Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, and the Paranormal: It's All About the Atmosphere

Ectoplasm: one of the odder

variations amongst spiritualists.

The "ectoplasm" is cheesecloth.

Books about Arthur Conan Doyle often read something like this: "But then, after creating the scientific Mr. Holmes, Conan Doyle proceeded to go off the deep end and invest in hunting for ghosts."

Along the same theme, several tribute authors have Holmes shake his head bemusedly at the sad mental decline of his friend/publisher, Mr. Arthur Conan Doyle.

Modern authors and critics make two mistakes here:

(1) Although Sherlock would have found Arthur Conan Doyle a far more bonhomous personality than himself, he would not have found his interest in spiritualism odd--not a Sherlock of the nineteenth century anyway. Spiritualism--at least initially--was greeted by the scientific community as a possible scientific advance. If humans could create a telegraph that communicated around the world, why couldn't humans create a device that communicated beyond this world? Scientific American offered an award to the first person to prove the existence of the afterlife.

Cottingley Fairies

To hugely summarize the Conan Doyle/Houdini relationship, Conan Doyle and Houdini investigated various spiritualists in America. From the beginning, Conan Doyle was admittedly more optimistic and Houdini was miles more skeptical but their mandate, at first, was the same: to uncover hoaxes and find the real thing.

They split when Conan Doyle thought they had found the real thing and Houdini continued to maintain that all spiritualists were frauds and hucksters (Houdini was right).

It is difficult to "get" Conan Doyle's intransigence in the face of what appears (to modern eyes) as obvious wackiness until one remembers that he lost a son and other family members to the horrors of World War I. In his dedication to occult phenomena, he supported the existence of the Cottingley fairies based on images that (to modern eyes) appear absolutely and obviously manufactured. It reminds me of a folklore class in which I showed the famous Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot clip; a bemused student in the front row said, "And people thought that wasn't a guy in a suit?"

In "Possibility Two," Sherlock agrees to investigate

a man who has been "poisoned" by a genetic mutation.

The bee is his payment.

As our eyes become more sophisticated, our expectations for what comprises fraud increase. There's a reason that con artists generally stick to the abstract painters rather than earlier artists; it is one thing to fool people with a Mondrian; it is another to fool them with a Rembrandt. However, even with a Mondrian, a true expert can often spot the fraud. Most con artists rely less on the product and more on the mark's willingness to be defrauded. Conan Doyle was willing to be defrauded. Houdini wasn't.

Despite Conan Doyle going admittedly a little strange (with those fairies and all), his hunt for the paranormal was still in keeping with nineteenth century scientific thought. The connection between forensics and, say, palm reading was at that time closer than makes us empiricists comfortable. From this perspective, Elementary's occasional episode in which an extreme scientific discovery plays a role is in keeping with the Holmes' tradition.

I love them all--but don't forget, folks:

Brett is still the yardstick (I realize.

that statement is debatable :).

(2) The Sherlock Holmes' stories, despite their emphasis on forensics, are mainly and principally adventure stories, not CSI-type discourses on fingerprinting.  Grissom is not running around shouting, "Preserve the evidence!" Watson is running around shooting guns. Most importantly, the stories are filled to the brim with atmosphere. All Sherlock Holmes, especially BBC's 1980 series with Jeremy Brett, utilize this atmosphere. Brett/Burke/Hardwicke -- Downey/Law -- Miller/Liu -- Cumberbatch/Freeman, everything up to and including the modernized versions hark back to the dark, oil-lamp London of bygone eras.

Sherlock Holmes has lasted for many reasons and one of them, yes, is the forensics. The forensics alone wouldn't have been enough though. Neither would the adventure. Neither would the characterization. Other mystery writers of the same era were producing forensics and adventure and memorable characterization.

Conan Doyle put it all together into one perfect creation.

And I'm sure Paget's pictures didn't hurt.