Fairy Investigation Society

The Fairy Investigation Society was founded in Britain in 1927 by Capt. Sir Quentin C.A. Craufurd, MBE and the artist Bernard Sleigh to collect information on fairy sightings.

During its prime, in the 1920s and 1930s, the society organized meetings, lectures, and discussions for collecting evidence of fairy life. With World War II, however, the society's records were largely lost or destroyed. The society was inactive until 1949 when Quentin C. A. Craufurd started the FIS up again with the help of Nottingham secretary Marjorie Johnson. Johnson wrote newsletters through the 1950s and helped create a survey of living fairylore, later published as Seeing Fairies.

During the late 1950s there were well over a hundred members, including famous individuals such as author Alasdair Alpin MacGregor, Ithell Colquhoun,Leslie Alan Shepard, RAF commander Sir Hugh Dowding, Victor Purcell, Walter Starkie (of gypsy lore fame), Naomi Mitchison and animator Walt Disney.

In 1960 a newspaper article in the Sunday Pictorial ridiculed Marjorie Johnson and Johnson began to withdraw from her role in the society. The society was only semi active under her successor Leslie Shepard, based in Blackrock, Dublin, Ireland, finally closing down in the early 1990s.

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