Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan (1859–ca. 1930) Though best known for writing stories about a fictional detective named Sherlock Holmes, Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle played an important role in early twentieth-century psychical research, spending most of his profits from the Sherlock Holmes stories to fund various investigations into the paranormal. He also wrote and lectured about paranormal subjects, travelling from his home in England to the United States and Canada to tell audiences about his beliefs related to the spirit world. For example, Doyle believed that spiritual mediums (people supposedly able to communicate with spirits) could bring ectoplasm, which was said to be matter from the spirit world, to the natural world. He also believed that inhabitants of the spirit world were able to smoke cigars and drink whiskey. Doyle’s written works relating to the paranormal include The Coming of the Fairies (1921) and The History of Spiritualism (1926). The Coming of the Fairies included what Doyle thought were genuine photographs of fairies (a collection known as the Cottingley fairy photographs), argued that fairies lived on Earth in numbers perhaps as large as the population of human beings, and offered various theories regarding the nature and habits of fairies.

Though he believed deeply in a spirit world, Doyle did not become interested in the paranormal until relatively late in life. As a boy he attended a religious school, but by the time he graduated in 1875 he had become an agnostic—that is, someone who believes that the existence of God is unknowable. He then became a physician, first as a general practitioner and then as a specialist in eye diseases, and he established his own practice in England. He was also involved in causes related to political and legal injustices.

Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, appeared in 1887. By this time, the Spiritualism movement had taken hold in London, and as a popular guest at social gatherings, Doyle had the opportunity to see many mediums at work. He soon decided that several of them had a genuine ability to communicate with spirits. During the 1920s he devoted much of his time to promoting this idea, particularly in regard to noted American medium Mina Crandon. Eventually, Doyle became so closely associated with Spiritualism that in 1929 Russia banned all Sherlock Holmes stories because the Russian government, which opposed any activities related to the supernatural, considered Doyle to be an occultist—that is, a person who believes in and studies supernatural powers.

SEE ALSO:

• Cottingley fairy photographs
• Mina Crandon
• Spiritualism

SOURCE:

The Greenhaven Encyclopedia of Paranormal Phenomena – written by Patricia D. Netzley © 2006 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning