page_title: Arthur Conan Doyle
section_title: Spiritualism, Freemasonry
hierarchical_section_title: Arthur Conan Doyle / Spiritualism, Freemasonry
caption_attribution_description: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and family looking over wall and pointing, New York City
context_page_description: Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle KStJ DL was a British writer and medical doctor. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 when he published A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and fifty six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction.
  Doyle was a prolific writer; other than Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement", helped to popularise the mystery of the Mary Celeste.
context_section_description: Doyle had a longstanding interest in mystical subjects, and remained fascinated by the idea of paranormal phenomena, even though the strength of his belief in their reality waxed and waned periodically over the years.
  In 1887, in Southsea, influenced by Major-General Alfred Wilks Drayson, a member of the Portsmouth Literary and Philosophical Society, Doyle began a series of investigations into the possibility of psychic phenomena, and attended about 20 seances, experiments in telepathy, and sittings with mediums. Writing to Spiritualist journal Light that year, he declared himself to be a Spiritualist, describing one particular event that had convinced him psychic phenomena were real. Also in 1887 (on 26 January), he was initiated as a Freemason at the Phoenix Lodge No. 257 in Southsea. (He resigned from the Lodge in 1889, returned to it in 1902, and resigned again in 1911.)
  In 1889, he became a founding member of the Hampshire Society for Psychical Research; in 1893, he joined the London-based Society for Psychical Research; and in 1894, he collaborated with Sir Sidney Scott and Frank Podmore in a search for poltergeists in Devon.
  In 1916, during the height of World War I, Doyle's belief in psychic phenomena was strengthened by what he took to be the psychic abilities of his children's nanny, Lily Loder Symonds. This and the constant drumbeat of wartime deaths inspired him with the idea that Spiritualism was what he called a "New Revelation" sent by God to bring solace to the bereaved. He wrote a piece in Light magazine about his faith and began lecturing frequently on Spiritualism. In 1918, he published his first Spiritualist work, The New Revelation.
  Some have mistakenly assumed that Doyle's turn to Spiritualism was prompted by the death of his son Kingsley, but Doyle began presenting himself publicly as a Spiritualist in 1916, and Kingsley died on 28 October 1918 (of pneumonia contracted during his convalescence after being seriously wounded in the 1916 Battle of the Somme).
  Nevertheless, the war-related deaths of many people who were close to him appears to have even further strengthened his long-held belief in life after death and spirit communication.   Doyle's brother Brigadier-general Innes Doyle died, also from pneumonia, in February 1919. His two brothers-in-law (one of whom was E. W. Hornung, creator of the literary character Raffles), as well as his two nephews, also died shortly after the war. His second book on Spiritualism, The Vital Message, appeared in 1919.
  Doyle found solace in supporting Spiritualism's ideas and the attempts of Spiritualists to find proof of an existence beyond the grave. In particular, according to some, he favoured Christian Spiritualism and encouraged the Spiritualists' National Union to accept an eighth precept – that of following the teachings and example of Jesus of Nazareth. He was a member of the renowned supernaturalist organisation The Ghost Club.
  In 1919, the magician P. T. Selbit staged a séance at his flat in Bloomsbury, which Doyle attended. Although some later claimed that Doyle had endorsed the apparent instances of clairvoyance at that séance as genuine, a contemporaneous report by the Sunday Express quoted Doyle as saying, "I should have to see it again before passing a definite opinion on it," and, "I have my doubts about the whole thing". In 1920, Doyle and the noted sceptic Joseph McCabe held a public debate at Queen's Hall in London, with Doyle taking the position that the claims of Spiritualism were true. After the debate, McCabe published a booklet, entitled Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud?, in which he laid out evidence refuting Doyle's arguments and claimed that Doyle had been duped into believing in Spiritualism through deliberate mediumship trickery.
  Doyle also debated the psychiatrist Harold Dearden, who vehemently disagreed with Doyle's belief that many cases of diagnosed mental illness were the result of spirit possession.
  In 1920, Doyle travelled to Australia and New Zealand on Spiritualist missionary work, and over the next several years, until his dea
caption: Doyle with his family in New York City, 1922
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