There are four main theories to account for their existence. They are the souls of the Pagan dead who cannot enter into Heaven because they are not good enough. They cannot go to Hell because they are not evil enough. They are fallen angels. When Lucifer was cast out of Heaven, those who went down to Hell were stopped in their flight and condemned to stay in, on and above the earth and in the waters. They are nature spirits. They are a race of small human beings who lived in Europe and the British Isles before the Celts. There is evidence that small humans lived in these lands. In the UK, they were the Picts, in Ireland, the Tuatha de Danaan.
July 1917: Frances and Elsie were playing in the Beck when Frances fell into the water. She knew she would be in trouble of her knew this. When her mother, Annie, saw her, she scolded her. Frances told her that she had been playing with faeries and slipped on some rocks. She was sent to her room. Elsie said they should take pictures of the faeries.
Elsie's father, Arthur, thought that allowing them to take pictures would put an end to their ludicrous tales of playing with faeries. Arthur had believed the girls were playing a joke. This would stop it.
The girls went to the Beck with the camera. They were not gone long. When they returned, they said they took a picture of faeries. Arthur took the plate out of the camera and into his darkroom to develop. As the picture began to develop, he wondered what the hazy images were and was told that they were the faeries. He also asked what the bits of paper he found were. Elsie replied that it was the faeries they played with by the waterfall. She was not questioned about this answer.
Arthur knew his daughter was a talented artist. She had attended Bradford Art College since she was 13 and she had been drawing pictures of faeries for a long time. Mothers, Annie and Polly, shrugged off the pictures at the time.
The first photograph shows Frances gazing into the camera with a group of faeries dancing. The second was a picture of Elsie with a gnome. Arthur believed they were cardboard cutouts and stopped lending the girls his camera.
