Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Edge of the Unknown

My experiences with mediums, good, bad and indifferent, are probably as wide as those of any living man. At one time or another I have experimented with Jonson of Los Angeles, whom I look upon as the best materializing medium whom I have known, with Inez Wagner of the same city, a wonderful voice medium, with Mrs. Wickland and with Miss Besinnet of Toledo, who is also of the first psychic quality. I have sat also in America with Mr. John Ticknor, a gifted amateur; with Mrs. Chenoweth, the famous clairvoyante; with Mrs. Wriedt of Detroit and Valiantine, wonderful direct voice exponents; with "Margery" Crandon, the world-famous amateur; with Miss Ridley of Philadelphia; Mrs. Pruden of Cincinnati; Mrs. Rose Miller of Washington; Mrs. Hazel of Winnipeg; the Hamilton circle in the same city, and many others. In Australasia I experimented with Bailey, the apport medium; Mrs. Susanna Harris; Mrs. Roberts of Dunedin, and several more. In South Africa with Mrs. Kimpton, and half a dozen more. In Paris with "Eva" and with Madame Briffaud. In Denmark with Einar Nielson. In Sweden with the remarkable daughter of Judge Dahl.

At home there are few mediums of the last twenty years whom I have not sampled, including Husk and Craddock of the older generation, and Evan Powell (at his best at the top of the list), Mrs. Roberts, Mrs. Garrett, Mrs. Barkel, Mrs. Brittain (all four splendid clairvoyantes), Mrs. Roberts Johnson and Mrs. Cooper (both of them overworked voice mediums), and a great many others of lesser note.

I have worked also many times with Hope of Crewe, who in his own line is the greatest medium of all time, and with Mrs. Deane, both of them exponents of psychic photography. These are some of the mediums whose gifts I have explored, and in many cases I have sat as often as a dozen times. Hence, if I have formed conclusions they have been based upon wide experiences. I have always taken copious notes of my cases. Fraud I have discovered, and helped to expose in several cases, but on the whole I should not put it at more than ten per centif as muchof the whole.

With so much practical work behind me the reader can imagine my feelings when in a public debate upon the subject with Dr. Haldane of Cambridge my distinguished opponent said, "I once knew a medium." In my reply I asked him what he would think of me if I contradicted him upon some point of chemistry, and said, "I have once been in a laboratory."

Apart from the ordinary phenomena of the sance room, my life has not given me much direct psychic experience. I have, so far as I know, no spiritual gifts myself and none of that psychic atmosphere which gives a tinge of romance to so many lives. There have, however, been occasions when without the aid of a medium I have been sensitive to the unknown.

One instance occurred some years ago. It was in my bedroom at Crowborough. I wakened in the night with the clear consciousness that there was someone in the room, and that the presence was not of this world. I was lying with my back to the room, acutely awake, but utterly unable to move. It was physically impossible for me to turn my body and face this visitor. I heard measured steps across the room. I was conscious (without seeing it) that someone was bending over me, and then I heard a voice saying in a loud whisper, "Doyle, I come to tell you that I am sorry." A minute later my disability disappeared, and I was able to turn, but all was black darkness and perfectly still. My wife had not awakened, and knew nothing of what had passed.

It was no dream, I was perfectly conscious all the time. My visitor gave no name, but I felt that it was a certain individual to whom I had tried to give psychic consolation when he was bereaved. He rejected my advances with some contempt and died himself shortly afterwards. It may well be that he wished to express regret. As to my own paralysis it came, I have no doubt, from the fact that the power for the manifestation had been drawn out of ME. When spirit manifests upon the physical plane it has to draw its matter from a material source, and I was the obvious one. It is the one occasion upon which I have been used as a physical medium, and I am content that it should be the last.

I had a second interesting experience some years ago. There was a church in the neighbourhood which had the reputation of being haunted. There are reasons why it would be wrong for me to indicate it more precisely. The party consisted of my wife and myself, my two sons, my daughter, a friend, and a young London lady who is among our rising poets. It was ten o'clock when we presented ourselves at the door of the church, where we were met by an elderly villager. Swinging a lantern he led the way to the choir end, where we all seated ourselves in the stalls which the ancient monks once occupied. My own very angular throne was that which had been used by many priors, in far-off days when the old church was one of the shrines of England. Opposite me, and dimly lit by the lantern, was the altar, and behind it a blank wall unbroken by any window, but reflecting strange ghostly shadows and illuminations through the high clerestory windows on either side. When the lantern was extinguished and we sat in the darkness watching these strange shifting lights coming and going, the impression was quite ghostly enough, though I have no doubt at all that there was a physical cause, due to some reflection of passing lights in the distance. It was, however, sufficiently weird.

For two hours I had sat in the dark upon my hard seat, and wondered whether cushions were vouchsafed to the priors of old. The lights still came and went behind the altar, but they only flickered over the top of the high expanse which faced us, and all below was very black. And then suddenly, quite suddenly, there came that which no scepticism could explain away. It may have been forty feet from where I sat to the altar, and midway between, or roughly twenty feet from me, there was a dull haze of light, a sort of phosphorescent cloud, a foot or so across, and about a man's height from the ground. We had been rustling and whispering, but the sudden utter silence showed me that my companions were as tense as I was. The light glimmered down, and hardened into a definite shapeor I should say shapes since there were two of them. They were two perfectly clear-cut figures in black and white, with a dim luminosity of their own. The colouring and arrangement gave me a general idea of cassocks and surplices. Whether they were facing the altar or facing each other, was more than I could say, but they were not misty figures, but solid objective shapes. For two or three minutes we all gazed at this amazing spectacle. Then my wife said loudly, "Friends, is there anything which we can do to help you?" In an instant they were gone, and we were peering into unbroken darkness with the lights still flickering above.

Personally, I saw no more, but those of our party who sat upon the right, said that they could afterwards see a similar figure, but somewhat taller a man alonewho stood on the left of the altar. For my own part nothing more occurred, and when midnight tolled forth above our heads, I thought it was time to make for the waiting motor.

Such was our experience. There was no possible room for error. Unquestionably we all saw these figures, and equally unquestionably the figures were not of this world. I was full of curiosity to know more of the matter, and presently my desire was gratified, for there came into my Psychic Bookshop a gentleman, Mr. Munro, who had had a similar experience some years before in the same place. He was possessed, however, of the great gift of clairvoyance, and his adventure was by day light, so that it was far more definite. He was going round the old church when he was suddenly aware of an ancient monk who was walking by his side, and he knew by his own sensations that it was a clairvoyant vision. The man was middle sized, with a keen, aristocratic, hawk- like face. So clear was he that Mr. Munro remembered how the sunlight shone upon the arched bone of his prominent nose. He walked for some time beside Mr. Munro, and he then vanished. What is noticeable is that he was wearing a gown of a peculiar tint of yellow. Some little time afterwards my informant was present at Bernard Shaw's noble play of "Saint Joan." In one act an English monk appears upon the stage. My friend instantly said to his wife, "That is the dress. That is what the dead man wore." Mrs. Munro, who was in the shop at the time, confirmed this. I may say that they had broached the subject before I had told them of our own experience in the old church.