Massimo Polidoro is an investigator of the paranormal, lecturer, and cofounder and head of CICAP, the Italian skeptics group. His website is at www.massimopolidoro.com.
This year, 2017, marks the hundredth anniversary of one of the most famous hoaxes in history: the Cottingley fairies photos, taken by two Yorkshire girls in 1917. Or were they? A new hypothesis, recently put forward in the pages of Fortean Times magazine, suggests that the photos may actually have been taken later, after very similar pictures, recently rediscovered, had already been created by other photographers. But why would the dates of the Cottingley photos be changed? That’s the interesting part. Let’s first take a step back and review the story.