Believe this…or not! We’re just passing on the news…
Something unbelievable and exciting has happened at Westfield…a repeat of an event from the past! A fairy has been captured on film at Westfield Heritage Village. Is it real? Is it a hoax? The only way to truly know is to see the photograph with your own eyes. The photo will be on display at Westfield’s Haunted Halloween this Friday and Saturday evenings from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Westfield Heritage Village has a photograph of a beautiful young fairy sitting on the bed upstairs in their historic Gillen house. Photographer David White, a volunteer at Westfield, uses a working antique box camera to take sepia photographs of images at Westfield. [Ed. note: He is the photographer in the photo in the blog post below.] When David went upstairs recently to photograph the bedrooms at the Gillen house he was surprised to see a young girl with fairy wings sitting quietly on the bed. Without disturbing her he was able to capture the image on film.
This unlikely event is strikingly similar to the Cottingley Fairies story from 1917 when two young cousins in England captured photographs of themselves with fairies beside the beck (stream) in the village of Cottingley where one of the girls lived. The pictures came to the attention of writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who used them to illustrate an article on fairies he had been commissioned to write for a Christmas 1920 edition magazine.
Efforts were made to validate the Cottingley photos but none of the experts could prove or disprove whether they were of real fairies or not. By sheer coincidence, Westfield now also has a photograph of a lovely young fairy.
Has history repeated itself? What other mysteries may be uncovered in the Village during Westfield’s Haunted Halloween? Visitors to Westfield’s Halloween programme will have the opportunity to view the photograph, decide for themselves if it is real or a hoax and discover many of the past traditions and mysteries of Halloweens gone by.
Have you ever seen a fairy?
3 Comments
Is this photo online yet? I can’t seem to find it. I wanna see it with my own eyes!
Thanks for remembering this. I’m curious too. I’ve passed on your note to Conservation Hamilton, which is in charge of Westfield. Hope we get an answer!
For an update to this story, PLUS a look at the actual, controversial photo itself, see our blog post of Jan. 6, 2012! We’re delighted to share the photo with you.