, where McAlister gives her full report on them.
If you’re planning a magical midsummer for this week, don’t miss our feature on days out in search of fairies, mermaids and more small folk in our June issue, in shops now.
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