Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
distraught by the death of his son
and his own advancing age
had his adventurous character
the explorer - Challenger (The Lost World)
convert to Spiritualism
in his 1926 novel ‘The Land of Mist’
“They are held to earth by pious memory...
for they die with unused vitality
which may be expended upon revenge.
That is why I disprove of Levity
The dead rich man pauses
before the lovely dwelling
Too heavy with matter to rise
above the earthly plane.”
In North America
Conan Doyle
clashed with Harry Houdini - the illusionist
argued that all spiritualists' tricks
could be duplicated by a competent magician.
Doyle insisted that Houdini himself
had ethereal powers, just didn’t know it
The magician dismissed him as a fool
“Sherlock Holmes famously disbelieved in vampires and spooks”
Doyle died of a heart attack at the age of 71 in East Sussex, on 7 July 1930.
Holmes, reclining on a French divan
taking a long drag from his church-warden pipe
injected a massive dose of cocaine
with a morphine chaser
and was heard to say to Doctor Watson:
“This House is no longer haunted.”
