Detecting the dead

Following personal tragedy, the creator of that most rational of literary figures, Sherlock Holmes, developed an obsession with spiritualism. Fiona Snailham and Anna Maria Barry explore the supernatural interests of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

- Fiona Snailham and Anna Maria Barry

On a July evening in 1930, 10,000 people crowded into London's Royal Albert Hall, hoping to catch a glimpse of their hero, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and perhaps even hear him speak. Sure enough, the celebrated author turned up right on time. Dressed in an evening suit, the man behind the Sherlock Holmes phenomenon took his seat on stage and began to talk. But there was something very strange about Doyle - he was dead.

The event at the Albert Hall was a seance - an attempt to communicate with the other side”. Doyle, who had died just a few days earlier, was the world's most famous proponent of spiritualism - a religious movement based on the belief that the living can speak to the dead. In life, the author had attended countless seances, written books on supernatural phenomena and toured the world giving lectures on his beliefs. In death, his supporters hoped that he would appear before them once again.

Spiritualism once had a huge following in Britain. People have long been fascinated by the idea of life after death, and the Victorians were no exception. The 19th-century craze for spiritualism originated across the Atlantic in 1848, when two young girls from rural New York came forward with an extraordinary claim. Sisters Kate and Maggie Fox were just 11 and 14 when they announced to the world that they could communicate with spirits. The departed, they said, spoke to them by “rapping” – spelling out messages with a series of knocking sounds. Though years later the sisters apparently confessed that this episode had been a hoax, at the time their abilities convinced many.