When two young English cousins claim to have captured fairies on film, their photographs attract the attention of legendary skeptic Harry Houdini (Harvey Keitel) and legendary dreamer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Peter O'Toole). But are the fairies real, or are they simply the wistful projections of the two lonely girls, whose fragile spirits have been crushed by the death of a brother and the loss of a father in World War I? Based on a true case from 1917 in which the girls' photos turned out to be a hoax, but rendered with an infectious fanciful spirit that equivocates on the existence of magical creatures.