extraordinary%20encounters

s i m p l e — “ Of course not”—spoken as if the
question we re a foolish and impertinent one.
That, however, was the last time the
women would maintain the pretense. In
1982, The Unexplained, a British magazine,
revealed that the two had confessed. In early
1983, they provided a signed statement to
British Journal of Photography editor Geoffrey
Crawley, who then wrote a long, definitive account
of the curious episode. The women did
not tell Crawley quite everything; they said
they wanted to keep some of the details to
themselves for a book they intended to write.
Neither lived long enough, however, to produce
the proposed volume. In a final, curious
footnote, Frances insisted to her death that
though the pictures did not show real fairies,
she had seen real fairies in the beck when she
and Elsie were friends and playmates.
A well-reviewed 1997 film, Fairy Tale: A
True Story, dramatized the story, with Peter
O’Toole playing Doyle.
See Also: Fairies encountered
Further Reading
Clapham, Walter, 1975. “There Were Fairies at the
Bottom of the Garden.” Woman (October):
42–43, 45.
Cooper, Joe, 1982. “Cottingley: At Last the Truth.”
The Unexplained 117: 2238–2340.
Crawley, Geoffrey, 1982, 1983. “That Astonishing
Affair of the Cottingley Fairies.” British Journal of
Photography Pt. I (December 14): 1375–1380;
Pt. II (December 31): 1406–1411, 1413–1414;
Pt. III (January 7): 9–15; Pt. IV (January 21):
66–71; Pt. V (January 28): 91–96; Pt. VI (February
4): 117–121; Pt. VII (February 11):
142–145, 153, 159; Pt. VIII (February 18):
170–171; Pt. IX (April 1): 332–338; Pt. X (April
8): 362–366.
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 1922. The Coming of the
Fairies. New York: George H. Doran Company.
Gardner, Edward L., 1945. Fairies: The Cottingley
Photographs and Their Sequel. London: Theosophical
Publishing House.
Hitchens, Christopher, 1997. “Fairy Tales Can
Come True. . . .” Vanity Fair 446 (October): 204,
206, 208, 210.
Hodson, Geoffrey, 1925. Fairies at Work and at Play.
London: Theosophical Publishing House.
Sanderson, S. F., 1973. “The Cottingley Fairy Photographs:
A Re-Appraisal of the Evidence.” Folk -
lore 84 (Summer): 89–103.
Curry 75
Smith, Paul, 1991. “The Cottingley Fairies: The End
of a Legend.” In Peter Narvaez, ed. The Good Peo -
ple: New Fairylore Essays, 371–405. Lexington:
University Press of Kentucky.
The Council
William LePar of North Canton, Ohio, channels
the Council, a single voice speaking for
twelve souls communicating from the Celestial
Level of the God-Made Heavenly Realms.
This, the Council says, is the only time in all
of history that human beings have been contacted
in this way. Since the original, involuntary
contact in the early 1970s, the Council
has generated hundreds of thousands of words
of discourse.
L e Par heads the SOL Association for Res
e a rch, a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization.
It publishes a new s l e t t e r, tapes, videos,
and books and sponsors lectures and a lending
library.
Further Reading
“Biographical Sketch of William Allen LePar,” n.d.
h t t p : / / w w w. s o l a r p re s s . c o m / a b o u t / B I O - B I L L .
HTM
Curry
In a published letter to author and UFO abductee
Whitley Strieber, an anonymous man
recounts an otherworldly encounter he experienced
at the age of eight, while living on an
Indian reservation in South Dakota. The correspondent
said he found himself inexplicably
outside the house in the middle of the night,
where he saw a smiling man who was somehow
“different,” with larger than normal eyes
and a small amount of hair on his head. Instinctively,
the boy knew the stranger’s name
was Curry, though later in life he learned that
curry is “actually a sort of spice from India.”
The stranger led the boy to an odd-looking
black car. Inside it was a man who looked to
be twenty years old or so. The man resembled
Curry, and somehow the boy understood that
he was to comfort him because the man was
frightened. The “car” ascended and flew rapidly
to a remote location where there was a