by David Marcum
“The Vampire of the Lyceum” ©2017 by Charles Veley and Anna Elliott. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the authors.
“The Adventure of the Second William Wilson” ©2016 by Daniel D. Victor. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
Editor’s Introduction
“Eliminate the Impossible”
by David Marcum
“No ghosts need apply.”
So says Mr. Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson near the beginning of “The Sussex Vampire”, one of several tales in The Canon that initially seem to involve the supernatural, the unexplained, or the impossible. In this one, Holmes has just been invited to consult on a matter related to vampires, leading him to state, “It’s pure lunacy.”
We expect nothing less from Holmes. He approaches the world in which he lives with the assumption that all is rational and explainable. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, he states that “I have hitherto confined my investigations to this world.” And it is the rules of this world, with its defined physical laws, understood causes-and-effects, and observable entropy and quantifiable phenomena that allow him to inexorably build his cases, piece by piece by piece. If Holmes were to consider the possibility of interference or involvement from some supernatural element in the solutions of his investigations, then every truth that he might establish would count for naught as some unquantifiable X-factor could be used to explain away every damning point. “I know that it’s my knife that killed him,” the criminal might state, “but it must have been the ghost that held it!” And who then, in a world where the impossible could not be eliminated, would be able to say for sure that it hadn’t?
In both the pitifully few sixty stories of the original Canon, as well as the many adventures that have been brought to us over the years from Watson’s Tin Dispatch Box by so many other later Literary Agents, Holmes refuses to acknowledge the influence of the paranormal. However, he is often presented with situations that seem at first to have unexplainable origins and impossibilities that apparently cannot be eliminated without acknowledging some sort of improbable elucidation beyond human ken.
Holmes’s scientific and skeptical approach was quite appropriate for those years in which he was in practice. It was a time when old beliefs were grinding against the new modern era, and men of science like Holmes were leading the way into the future. Holmes stated that “[t]his agency stands flat-footed upon the ground,” a policy that he held to time and again, approaching his investigations from a footing in fact, not fancy. This stance served him well. It has been noted elsewhere that Sherlock Holmes was in the forefront of developing modern forensic methods for criminal investigation. For example, in 2002, the United Kingdom’s Royal Society of Chemistry posthumously bestowed the “Extraordinary Honorary Fellowship” upon Holmes as “the first detective to exploit chemical science as a means of detection”. And there’s a very good reason that Scotland Yard’s national computer system, developed for major crime enquiries by all British police forces, called is called HOLMES (Home Office Large Major Enquiry System), and that the Yard’s training program is called Elementary.
Yet, even as Victorian and Edwardian societies were modernizing in terms of a respect for and advancement of science, much was still mired in the past. New knowledge widened the gulf between the haves and have-nots, and there was so much that was still culturally rooted in the old ways - including an idea that it wasn’t a good thing to abandon ancient beliefs too quickly, and a sneaking suspicion in the back of many people’s minds that there was some truth in the notions of ghosts and monsters and beasts and curses of all descriptions.
Perhaps this is what led to the easy acceptance of spiritualism during and beyond the years of Holmes’s active practice. The Victorians had a fascination with death, as reflected in the rise during this time of extremely ornate cemeteries, along with the many curious customs related to dead bodies, including making strange photos while posing with the dead. Interest in archaeology increased as artifacts were brought to England from around the world, with many of them - such as the Egyptian mummies that can still be viewed today at the British Museum - only fueling the fires of interest in the unusual ways that the dead are treated. And certainly people wanted to know more about life after death - either for the promise of an easier afterlife as a reward for the trials upon this earth, or simply for the comforting knowledge that loved ones, and one’s self as well, would continue on in some way following the transition from this physical plane to the spiritual.
The uncertainty of those years when Holmes was in practice, with upheavals in the social order and the seemingly endless parade of newly invented machines and technology, contributed to an unsettled sense that this new science wasn’t able to explain everything after all.
As this innate and curious void, held by the masses who wanted to hear more about this other unexplained world, cried to be filled, it is no surprise that literature did its part to provide answers of sorts for people from all walks of life. Ruth Robbins, a Professor of English Literature at Leeds Metropolitan University stated in The Guardian (“Ghost Stories: Why The Victorians Were So Spookily Good At Them”, December 23, 2013) that the much-easier availability of the printed word, coinciding with the Industrial Revolution of the second half of the nineteenth century, profoundly changed the way that supernatural stories were presented. Prior to this time, ghost stories, for example, had been primarily shared orally. With access to relatively cheap books and periodicals, people could now read these spooky tales on their own - and there was no shortage of them.
Ghost and monster stories played right into the existing gothic tradition, that form of literature known for its sense of foreboding, along with the feeling of a deepening mystery with every turn of the screw, and the hair standing up on the back of one’s neck. Among the practitioners and purveyors of this type of narrative was one of my favorites, Charles Dickens, rightfully credited with so many things, and also one of the early scribes of ghostly yarns. He’s famous for A Christmas Carol (1843), but there was also its prototype, “The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton”, buried in Dickens’ first novel The Pickwick Papers (1837), and also “The Signal-Man” (1866).
Dickens was preceded in the telling of these thrilling tales by many other pioneers in the field, including Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and followed by others, such as M.R. James, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James, Bram Stoker, Gaston Leroux, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The latter, Dr. Watson’s Literary Agent, contrived a number of supernatural stories throughout his career, including the Egyptian-themed “Lot 249” and “The Ring of Thoth” - or so I’m told, as I’ve never actually read anything written by Conan Doyle besides the historical middle sections of A Study in Scarlet and The Valley of Fear, and the introduction to The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes. A man of science himself, Conan Doyle’s odd pivot to an interest in spiritualism began in the mid-1880’s, progressing steadily throughout his life from being merely curious to a fervent missionary as he became one of its indefatigable and vigorous defenders. Even as that occurred, one can only imagine his acquaintance, Sherlock Holmes, shaking his head in either pity or disgust.
In the original Canon, there are a number of occasions when Holmes is approached to investigate something that has some apparent connection to the supernatural. The Hound of the Baskervilles stems from an ancient family curse. “The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge” has connections to voodoo. As mentioned, “The Sussex Vampire” seems to involve a blood-sucker attacking a child. “The Creeping Man” concerns the possible transformation of a man to a beast through suspicious and unproven science, and “The Devil’s Foot” is a chilling case where something can drive men mad - or kill them. Even “The Copper Beeches” and “The Speckled Band”, while not specifically supernatural, cannot avoid a s
ense of creeping horror. Then there are the untold cases - a giant rat, a remarkable worm unknown to science, and the cutter Alicia vanishing into the mist. And that doesn’t even begin to account for all the subsequent narratives provided by later Literary Agents wherein Holmes seems to face the impossible.
The examples are far too numerous to list completely here, but the list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning stories in various collections like The Irregular Casebook of Sherlock Holmes by Ron Weighell (2000), Ghosts in Baker Street (2006), the Lovecraftian-themed Shadows Over Baker Street (2003), and the ongoing Gaslight series (see below.) Holmes battled the supposedly supernatural in countless old radio shows, including “The Limping Ghost” (September 1945), “The Stuttering Ghost” (October 1946), “The Bleeding Chandelier” (June 1948), “The Uddington Witch” (October 1948), and “The Tollington Ghost” (April 2007). And of course, one mustn’t forget the six truly amazing episodes of John Taylor’s The Uncovered Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (1993), published in the same year as a very fine companion book. Then there’s George Mann’s audio drama “The Reification of Hans Gerber” (2011), later novelized as part of Sherlock Holmes: The Will of the Dead (2013).
An especially good radio episode with supernatural overtones was “The Haunted Bagpipes” by Edith Meiser, (February 1947), later presented in comic form as illustrated by Frank Giacoia, and then again adapted for print by Carla Coupe in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine (Vol. 2, No. 1, 2011)
In addition to numerous radio broadcasts, there were similar “impossible” television episodes from the old 1950’s television show Sherlock Holmes with Ronald Howard, such as “The Belligerent Ghost”, “The Haunted Gainsborough”, and “The Laughing Mummy”. The show was rebooted in 1980 with Geoffrey Whitehead as Holmes, and had an episode called “The Other Ghost”. Films with Holmes facing something with other-worldly overtones have included The Scarlet Claw (1944), The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire (2002), and Sherlock Holmes (2009).
From the massive list of similarly themed fan-fictions, one might choose “The Mottled Eyes” or “The Vampire’s Kiss”. There are countless novels, such as the six short works by Kel Richards, or Val Andrews’ The Longacre Vampire (2000), or Draco, Draconis (1996) by Spencer Brett and David Dorian. One shouldn’t ignore the narratives brought to us by Sam Siciliano, narrated by Holmes’s annoying cousin Dr. Henry Vernier, all featuring supposedly supernatural encounters. Then there is Randall Collins’ The Case of the Philosopher’s Ring (1978) and the different sequels to The Hound, including Rick Boyer’s most amazing The Giant Rat of Sumatra (1976), Teresa Collard’s The Baskerville Inheritance (2012), and Kelvin Jones’ The Baskerville Papers (2016).
Holmes has battled Count Dracula in too many encounters to list, but in almost every one of them, he finds himself ridiculously facing a real undead Transylvanian vampire who can change to a bat. Often, Holmes is simply inserted into the Van Helsing role within the plot of the original Dracula story. I’ve always ignored each of these, as the real Holmes would never encounter an imaginary creature such as this. The one exception so far has been a book that I recently read, Mark Latham’s A Betrayal in Blood (2017) - finally, a Holmes-Dracula encounter that I can enjoy and highly recommend.
A list of this sort is really too long to compile, and this shouldn’t be taken as anywhere close to the last word. There are numerous supposedly impossible circumstances or supernatural encounters of one sort or another contained in many Holmes collections, tucked in with the more “normal” cases, and these are but a few of them:
The Case of the Vampire’s Mark”, Murder in Baker Street – Bill Crider
“The Night in the Elizabethan Concert Hall in the Very Heart of London” and “The Night In The Burial Vault Under The Sanitarium At Soames Meadow”, Traveling With Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson – Herman Anthony Litzinger
“The Adventure of Jackthorn Circle”, Sherlock Holmes: Mysteries of the Victorian Era – Rock DiLisio
“Sherlock Holmes, Dragon Slayer”, Resurrected Holmes - Darrell Schweitzer
“The Adventure of the Phantom Coachman”, The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part IV: 2016 Annual – Arthur Hall
“The Adventure of the Talking Ghost”, Alias Simon Hawkes - Philip J. Carraher
“Lord Garnett’s Skulls”, The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part II: 1890-1895 – J.R. Campbell
“The Ghost of Gordon Square”, The Chemical Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Thomas G. Waddell and Thomas R. Rybolt
“The Case of Hodgson’s Ghost”, The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes – Ted Riccardi
“A Ballad of the White Plague”, The Confidential Casebook of Sherlock Holmes – P.C. Hodgel
“The Adventure of the Dark Tower”, The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part III: 1896-1929 – Peter K. Andersson
“The Adventure of the Field Theorems”, Sherlock Holmes In Orbit – Vonda N. McIntyre
“The Haunting of Sutton House”, The Papers of Sherlock Holmes Vol. I - David Marcum
“The Chamber of Sorrow Mystery”, The Outstanding Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes – Gerard Kelly
“The Shadows on the Lawn”, The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Barry Jones
“The Deptford Horror”, The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes - Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr
When I had the idea for the theme of this anthology, I wasn’t sure how it would go. I’m a strict traditionalist. I want to read more and more Canonical-type stories about Holmes and Watson - and nothing about “Sherlock and John”! - and that’s what I write and also encourage in others as well. Many has been the time when I’ve started reading a new Holmes story, only to realize that, no matter how authentic the first part is, the end has veered off into one-hundred-percent no-coming-back supernatural territory - Holmes is battling a real monster, or facing a full-fledged vampire or wolfman, or perhaps a brain-eating fungus from another planet. There is a misguided belief that, just because someone wishes it to be so, Holmes is interchangeable with Abraham Van Helsing - and he most definitely is not.
As someone who has collected, read, and chronologicized literally thousands of Holmes adventures over the last forty-two-plus years, I’m dismayed when this happens. As I make notes for each story to be listed in the massive overall chronology that I’ve constructed, I generally indicate when a book has “incorrect” statements or segments, and that includes notes identifying those parts of a story that were really and truly written by Watson, as compared with paragraphs or pages or chapters that were clearly composed and added by some later editor who has taken Watson’s notes and either changed parts, or stuck in completely fictional middles and endings to fulfill their own agenda. Sometimes the story goes so far off into the weeds that even pulled-out pieces of it can’t be judged as authentic, and the whole thing is lost.
In terms of the theme of these books - Eliminate the Impossible - I owe thanks to Sherlockian Jeff Cambell. In the past he’s found some tales from Watson’s Tin Dispatch Box, and also (with Charles Prepolec) edited several anthologies, including two of my favorites, Curious Incidents Volumes I and II, featuring totally traditionally adventures, and Gaslight Grimoire (2008), Gaslight Grotesque (2009), and Gaslight Arcanum (2011), each with a more decided supernatural bend. Jeff and I were emailing about things Holmesian back in June 2016, and it was then that I had the idea for this collection’s theme. We discussed it in a few emails, and I realized that I was enthusiastic about an anthology of apparently supernatural investigations, but with rational solutions – just like “The Sussex Vampire” and The Hound of the Baskervilles.
I sent out invitations, and the response was overwhelming. Just like the first volumes of the MX anthologies, which grew from one to two, and then from two to three, this two-volume set started with the idea of being a single book before greatly expanding, as more p
eople wanted to join the party. (Sadly, Jeff Campbell was going to write a story, but his own editing duties for the upcoming Gaslight Gothic took his attention elsewhere.)
As I had explained to the participants, this book would consist of what seemed to be supernatural tales, but with real-world rational endings. However, I left the door open just a crack - if there was some sort of hint at the end that more had occurred than could be easily explained, possibly even something a bit supernatural, I was okay with that too - this time. After all, I think it’s arrogant for us to think we have figured it all out, and that something doesn’t exist simply because we can’t see it... yet. To paraphrase Hamlet: There are more things in heaven and earth, Watson, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I did hear a bit of sarcastic push-back. One person referred to this as a “Scooby Doo book”, but I firmly declare that there is a plethora of different kinds of stories in this volume, and none that have the sense that the culprit would have gotten away with it if not for that meddlesome consulting detective.
These two volumes contain stories where Holmes faces ghosts and mythological creatures, possessions and prophecies, impossible circumstances and curses. Some begin with the impossible element defined from the beginning, while others progress for quite a while as “normal” cases before the twist is revealed. As with all Holmes adventures, this collection represents one of the great enjoyments of reading about The Great Detective - the reader never knows where each tale will lead. The narratives might be serious or humorous, workmanlike or heart-breaking.
The reader might encounter a ghost story or a police procedural or a caper, set in London or in the country, or early or late in Holmes’s career, and either a comedy or a tragedy. And while each of the adventures in these volumes is categorized by Holmes eliminating the impossible to obtain, however improbable, the truth, the various impossibilities contained within these covers are presented in an incredibly varied and exciting manner. I’m certain that you will enjoy all of them.