Exhibits in the Haunted Museum are based on the work of Troy Taylor from his book, Ghosts by Gaslight!


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 Despite a number of set-backs, the collapse of friendships, ridiculous frauds and even the exposure of mediums he believed in, Conan Doyle would not be shaken in his beliefs. He was insulted, disparaged and forced to give up most of his paid work but he never faltered.

What could have so convinced this proper and courageous English gentleman to so heartily embrace a movement that was despised by so many? What did Conan Doyle know that so much of the rest of the world did not? And what mysteries was he privy to.....?

"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had many striking characteristics. He was gigantically tall and strong. He was a gifted story-teller. He was a man of strong opinions and considerable political influence... But perhaps the most extraordinary thing about him was the combination of all the attributes of worldly success with an almost child-like literalness and credulity of mind, manifested particularly in relation to Spiritualism and its surrounding phenomena."
Author Ruth Brandon in The Spiritualists (1983)

THE DOCTOR & WRITER
 Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on May 22, 1859. He was the second child and oldest son of Charles Doyle, an assistant surveyor in the Scottish Office of Works. Charles Doyle was an artistic man but never fared well in his work. Early biographies of his son painted a picture of his father as a "dreamy aesthetic figure" but it was later revealed that he was both an alcoholic and an epileptic. He left his job while in his 40's and spent most of the rest of his life in nursing homes for alcoholics and mental asylums. Doyle's mother, Mary, on the other hand was the backbone of the family. She was a well-read woman and a great storyteller and years later, Arthur would credit her for her love of literature. She bore her husband ten children in all, five girls and two boys of whom survived.

Growing up, Doyle spent two years at a preparatory school of Hodder and then among the Jesuits at Stonyhurst. He had been allowed to attend this Catholic institution at no charge for it was hoped that he might dedicate his life to the church. He would eventually become disenchanted with Catholicism though and decide on pursuing a medical career instead. Over the next few years, Doyle endured the spartan conditions of boarding school, the corporal punishment and the poor food. He excelled at sports, especially cricket, and at 16 passed his graduate exam with honors. Doyle began working hard to obtain a scholarship for his medical studies and while awarded one, a series of official mistakes prevented him from receiving it. His family could not afford to send him to school, so he worked a series of jobs and attended medical college at the same time. It took him five years to earn his degrees as a Bachelor of Medicine but his completed his schooling in Edinburgh in 1881.

Doyle was eager to start a medical practice after graduation and had also developed a love for writing. He hoped to supplement his practice by selling short stories to the magazines of the day but while in school, he recognized the importance of working first and writing later. He wrote and sold a short story or two and then, as a third-year student, he signed on as a ship's surgeon for a whaler that was making a seven month voyage to the Arctic. Doyle got along well with the ships' crew. He was by now a massive and strong young man, an all around sportsman and a man of incredible strength. His boxing skills also served him well and he won a bout with the ship's steward on the first night out of port.

A chance meeting with a physician in London convinced Doyle to move his practice to the city. He decided however to specialize in eye care but to do so, he needed to attend a six month training session in Vienna. The Southsea practice was abandoned (it was too small to be sold), Mary was sent to her grandmother and Doyle and Louise set off for Austria. The entire trip turned out to be a disaster. The lectures were given in German and while Doyle had a conversational knowledge of the language, he was unable to follow the technical terms. He wrote a short book The Doings at Raffles Haw instead and he and Louise left Vienna in two months instead of six. When the couple returned to England, he set up practice in London in Devonshire Place, at the top of Wimpole Street. It was a quiet and ideal location -- for writing anyway -- and not a single patient darkened Doyle's doorstep. He spent all of his time writing and it was here that he created the next set of Sherlock Holmes tales. The immediate success of the stories, the lack of patients and a severe bout with influenza that nearly killed him made his  next decision an easy one. He would give up his medical work and turn all his attentions to writing.

MEMORIES & ADVENTURES
Conan Doyle was in his early thirties when he decided to break with medicine and over the next ten years, he became increasingly more successful and and increasingly more of a public figure. He emerged into the last decade of the Nineteenth Century as one of the most influential characters of his generation. To one aspect of the public he was the creator of Sherlock Homes, to another he was the author of historical novels and adventure stories and even those who were not interested in his gripping tales, he was a man of total faith in the Imperial idea of Britain and a personage who was ready and eager to play a role in public affairs.

Doyle was a figure that most men aspired to imitate. He looked more like a sportsman than a man of letter, was a robust outdoorsman and a avid boxer, adept at soccer and loved cricket. He was also, like many men and women of his generation, concerned about religion. He lost his Catholic faith while still a young man and for a time was mildly agnostic. While living in Southsea, he became interested in psychical research and began reading heavily on the subject. He also had the opportunity to visit séances and experiments in telepathy and thought transference. His search for answers led to a meeting with Sir Oliver Lodge, one of the leading paranormal investigators of the time, and in 1893, he joined the Psychical Research Society. He watched with interest the public's fascination with Spiritualism but did not understand how ghostly phenomena warranted a faith and religion based around it -- at least not yet. He did become more and more interested in the Spiritualist movement though, although at first his interested was tinged heavily with skepticism. This did not keep him from writing horror tales in which Spiritualism played a part though.

Sadly, Doyle's personal life was not to successful. He refused to accept the diagnosis that doctor's had given to his beloved Louise was became determined to find a cure for her tuberculosis. According to the doctors, she only had a few months love but Doyle was sure that he could prolong her life. He set aside his a career and began taking Louis to various places that had been recommended as being helpful to patients suffering from consumption. He traveled first to Switzerland and then was told by a friend and fellow writer, Grant Allen, who also suffered from tuberculosis, that he had found the climate in the English county of Surrey to be of great benefit. So, Doyle purchased a large home there called Undershaw,  which incidentally, was one of the first in the region to have electric lighting. This was Louise's home until her death in 1906.

Doyle remained in South Africa for a little more than three months. After the capture of the Boer capital of Pretoria, the war (he thought) came to an end. He found the time he spent in the country to be deeply satisfying and after obtaining a number of first-hand accounts of the fighting, he wrote a book called The Great Boer War on his return to England. The book became very popular, although was outdated by another history that came out later since what seemed to be the end of the war was not. It actually contained on as a guerilla war for nearly two years. Regardless, the book was successful and in the last chapter, Doyle suggested what he believed were some necessary military reforms. They caused a great stir and included the concealment of large guns (two batteries had almost been lost at one battle because a commander foolishly pushed them ahead of the infantry and provided no cover for them); the abandonment of cavalry swords and lances; and the development of a highly-trained infantry that could be supplemented by national volunteer militia units. These ideas seem quite sensible today but shocked the Army establishment of the time.

Doyle also found himself immersed in the controversy that surrounded the final months of the war as well. The guerilla war that continued brought a severe response from the British military. The Boers fed off the land and moved around constantly, striking at British forces and then vanishing. The military established s series of block houses to try and contain the guerillas, burned their farms and established concentration camps for the women and children who were burned out. The camps were dirty and badly run and various epidemics like measles and typhoid continually swept through them. A number of articles and pamphlets appeared that described the conditions of the camp but which also made false claims about the conduct of British soldiers. They articles inflamed man European countries and Britain became widely criticized. In response, Doyle penned a small booklet called The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Conduct and it was put together from eyewitness accounts in less than a week. He made a good case against the claims that British soldiers were raping Boer women and using dum-dum bullets that expanded on impact. He also admitted that while the camps had their shortcomings, they were necessary alternative to allowing the women and children to starve to death. The booklet had its effect, especially in other European countries, and managed to counter the anti-British feelings. We would consider it to be propaganda today but it was done in support of a cause that the author truly believed in.

Before Doyle wrote the booklet, he had stood for Parliament in the 1900 general election. He was a Conservative candidate and while not in opposition to the Liberal policy of social reform at home, he joined the conservative Unionist party because they were the pro-military and Empire party. He ran for office in Edinburgh but had little chance of winning in the mostly Liberal area. His campaign was very effective however and he spoke to workmen, gave informal speeches in the street and rented out an opera house for formal speeches in the evening. He ended up making 14 appearances in less than three days, genially acknowledging the hecklers who called him "Sherlock Holmes" and focused on the importance of military reforms, national defense and the Empire. Things looked well for him until, on election day, a fanatical Protestant hung posters all over the district that proclaimed Conan Doyle to be a Jesuit-educated, Catholic agent -- a lie that must have galled a man who had long ago abandoned the Catholic faith. The posters likely swayed many voters but Doyle did improve the Unionist vote by 1500. Regardless, he lost the election. Years later, he admitted that he was glad that he had never ended up in politics. He would have never have been a good party man and he disliked electioneering. He was never that interested in politics anyway but he was a fighter by nature and fighters never like to lose.

By this time, Doyle was not only a famous author but a famous man and he was offered a knighthood, which he immediately refused, stating that a knighthood was a discredited title. His mother was furious and persisted with her demand that he reconsider until she eventually got her way. In 1902, he became Sir Arthur. Interestingly though, years later, in one of the last Sherlock Holmes stories, "The Three Garridebs", Dr. Watson mentions in passing that Holmes had refused a knighthood and named the year in which this occurred. Not surprisingly, it was 1902.  

A REAL-LIFE "SHERLOCK HOLMES"
The Sherlock Holmes stories, along with his historical novels, made Conan Doyle a famous author but it was his activities during the Boer War that made him a national celebrity. During the last ten years of the Nineteenth century, he published five collections of short stories and 11 novels and would go on to write many more, including The Lost World, the Hound of the Baskervilles and many others. During this time period, his furious literary activity only slackened when he was bothered by questions ranging from national defense or to the plight of two men that he rescued from false accusations of crime, George Edalji and Oscar Slater.

The case of George Edalji began in 1903. His father, Sharpurji Edalji, was an Indian turned Christian, who served as a vicar for 30 years in a mining district near Birmingham. The elder Edalji had married an Englishwoman and the family, including their three children, were often the butts of practical jokes like the insertion of fake advertisements using their name in the local paper. They also received threatening letters on occasion, all sent anonymously. The Chief constable of Staffordshire, Captain Anson, believed that the death threats were sent by a son, George Edalji, even though they warned of harm to his own family. When the key to the local grammar school was found on Edalji's doorstep, Anson wrote to his father and stated that he knew that George was responsible for the theft of the key and would listen to no protestations of innocence from him. In fact, he wrote, he hoped to send George to jail. This occurred in 1895 and while Anson failed in this, he never gave up his dislike for the family and so it was no coincidence that Anson was still the constable when George fell into trouble again in 1903.

Accused cattle mutilator George Edalji

In that year, there was a bizarre flap of cattle mutilations that took place in the district. During the nighttime hours, horses and cattle were having their stomachs ripped open by some sharp shallow instrument and perhaps even stranger, a flurry of anonymous letters were sent out to police and local residents accusing George Edalji of having a hand in the attacks. The local police, influenced by Captain Anson, identified Edalji as the letter writer -- in spite of the fact that the letter accused him of the crimes. Edalji was a practicing barrister (attorney) at the time but still lived at home with his parents.

The Edalji home was searched and while nothing of real importance was found, it is believed that the police may have planted evidence to connect a jacket of George's to one of the scenes of the crime. Using this small (and quite suspect) scrap of evidence, along with the the word of a handwriting expert who had already been discredited in another case, George Edalji was sent to prison for seven years. The weakness of the case inspired widespread protest and a petition that bore more than 10,000 names was sent to the Home Office, imploring an official to take action and re-examine the case. Nothing was done for some time though and Edalji ended up serving three years of his sentence before he was suddenly released with no explanation. His name had not been cleared though and in an effort to do so, he wrote his own account of what had happened to him. It came to the attention of Sir Arthur. "As I read," he later wrote, "the unmistakable accent of truth forced itself upon my attention and I realized that I was in the presence of appalling tragedy, and that I was called upon to do what I could to set it right."

Conan Doyle immediately went into action. He obtained papers, read accounts of the trial and went to Staffordshire, where he examined the scenes of the crimes and met with George Edalji. The deductions that he reached to prove the man's innocence are, without question, worthy of Doyle's fictional detective. The crime for which Edalji was convicted occurred on a rainy, moonless night in the middle of a field. He would have had to have walked a mile to get to the scene, crossed a mail railway line that was protected by a double fence or would have had to have taken an even longer route that would have involved crossing large ditches and climbing over hedges and steep banks. Simply put -- Edalji could not have done it and it only took five minutes in the man's presence for Doyle to deduce why. He met Edalji at a hotel:

"I had been delayed, and he was passing the time reading the paper ... He held the paper close to his eyes and rather sideways, proving not only a high degree of myopia but marked astigmatism. The idea of such a man scouring the fields at night and assaulting cattle while avoiding the watching police was ludicrous to anyone who can imagine what the world looks like to eyes with a myopia of eight dioptres."

Doyle's attendance at the lectures in Vienna had proven to be worthwhile after all! Doyle did admit that Edalji was rather an odd looking fellow and he could understand where he might arouse suspicion from unknowing persons. He said that the man's sight was "so hopelessly bad that no glasses availed in the open air" and without any spectacles at all, he had a vacant, staring appearance that was unsettling and unusual. But "there in that single physical defect, lay the moral certainty of his innocence."

Doyle did not leave matters at this however. He then began examining the physical evidence collected by the police and found it severely lacking. One of the few pieces of genuine evidence they had found was a damp coat with stains on it that may have been blood. Doyle tore the police case into shreds with a few mere pieces of logic though. If the coat had been damp when found, then the blood (if that's what it was) should have been damp as well. A police inspector need only touch his finger to the stain to see if it was actually blood. No tests, which did not exist in those days anyway, would have been needed. In addition, the stains were only the size of a small coin. "The most adept operator who ever lived would not rip up a horse with a razor upon a dark night and have only two three-penny bit spots of blood to show for it," Doyle stated without question. "The idea is beyond argument."

Doyle had shown quite convincingly that Edalji was not the culprit, but then who was? Discreet inquiries in the district, starting with the theft of the school key and including many of the earlier anonymous letters, soon revealed a new suspect, a school student and butcher's apprentice named Royden Sharp. Doyle believed that the case he made against the man was very strong and had, as he wrote, "five separate inquiries afoot by which I hope to make it overwhelming." His belief that Sharp was guilty was only strengthened when he too began to receive anonymous threat messages.

Sir Arthur soon found that real life is not always like a Sherlock Holmes story. Captain Anson had powerful friends and one of the three commissioners appointed to consider the case in light of Doyle's new evidence was his second cousin. Edalji ended up with a partial clearing of his name. He was found to be innocent of the charges of cattle mutilation and it was decided that he would be pardoned. However, they refused to say that he did not write the letters and because might have "brought his troubles on himself", he was given no compensation for his three years in prison. Conan Doyle called the affair a blot on the record of English justice and commented bitterly about the way that the officials had undermined the case and had colluded to slander Edalji, even while pardoning him. "What confronts you," he wrote, "is a determination to admit nothing which inculpates another official, and as to the idea of punishing another official for offences which have caused misery to helpless victims, it never comes within their horizons."

The other criminal case in which Conan Doyle got involved did not call for his deductive powers to be put to use but it did become a nationally famous case of an injustice that was corrected. It also, like the Edalji case, left Doyle with a bitter aftertaste.

In 1909, a man who used the name Oscar Slater was tried in Edinburgh on the charge of murdering a woman named Marion Gilchrist with a hammer. Slater was a German Jew and made his living under dubious circumstances. At the time of his arrest, he had landed in New York with his mistress. Thanks to all of this, combined with a distrust for foreigners (i.e. the Edalji case), all sorts of lurid newspaper reports appeared before the trial even started. The police investigation was, at best, haphazard and one of the high points involved the inspectors showing Slater's photograph to witnesses before asking them to identify him as a man seen near the victim's house. The trial was no better. The prosecutor made a number of totally unjustified assumptions about Slater's character and activities ( including that he was a pimp, even though he had no real evidence to back this up) and the judge did little to curb his enthusiasm. It didn't help matters that the defense was inadequate and actually managed to bungle along in support of the outrageous claims made by the prosecution. Slater was found guilty by a majority verdict and sentenced to death. He was reprieved two days before the date was fixed for his execution though and his sentence was changed to hard labor for life.

Oscar Slater -- Rescued from prison by Conan Doyle

Conan Doyle's attention was drawn to the case after a book was published in 1910 about notable British trials that called the Slater case a miscarriage of justice. He had been deeply angered over the incidents in the Edalji case and hesitated to get involved in anything like it again. After reading about Slater's situation though, he couldn't help but get involved. "I saw it was a worse case than the Edalji one," he said, "and that this unhappy man had in all probability no more to do with the murder for which he had been condemned than I had." Doyle went into action again, albeit a little reluctantly this time. Slater was in many ways the perfect example of the type of man Doyle disliked. He made his living in ways that were dishonest (gambling and as a con man, although likely not through prostitution), he dressed flashily and was a drifter with none of the national pride that Doyle so greatly valued. He refused to let this bother him though and he took up Slater's cause and was determined to make right the injustice that had been committed.

His first step was to publish a small booklet called The Case of Oscar Slater. In it, he pointed out the holes in the prosecution's case, which were so plain that common sense and not deductive reasoning was needed to see them, and attacked the prejudice shown by the judge and prosecuting counsel. The booklet sold widely, thanks to the author's name, but the reception for it was disinterested and a few newspapers were openly hostile. Conan Doyle refused to let this deter him and his activities, along with a statement by an upstanding police inspector who stated that some of the evidence presented at trial had been altered from the original witness statements, pushed the authorities into ordering a hearing in the matter. The inquiry was held in secret in 1914 and was presided over by a Scottish attorney with no experience in criminal matters. The witnesses were never placed under oath and the resulting findings only supported the verdict in the original trial. The authorities refused to allow a retrial and the police inspector who spoke out was dismissed from the force without his pension.

Slater remained in prison for years afterward. In 1925, he managed to smuggle out a message to Conan Doyle who, when he received it, immediately began requesting an official pardon for the man. This was also refused but in 1927, from America, the chief prosecution witness revealed that she had originally give the police the name of another man who had often visited Marion Gilchrist. The police had ignored this testimony though and according to another witness, had told her exactly what to say to the prosecutor and on the witness stand at trial. After this damning statement, another witness also recanted her testimony, leaving the officials in a predicament. With no fanfare, Slater was released from prison, having served more than 18 years behind bars. There was no suggestion that he was innocent and certainly no mention of compensation.

Doyle's pen was again put to paper and he wrote a pamphlet, which was sent to all government officials, which demanded that Slater be given a new trial. Finally, after much discussion and many questions in the house of commons, an appeal was accepted. Slater had no money at all to stand a new trial, so Conan Doyle guaranteed all of his expenses. The evidence of Slater's innocence at the new trial was, or should have been, overwhelming but as Doyle found out in the Edalji case, officials refused to admit to any wrongdoing and would not blame other officials for the failures in the case. The appeal judges decided that the jury's verdict was reasonable and that the new evidence uncovered was not material. Still, they did find for Slater on the grounds that the judge's instructions for the jury "amounted to a misdirection of the law". The verdict was then set aside and Slater was found officially not guilty.

Doyle had succeeded, so why then did the case leave him with bad feelings? Those feelings came from Slater himself. Although the man expressed gratitude to Doyle for helping him, the two men did not get along at all and this was partially because of Doyle's attitude toward the German. He would have nothing to do with Slater personally and even returned the cigar-cutter that he was sent as a present. The animosity arose over the matter of Slater's compensation for his time in prison. He was given a miserable sum and Doyle pushed him to ask for more and also to make a claim for his legal expenses. He felt that Slater was bound by honor to repay those who had spent money in connection for his appeal but Slater never bothered. The amount that Doyle had paid out of his own pocket meant nothing to him but he felt that Slater had behaved dishonorably towards himself and others. Conan Doyle's feelings about the whole matter were summed up in a letter that he wrote to Slater that stated:

"If you are indeed quite responsible for your actions, then you are the most ungrateful as well as the most foolish person whom I have ever known."

THE WAR YEARS
In 1911, Conan Doyle took part in a motor car race called Prince Henry's Tour. He had long been fascinated with the automobile, having purchased his first in 1903, and looked forward to a great sporting event. Prince Henry was Prussian and the race began in Germany and ended in London, after a circular tour of England and Scotland. It also pitted 50 British drivers against 50 German drivers and Conan Doyle drove his favorite motor car and took Jean along as a passenger. The race was won by the British team and Prince Henry presented them with an ivory lady called "Peace" but from what Doyle saw and heard during the race, he feared that war with Germany was not far off. He had been accompanied by various Prussian officers as observers and several of them made the assumption that war between the two nations was inevitable.

Doyle began preparing for war in the best way that he knew how -- with his pen. He told his brother Innes that he did not like the look of things and feared that England was not ready to fight. He exaggerated the effectiveness of the airship in those days but he was almost uncannily accurate about the threat posed by the recent vessel, the submarine. He wrote a lengthy story called "Danger", in which Britain's enemy has a fleet of submarines that ignored the British Navy but made merciless attacks on merchant shipping, causing famine and forcing England to surrender. His warning of the submarine threat was laughed about at the time it was written but three years later, the German Naval Secretary would write that Conan Doyle had been "the only prophet of the present form of economic warfare" as the Germans began preying on merchant vessels.

And while Conan Doyle was always an agent of reform and change when it came to politics and the military, he was not always so forward thinking with his ideas. He was a stoutly old-fashioned man and while embracing movements like Spiritualism in his later years, he was steadfastly opposed to others. He detested the suffragette movement and often spoke out against the actions of the radical members of the movement, calling them "wild women". The suffragettes responded by putting a hazardous sulfate called vitriol through the letter box of Windlesham, the home that Doyle had moved to in Crowborough in 1909. Doyle's opposition to the suffragettes was based on the belief that it was pointless for women to have the vote, but he also felt that was very unwomanly. On the other hand, he was sympathetic to the reform of the Divorce Law, by which a husband could gain a divorce on the grounds of his wife's adultery but a wife had to prove not only adultery but brutality or desertion as well. He campaigned hard to get the law changed but this all was placed on the back burner when war was declared in August 1914.

 Conan Doyle was again galvanized into action. He said after the fighting had ended that the Great War was the physical climax of his life, a remarkable statement considering that he was 55 years-old at the time it started. Within a day or two, he had organized a Crowborough civilian group called the Volunteers. He received requests for their rules and methods from over 1,200 other towns and villages, even thought eh volunteer force was disbanded by an order from the War Office a few weeks after it was founded. It was replaced by an official body that boasted more than 200,000 men, although Doyle served in it as a private during the entire War. Most of the men were Sir Arthur's age or older but thought nothing of marching as many as 14 miles each day, singing along the entire route.

He was invigorated by the war effort but it was not enough for him. He wanted to see action and volunteered for the Army. Needless to say, he was not accepted but he did send a flurry of ideas, many of them ingenious and practical, to the War Office. Since many of the military ships had few lifeboats, the sailors on board them had little chance of surviving if they lost their ship or fell into the sea. Doyle suggested the idea of inflatable rubber rafts that could be used and while this idea was turned down, he did suggest the development of inflatable rubber collars for seamen to carry with them in their pockets. He also came up with an idea for soldiers to be fitted with body armor but it too was rejected. Unfortunately, many of those who worked in the office agreed with his innovative notions but there was little they could do about it without approval from the high command. At the Ministry of Munitions, when he went there to argue for his body armor idea, he was told: "Sir Arthur, there is no use arguing here, for these is no one in this building who does not know that you are right!"

Ideas aside, his principal endeavor during the war was to rally Britain's spirits. Within a month of the war's beginning, he published a booklet called To Arms and quickly set to work on a history called of the British campaign in France. he maintained contact with many of the British commanders and chronicled their efforts extensively, sometimes posting and receiving as many as five letters each day to and from the front. But he was not content to work from home and in 1916, he accepted an assignment to write about the Italian Army and to visit the British front on the way. As a deputy-lieutenant of Surrey, he had the right to wear a uniform and his tailor "rigged me up in wondrous khaki garb which was something between that of a Colonel and a Brigadier, with silver roses instead of stars or crosses upon the shoulder straps." He looked impressive, especially wearing his medals from South Africa, and was treated with respect everywhere that he went.  He went to France on a destroyer in the company of several generals and was allowed to meet up with Innes, who was now a Colonel.

His trip to the Italian front turned out to be a hazardous one. His hosts tried, without success, to keep him out of harm's way but the party was shelled and nearly hit and had to turn back. Doyle put together volumes of notes about the Italian troops, wrote them up on his return and was told that his trip was a great success. The expedition led to his having breakfast with Lloyd George, the new Prime Minister, and also to an invitation from the Australian government to see their section of the line. While on this trip, he saw part of the battle of St. Quentin. The end of the Great War must have brought mixed feelings to Doyle. He was undoubtedly overjoyed with the Allied victory but in another sense, his greatest adventure had come to an end. The marching and the drilling, the war correspondence, the dangerous journeys that took him into the heart of historical events all combined to indulge his boyish love of adventure. But the War and its aftermath also brought him the deepest grief that he had ever known.

Conan Doyle in uniform for his trip to the Italian Front

 First, his wife's brother and Doyle's friend, Malcolm Leckie, had been killed and then two nephews and several other friends and relatives. And then Kingsley, the only son of his first marriage, and his beloved brother Innes, both died within a few weeks of one another. Kingsley had been badly wounded on the Somme and had died of pneumonia in October 1918. Not long after, Innes, now a Brigadier General, also came down with pneumonia and died. Conan Doyle said and wrote very little of these deaths but they must have hit him quite hard, perhaps even harder than the death of his mother two years later.

Although these deaths were not responsible for his belief in Spiritualism, they surely must have had a great effect on the strength of his convictions. He had long been interested in the occult but at the beginning of the war had merely been sympathetic to the movement. The wartime deaths and the suffering that he witnessed must have convinced him of the need for our spirits to live on. It was a time when the public at large felt a great urgency to turn toward spiritual things and as Spiritualism had seen a great revival following the Civil War, it would see another following World War I. The movement had just entered its modern heyday and standing at the forefront was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

CONAN DOYLE -- AMONG THE SPIRITS
Conan Doyle's interest in Spiritualism began when he was still an almost penniless young doctor living in Southsea. It was during a time when science was just starting to question the idea that another world might exist beyond our own and Doyle became caught up on the study, as well as in the burgeoning Spiritualist movement. He avidly followed the research that was being done and even attended a number of séances and kept detailed notes of what occurred there. Early in his research, he began to consider the idea that a great amount of the phenomena that he witnessed was genuine and that the knocks, raps, horn-blowing and messages from the dead were worthy of at least a cautious belief.

Somewhere along the line, his cautious skepticism gave way to outright acceptance and there has been much debate as to what finally immersed Doyle completely into the Spiritualist movement. Most believe that it was the series of deaths that occurred during the Great War that led Doyle to embrace the movement as he did. Soon after Kingsleys' death, he was convinced that he heard the voice of his son during a séance with a Welsh medium. On the other hand, two years later, he would also be convinced that he embraced the materialized spirit of his mother with the help of two American mediums, William and Eva Thompson. Within days, these mediums were exposed as frauds and were arrested at another séance by police officers who found wigs, costumes and fluorescent makeup among their belongings. In spite of this, Doyle was not swayed from his newfound beliefs.

Even before this, a short time after the death of Malcolm Leckie (Doyle's brother-in-law), a sick friend of Lady Jean Doyle came to stay at the Conan Doyle home. Her name was Lily Lauder-Symonds and she had a reputation for being a gifted medium. While she was there, she offered to conduct a séance for the family and delivered a message from Lady Jean’s brother, Malcolm. He had been killed during the Great War and he and Conan Doyle had been close friends. Years before, the two men had shared a private joke about a guinea that Leckie had had given to Sir Arthur as his first “fee” when he became an Army doctor. Doyle had cherished the small token and wore it on his watch chain. The message that Conan Doyle was given by Lauder-Symonds concerned the guinea, an item that most people, including the medium, knew nothing about. This was likely the incident that finally convinced Sir Arthur of the legitimacy of Spiritualism. Shortly after, he began his full-fledged conversion to the movement, although he did not go public with his beliefs right away due to his involvement with British war efforts.

Conan Doyle in his study at Windlesham, his home in Crowborough

 Soon after the war’s end, he announced his conversion to the public in the Spiritualist magazine, The Light. While Spiritualists around the world applauded his valiant efforts, his critics were instantly unkind. None of them could understand how the creator of the logical detective, Sherlock Holmes, could so gullible about the so-called “wonders” of Spiritualism. But Conan Doyle’s convictions came from his supreme self-confidence, and whether the public shared his beliefs of not, he never doubted that he had found the true path. Conan Doyle plunged into Spiritualism with all of the vigor that he showed to everything else, which could be considerable. Despite some set backs and the exposure of frauds like the Thompson's, Doyle could not be shaken from his beliefs. He was firmly convinced of life after death and the possibility of making contact with the spirit world.

Doyle began lecturing for the Spiritualist cause in October 1917, appearing in Bradford and London. In the years that followed, he visited almost every town in Britain, finding what he described as critical but attentive audiences. It's possible (and perhaps even likely) that most people came to hear the creator of Sherlock Holmes rather than because of their interest in the spirit world, but if this was the case, he didn't care. After storming through London, Doyle and his family also visited Australia and the United States, all on behalf of Spiritualism. He also lectured all over Europe and in South Africa, Kenya and Rhodesia. In 1926, he published a spiritual adventure story called The Land of the Mist, which featured the popular Professor Challenger character from his earlier book, The Lost World. He also wrote a massive, two volume book called The History of Spiritualism and throughout the 1920's spent a quarter of a million pounds advancing the Spiritualist cause.

During this same time period, Lady Jean began to develop the skills of a medium, which was in sharp contrast to her earlier feelings about the movement. She had disapproved of her husband's interest in the occult and disliked his concerns with Spiritualism, which she called "uncanny and dangerous". However, her brother Malcolm's death during the war changed her feelings and in 1921 she was suddenly given what her husband called the "gift of inspired writing". She soon began to receive messages from the other side and the loved ones they had lost soon began to make regular appearances at the Doyle's home circle.

In his books, writings and personal appearances, Doyle recounted dozens of bizarre and seemingly unexplained occurrences, but whether they were the product of the supernatural or his own willingness to believe, is unknown. He often claimed to touch phantom hands, to see objects move about, to witness the wondrous works of talented mediums and to possess notebooks will with information that had been given to his wife from spirits -- information that Doyle believed was "utterly beyond her ken." He also came face to face with at least one ghost and investigated a haunted house in Dorset. He chronicled this adventure in his book On the Edge of the Unknown, which makes compelling reading whether you believe in the mysteries of Spiritualism or not. Strangely, the house burned down after Doyle's investigation and a child's body was found buried in the garden. After the body was found, the haunting ceased and Doyle came to believe that the child's spirit may have been responsible for it since nothing out of the ordinary ever occurred at the site after the blaze.

A Spirit Photograph that Sir Arthur posed for that purports to have the spirit "extra" of his son, Kingsley, who was killed in the Great War

Conan Doyle also collected a huge number of spirit photographs, most of which he believed to be genuine, including one of a ghostly woman that was taken at a haunted inn in Norwich. In 1922, he penned a book on the subject called The Case for Spirit Photography. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the photos that Conan Doyle championed appear blatantly fake today, the obvious results of fraud and double exposure. He became particularly involved with a group of spirit photographers led by William Hope of Crewe. The so-called "Crewe Circle" produced several hundred alleged spirit photographs during its heyday and Doyle posed for a number of them. Not surprisingly, all of the developed plates portrayed spirit "extra" lurking over his shoulder. The credulous author believed all of them to be authentic. Doyle's fascination with unusual photographs led to what most would offer as his greatest embarrassment in the early 1920's. He was never embarrassed by the photographs or they outcome however, although not for the reasons that most might think. He simply could not conceive of the idea that the whole thing could have been a hoax!

 In 1920, Conan Doyle received a letter from a Spiritualist friend, Felicia Scatcherd, who informed of some photographs which proved the existence of fairies in Yorkshire. Conan Doyle asked his friend Edward Gardner to go down and investigate and Gardner soon found himself in the possession of several photos which showed very small female figures with transparent wings. The photographers had been two young girls, Elsie Wright and her cousin, Frances Griffiths. They claimed they had seen the fairies on an earlier occasion and had gone back with a camera and photographed them. They had been taken in July and September 1917, near the Yorkshire village of Cottingley. Doyle's acceptance of the photographs, and his writings about them, would galvanize the Spiritualist community -- and would provide the greatest ammunition for his critics. Click Here to Read a Complete Account of Doyle & the Cottingley Affair!

Later on in that same year, Conan Doyle met a man with whom he would maintain a rather strange friendship over the course of the next fours years. He was the famous magician Harry Houdini and the two of them met in England and began a good natured but antagonistic relationship that last for about two years. Doyle believed that Spiritualism was of great importance to the world, while Houdini actively campaigned against it and its "mediumistic parlor tricks". The two men, both of whom possessed a vast knowledge of the movement, argued long and inconclusively but remained close until a series of incidents caused the friendship to abruptly end. A rift developed between the two men and was never repaired, resulting in both public and private battles between them until Houdini's death in 1926. Click Here to Read about the Strange Friendship Between Doyle and Houdini  Houdini and Doyle were each regretful about the way their friendship ended but both men were too stubborn to back down from their opposing positions and continually waged in a war of words.

Conan Doyle and Houdini in Atlantic City in 1922

And Houdini was not the only friend that Doyle lost because of his unquestioning support of Spiritualism. Another was novelist and "Fu Manchu" creator, Sax Rohmer. He and Doyle met because of the author's previous friendship with Houdini. Rohmer was a member of the Magician's Club of London, of which Houdini was also a member, and their friendship was firmly cemented in 1919 when Houdini helped the writer out of an impossible situation that he had created with a writing error in a serial story for Collier's Weekly magazine. Houdini suggested a possible solution and got Rohmer out of the trap that he had written his characters into. Rohmer's friendship with Conan Doyle was strengthened thanks to each writer's interest in the occult. Rohmer himself had written a 1914 history called The Romance of Sorcery but did not share Doyle's obsession with the Spiritualist movement. His friendship with the other author ended after Houdini's death, when Conan Doyle began publicly criticizing the late magician's campaign against fraudulent mediums. Rohmer sprang to Houdini's defense and the previous friendship with Doyle was ended as a result.

Until his final days, Conan Doyle clung tenaciously to his belief in the afterlife and to the reality of the Spiritualist movement. In fact, he believed that his final hours in 1930 were the beginning of perhaps his greatest adventure. Throughout the 1920's, Doyle had suffered several small heart attacks and his doctors warned him about his excessive travel and speaking engagements. The robust author ignored them however, maintaining that he simply had too much to do. Eventually though, it all caught up with him and he was diagnosed with serious heart disease in the spring of 1930. He began a decline that ended in July and worsened after he caught a serious cold while lecturing about Spiritualism in Scandinavia. 

On the morning of July 7, his family gathered around him and held on to the slight pressure that he still hand in his hands. Around half past eight, Conan Doyle revived himself a little but did not speak. He looked at each of his loved ones and then settled back and closed his eyes forever. His son Adrian Doyle gave the anxious public a short account of his father's last moments: "His last words to us were to my mother and they show just how much he thought of her. He simply smiled up at her and said that she was wonderful. He was in too much pain to say a lot, his breathing was very bad and what he said was during a brief flash of consciousness. I have never seen anyone take anything more gamely in all my life. Even when we all knew that he was suffering great pain, he always managed to keep a smile for us."

An alleged spirit photograph with Conan Doyle that was taken a number of years after his death.

Conan Doyle's death caused an immediate sensation among the world's Spiritualist community. Mediums everywhere waited anxiously for his first message from the other side and while it took some time, they never gave up hope. Soon, he became a frequently reported presence as séances the world over and also began appearing in a number of questionable spirit photographs as well. The Doyle family never had any doubts that he would return. When asked if he would, Adrian Doyle replied: "Why, of course! My father fully believed that when he passed over he would continue to keep in touch with us. All of the family believes so too. There is no question that my father will speak to us just as he did before he passed over." There is no question that Conan Doyle lived a life of action, romance and literary greatness but what drove this author and adventurer to cling to the tenets of Spiritualism as strongly as he did, sacrificing almost everything, from his writing career to his friendships and often even his credibility, for the movement?

 He is often criticized today (as he was then) for his gullibility and foolishness but could the creator of such a analytical character as Sherlock Holmes have seen something in Spiritualism that the rest of us do not? It is not up to us to judge the correctness or credulity of Doyle's personal beliefs but we do know that he believed in the reality of the movement whole-heartedly, and right or wrong, we cannot find fault with him for his convictions.

It has been said that the final moments of a man's life will define his entire existence in the next world and if this is true, then Conan Doyle lived his final moments as a man who was at peace with himself and his beliefs. What better life could be asked?

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