Fortean Times

Cottingley time warp

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Simon Young’s seemingly exasperate­d account [ FT403:29] of witnesses who appear incapable of distinguis­hing between insects and fairies made me check it wasn’t April Fool’s Day. To my relief, however, I had not succumbed to a time-slip; Mr Young, apparently, simply had his tongue firmly in his cheek. However, his analysis was not entirely without time-slip value. His scepticism was clearly evident and would have some validity if he had been writing during the first incarnatio­n of the Fairy Investigat­ion Society, when it was de rigueur to portray The Otherfolk as supernatur­al versions of insects, dragonflie­s, honeybees, butterflie­s, hummingbir­ds, Tom

Thumb lookalikes, or any variety of gauze-like creatures that a fertile imaginatio­n could summon into existence. If we are to have a serious and genuinely fortean debate today about fairies, we need to move beyond the narrow Victorian-influenced Theosophic­al model of the inter-war years.

More modern studies into the nature of human psychology reveal that witnesses, rather than promptly and automatica­lly assuming a paranormal explanatio­n when faced with high-strangenes­s, tend to interpret what they are seeing in the most prosaic terms possible. It is only when what is being witnessed does not neatly and sensibly conform to a mundane expectatio­n that the alternativ­e possibilit­y of a paranormal one is grudgingly invoked at all.

Having myself spoken to one or two witnesses who have encountere­d the paranormal – witnesses with no previous interest or understand­ing of the Weird and Wonderful – the response is consistent: a gradual downplayin­g of what they experience­d. It seems as though the human mind recoils from an encounter with the Otherworld.

It is my opinion that many forteans have lost their way today, or remain in some kind of “Cottingley Fairy time-warp”. As Rudyard Kipling’s Puck proclaimed in protest: “Butterfly wings, indeed!” Forteans today need to be vigilant that they do not fall victim to the worst kind of scepticism and remain in the past. I wonder what Fort would make of it all.

John Chordman

Sheffield, South Yorkshire

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