The Coming of the Fairies

When Mr. Gardner was in Yorkshire in July, he left a good camera with / Elsie, for he learned that her cousin Frances was about to visit her / again and that there would be a chance of more photographs. One of our / difficulties has been that the associated aura of the two girls is / needful. This joining of auras to produce a stronger effect than either / can get singly is common enough in psychic matters. We wished to make / full use of the combined power of the girls in August. My last words / to Mr. Gardner, therefore, before starting for Australia were that I / should open no letter more eagerly than that which would tell me the / result of our new venture. In my heart I hardly expected success, for / three years had passed, and I was well aware that the processes of / puberty are often fatal to psychic power.

I was surprised, therefore, as well as delighted, when I had his letter / at Melbourne, informing me of complete success and enclosing three / more wonderful prints, all taken in the fairy glen. Any doubts which / had remained in my mind as to honesty were completely overcome, for / it was clear that these pictures, specially the one of the fairies / in the bush, were altogether beyond the possibility of fake. Even / now, however, having a wide experience of transference of pictures / in psychic photography and the effect of thought upon ectoplasmic / images, I feel that there is a possible alternative explanation in / this direction, and I have never quite lost sight of the fact that it / is a curious coincidence that so unique an event should have happened / in a family some members of which were already inclined to occult / study, and might be imagined to have formed thought-pictures of occult / appearances. Such suppositions, though not to be entirely dismissed, / are, as it seems to me, far-fetched and remote.