Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a ghost hunter

The author of the novel about Sherlock Holmes was also a zealous researcher of paranormal phenomena, who had several own experiences with ghosts.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle will be known for centuries as the creator of the passionate and fearless detective Sherlock Holmes. In addition to these puzzles, Doyle also showed interest in the unknown and paranormal phenomena. After all, he was also the author of „Lost World”, „Tales of Terror and Mystery” or „Through the Magic Door”, along with other fantasy novels.

After the death of his wife Louisa in 1906 and the departure of his son, brother, two brothers-in-law and two nephews in a short time, Doyle found shelter from his depression in the spiritualist movement, which promoted the view that the living could in fact communicate with the dead. He came to many screenings and made friends with several well-known media of that time. He was admitted to the National Association of Spiritists and was a prominent member of both the Spirit Club and the Society for Mental Research. He even founded the Psychic Bookstore in London in 1925.

Although he considered himself an open-minded skeptic about paranormal phenomena, he probably believed in some events too eagerly. His most embarrassing announcement was that the photos known as Fairy Cottingley photographs were authentic and constituted evidence of mental phenomena. These pictures were taken by two little girls, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, who claimed they were playing with fairies near the garden stream. „Fairies” were only figures cut out of paper.

Personal experiences

Although he spent many years exploring and exploring the possibility of mental phenomena and life after death, Doyle admitted that he had only a few personal experiences that he could categorize as unexplained, or at least „strange.” These experiences, however, were noteworthy and he described them in his book „The Edge of the Unknown” from 1930.

Whispering ghost

The first experience was an event that we would consider a sleep paralysis or „old witch syndrome” in which the victim wakes up and cannot move and often senses a foreign presence in the room.

Doyle woke up in the bedroom of his home in Crowborough. „I lay in my room on my back,” he wrote, „clearly agitated, but completely unable to move.” He was „obviously aware that someone was in the room and that this presence was out of this world.”

However, Doyle’s story with sleep paralysis definitely has a ghost in the background. Doyle heard footsteps approaching him from across the room and felt the presence close and bent over him. Then he heard a loud whisper saying „Doyle, I came to tell you I’m sorry.”

Although the guest did not reveal his name, Doyle was convinced that he knew who the ghost was. „Certainly it was the person I tried to comfort mentally after she was kidnapped,” he wrote. „This man contemptuously rejected my advice and died soon afterwards. Perhaps he wanted to express his regret.”

In this case, Doyle also interestingly explained this case of sleep paralysis: the spirit, when it needs to materialize on the physical plane, must draw energy from a material source. This source was himself. In other words, he was immobilized because the ghost drew energy from it to appear.

Church ghosts

Arthur Conan Doyle could actually see a few ghosts on another occasion. He heard that a nearby church was considered to be haunted, so he went to this place to examine with his wife, two sons, daughter and two friends. Everyone appeared in the old church at ten o’clock in the evening and was greeted by an old peasant with a lamp in his hand who led them inside.

They sat in the choir on a stiff wooden bench „once used by ancient monks”. On the other side there was an altar, poorly lit only by the lamp. At that moment the lamp burned out and everyone was sitting in the dark, seeing only strangely shaped shadows and barely visible illuminations created by the dim light flowing through the high windows of the nave.

They sat in the uncomfortable seats for two hours in the dark. Suddenly something started materializing. „About twenty feet away,” Doyle wrote, „a cloudy haze of light appeared, a kind of phosphorescent cloud, about one foot in size, at a height equal to human height.”

Doyle’s other companions also saw this appearance. „The light flickered and took a specific shape – or shapes – because there were two of them. They were perfectly cut figures in black and white, weakly glowing. Their colors and arrangement reminded me of cassocks and elves” (surplice is a dress used by altar servers – note by Ivellios).

As soon as Doyle’s wife spoke loudly to these characters „Friends, can we help you with anything?”, The apparitions disappeared. Doyle discovers

later lived that others also saw ghosts in this church on various occasions.

Hidden Documents

As an active member of the Psychic Research Society, Doyle has become something of a ghost hunter who investigates reports and complaints about haunting, which is mostly the same thing as crew members doing paranormal television shows today.

Shortly after the end of World War I, Doyle received a letter from a widow of a decorated soldier who rented a house in Alton, Hampshire. As she complained in her letter, the ghost was so haunted by a noisy spirit that he was deterred by her children and several servants.

Doyle went to study. When he arrived, he learned that the widow had experimented with automatic writing, hoping to be in contact with a disturbing spirit. In this way she got to know his name, and after examining verified that a man with that name had lived in this house about sixty years earlier. What’s more, thanks to her sessions with automatic writing, she learned that this ghost was worried about some important documents allegedly hidden in the rafters in the junkyard – a small room serving as a warehouse.

Doyle pledged to search the damp and dusty room for hidden documents. „It was a terrible place,” he said, „covered in a thick layer of dust and piled with all kinds of rubbish, and for an hour or even longer, in a shirt and trousers, I dived under rafters in search of these documents.”

In a „shocking state of dust and sweat,” Doyle returned from the room with nothing, unable to find any of those documents. He and the widow then organized their own little screening, in which Doyle informed the ghost that the documents, if they were ever in the junkyard, were no longer there. Then he scolded the ghost for his noisy and rude behavior and ordered him „not to think about his affairs in this pit again, but to set his mind to a higher life.”

Doyle admitted that this study lacked direct evidence and was open to criticism, but the widow later stated that her spiritual activity had ceased and that „the atmosphere in her home had changed into a deeply peaceful one.”

Charmouth ghost

Doyle organized another expedition in search of ghosts with two companions – one of them, Mr. Podmore, was an avid opponent of spiritualism – they went to a haunted house in Charmouth. The old house was rented by an elderly woman, her grown-up son and married daughter. The family was harassed by the activity of the poltergeist, most often in the form of unexplained noises that were so annoying that they could barely stand the apartment in this place.

The men began their investigation, checking the house for any signs of forgery, and took other measures to prevent fraud, awaiting the manifestation of paranormal activity. Nothing happened the first night. To the other, however, „a terrifying sound was heard,” as Doyle described it. „As if someone was banging on the table with a big stick. The door in the living room was open and the noise echoed in the passage.” The men ran to look for the cause of the sound, but they did not find it, and there were no signs of fraud.

Doyle wrote an interesting ending to this story. About a year after the investigation, the house burned down and an old child’s skeleton was found buried in the garden. Doyle wondered if the child who had ended his life so early was the cause of the visitation.

Doyle wrote that he could not send the study a report to the Society, but Skeptic Podmore did so – his report irritated Doyle. In his report, Podmore stated that the „unexplained” sound was caused by a young man living in this house who had cheated. According to Doyle, this was nonsense, because the young man „was actually sitting with us in the living room when it began. That’s why Podmore’s explanation was completely impossible.”

Doyle then mocked all those skeptics who did not change their minds despite the facts. „I think that if we want the truth, we should not only be critical of psychological claims, but also of all so-called allegations in this matter,” he wrote. „I am sorry to say that in some cases a plea means that a complete lie becomes part of the criticism.”