Well said. Despite being altogether familiar with the boundaries of reality, many people are still inclined to cross and embrace fantasy. They simply "want to believe".
Hint: This usually ends badly... : /
Posted on 10/14/2008 11:53:47 PM PDT by nickcarraway
He was the creator of the most rational and intelligent detective of all time. So why, asks a new book, was Arthur Conan Doyle fooled into believing in fairies?
Cottingley, a village outside Bradford in Yorkshire, would have remained in much deserved obscurity had not 16-year-old Elsie Wright taken a remarkable photograph of her ten-year-old cousin, Frances Griffiths, playing with 'fairies' on the banks of a stream which ran behind the garden of Elsie's house.
A few days earlier, in the summer of 1917, Frances had slipped and fallen into the stream. When she got home, her mother demanded to know why her dress was soaked and the tearful girl offered the excuse that she fallen into the water while she was 'playing with the fairies'.
Her mother, unamused, sent her up to the attic bedroom she shared with Elsie where, later that afternoon, the two girls hatched a childish prank that would make headlines around the world, severely damage the reputations of eminent public figures and generate a controversy that endured for generations.
The saga of the Cottingley fairies began with a mischievous idea from Elsie. She suggested they should take a photograph of the 'fairies' to prove to Frances' mother that she had been telling the truth.
By happy circumstance, the family owned a copy of Princess Mary's Gift Book, published in 1914 to raise funds for charity. The girls flicked through its pages, looking for suitable fairy pictures and found them in the illustrations for a poem by Alfred Noyes called A Spell For A Fairy.
They cut them out and pasted them on to cardboard. With a few long hatpins on which to mount their 'fairies' and a roll of zinc oxide bandage tape, they were ready.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Conan Doyle was also heavily into spiritualism. Seances and such. But Holmes scoffed at these things. I think it’s a credit to his ability to not inject himself into his character and try to push those beliefs onto the public. I give him credit for that.
As for why he’d fall for such things? He was human like the rest of us and NOT Sherlock Holmes.
Yes, it is interesting. I guess you have to believe in something, and that worked for him.
I am a huge Sherlock Homes fan. I could care less about his creator—LOL. I do love that he created those wonderful stories. I just wish there were even more.
IIRC, his belief in spiritualism was kindled by the death of his beloved son, who was a soldier in WW I. He was so overcome by grief that he attempted to communicate with his son “on the other side.” He lost a great deal of money to charlatans in this way.
One of the earliest examples of “fauxtography.”
Well said. Despite being altogether familiar with the boundaries of reality, many people are still inclined to cross and embrace fantasy. They simply "want to believe".
Hint: This usually ends badly... : /
.
Yes, ‘hope’ without a compass is bad thing but it’s getting more common.
I hadn’t heard anything about Doyle and the bomb shelter.
Frances and the Fairies, July 1917, taken by Elsie. Midg Quarter camera at 4 feet, 1/50 sec., sunny day.
Well, faries wear boots and ya gotta believe me. I saw them, I saw with my own two eyes....
Yes, it would be nice. But there are a huge number of Sherlock Holmes stories written by other authors, with varying degrees of success.
Fairy Rings, in my experience, refers to a circle of mushrooms growing, often, but not always, around cow patties. Also, these mushrooms are quite often hallucinogenic.
I think I’ll second the “external demonic activity.” :)
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