Mr John Hyatt, Director for Research and Innovation in Art and Design, at Manchester Metropolitan University, has took the plunge regarding what he believes is a miraculous discovery, risking his intellectual career in the pursuit of the truth.
For the last few years, and completely in secret, john has been encountering some very strange creatures, that, apart from a handful of compelling hoaxes, and according to the theory of evolution, simply should not exist.
Understandably for a university lecturer to reveal he believes in what most accredit to fiction, could have got john in a rather sticky position.
However, thanks to reams of photographic evidence he has been quietly collecting, and the sheer certainty he now has that the images are authentic proof of his experience, he has exposed to the world just what he believes he has found.
In a small pocket of the English countryside known as the Rossendale Valley, in Lancashire, john has publicly claimed a population of fairies somehow exists.
After capturing numerous photographs of some rather curious looking creatures within the area, he told the press that he was shocked when he enlarged the images to reveal tiny flying human forms.
Mr Hyatt, who lives Rawtenstall, has posted some of his images on social media and says they have attracted much debate.
An exhibition, called Rossendale Fairies, will be held at The Whitaker Museum in Whitaker Park in Rossendale, revealing his finds.
Mr Hyatt said the name is a nod to the famous story of the Cottingley fairies.
However he admits the creatures he snapped are a long way from the characters depicted in children’s stories and hopes his pictures will change people’s perceptions of them.
'I don’t believe they are just smaller versions of us and go home and have a cup of tea at the end of the day he says.
'And he isnt suggesting they have any special powers.
'From my experience they were just enjoying themselves and having a little dance in the sunlight.
In 2009, Phyllis Bacon, 55, believed she took a photo of a fairy at the bottom of her garden in New Addington, near Croydon in South London, which appears uncannily like mikes photographs.
In the summer of 1917, Frances Griffiths had slipped into a stream at the end of her garden, later telling her mother she had fallen while 'playing with the fairies'. later that afternoon, the two girls supposedly hatched a childish prank that would make headlines around the world..
Elsie suggested they should take a photograph of the 'fairies' to prove to Frances' mother that she had been telling the truth.
The girls, according to elsie, drew some fairies, cut them out and pasted them on to cardboard.
They arranged the four fairies - three with wings and one playing a piped instrument - in front of Frances, who put flowers in her hair, cupped her chin in her hand and, curiously, while Elsie took the picture.
When their father developed the exposed plate in a darkroom he asked Elsie what they were, and she told him they were the fairies that she and Frances played with by the stream.
Polly Wright, Elsie's mother, and Annie Griffiths, Frances mother, took the photographs to a meeting of the Theosophical Society in Harrogate.
Knowledge of photography was not widespread at this time and few understood that the 'spirit' could be introduced by a simple double exposure on the same photographic plate.
As a result, many Spiritualists were encouraged to believe that the camera could 'see' what the naked eye could not, a belief which helped legitimise the Cottingley fairy photographs.
Elsie and Frances stuck doggedly to their story well into their 70’s when elsie confessed to them being cardboard cutouts.
Frances continued to claim, contrary to Elsie’s claims, that she had indeed seen fairies and that the fifth photograph - the fairy bower - was authentic. She died in 1986; Elsie died two years later.
'The joke was only meant to last two hours,' said Elsie towards the end of her life. 'but It lasted 70 years.
What do you think about the photographs proof of the seemingly impossible? Or just another hoax.
Written and Produced by Mystery History