For 14 years, from the time he converted in 1916 until he died in 1930, the famous author was a tireless missionary for Spiritualism, the belief that human personality sunives death and that the living can communicate with the dead. To support the cause, he traveled around the world on lecture tours. wrote books. spent thousands of pounds of his own money and even opened a psychic bookshop in London. His reputation suffered, especially after he began championing the existence of fairies, an incident somewhat fancifully retold in the film Fairytale-A True Story, stawing Peter O'Toole as Doyle, which is scheduled to be reIeased by Paramount Pictures next month. How could the man who created the super-rational Sherlock Holmes believe in voices from the dead, fairies, ectoplasmic apyaritions and such? "Readers appreciated and loved Arthur Conan Doyle," wrote his first biographer. "They deprecated the fact that he ever espoused the cause of Spiritualism. The writings of the last twelve years of his life they would willingly ignore." Modem Spiritualism was born in 1848 in Hydesville, a smarl town near Rochester, New York, after a house rented by a family named Fox supposedly was plagued by mysterious rapping sounds. One day, Kate Fox, 11, asked the invisible rapper to repeat what she did as she snapped her fingers--and the snaps were echoed with raps. Using a code and the alphabet, the Foxes determined that the rapper was the spirit of a murdered peddler who had been buried in the basement. Subsequent digging found what may have been traces of human hair and bones. The house's previous tenant, fingered as the murderer by the raps, denied the accusations.  

For believers in Spiritualism, the "Rochester Rappings" proved the existence of an intelligence beyond the vale. Kate and her sisters became internationally known mediums, but in 1888 sister Margaret, by then, like Kate, a rather pathetic alcoholic, confessed that they made the celebrated rappings by cracking their big toes. (She later recanted the confession.)  

The Fox sisters spurred a huge interest in things psychic. After becoming popular in the United States in the '85" Spiritualism crossed the Atlantic. Seances and table turning became all the rage. Spiritualistic circles sprang up, often centered around a charismatic medium. Scottish medium Daniel Dunglas Home-"the most remarkable individual of whom we have any record since the age of the Apostles," according to Doyle-could reportedly float up to the ceiling in broad daylight. At stances, usually conducted in darkened rooms, "ectoplasm" flowed from the body of a medium, sometimes forming limbs or faces.  

Spiritualism's best-known advocate was born on May 22, 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he was raised on the edge of poverty. His father, Charles Doyle, a sometime illustrator, was an alcoholic who had to be institutionalized. His mother, Mary, the guiding figure in his life, gave her son an appreciation for the chivalric ideals of the past. From a Catholic family, Doyle was sent to Jesuit schoolswhere he lost his faith. "I remember that when, as a grown lad, I heard Father Murphy, a great fierce Irish priest, declare that there was sure damnation for everyone outside the Church, I looked upon him with horror, and to that moment I trace the first rift which has grown into such a chasm between me and those who were my guides."  

His interest in occult matters dated to the late l880s, when he was a young doctor in the Portsmouth suburb of Southsea. Finding the medical profession less than rewarding, Doyle tried supplementing his income by writing. One of the books he wrote in Southsea was titled A Study in Scarlet and featured a detective named Sherlock Holmes. He also joined the Portsmouth Literary and Scientific Society and conducted experiments in telepathy with a fellow member. "I showed beyond any doubt whatever that I could convey my thoughts without words," he later explained. In 1887, the young doctor wrote to the Spiritualist publication Light, saying a stance he attended "showed me at last that it was absolutely certain that intelligence could exist apart from the body." He later claimed that it took decades of study before he embraced Spiritualism, but his letter to tlght indicates that he was predisposed to believe.  

By 1916, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle-he added the "Sir" when he was knighted in 1902-was loved and respected around the world. Sherlock Holmes was just one of many characters to spring from Doyle's imagination. Besides novels and short stories, he also wrote poems, plays, innumerible letters to the press on the issues of the day and a six-volume history of World War I. During the Boer War, he served in an army hospital, and he earned his knighthood after writing a defensc of the British conduct in that conflict. He w;ls a great sportsman who loved boxing, golf, billiards, bicycling and cricket, and he is credited with helping to introduce skiing into Switzerland. Like a British Teddy Roosevelt, he impressed people with his boyish enthusiasm. "I had come to think of Doyle as a great rollicking, goodnatured, adventurous man who had never forsaken his boyhood, or rather had brought the spirit of youth into his maturity," wrote George H. Doran, his American publisher. He was, in short, the very antithesis of a man who would try to talk with the dead. Then he convertzd to Spiritualism. 

There was apparently no great epiphany-no Saulon-the-road-to-Damascus experience. Doyle had weighed the evidence for years. He had been impressed by the accounts of scientifc men who believed. Sir William Crookes, who discovered thallium, had worked with D. D. Home and a medium named Florence Cook and Fronounced them genuine. Physicist Sir Oliver Lodge had written a book, titled Rdymond, about his communications with his dead son. If these men of science believed, Doyle reasoned, who was he to argue?  

Strangely enough, his own personal experiences before his conversion were never very spectacular, nothing like the stories he had read about Home floating to the ceiling or Florence Cook materializing a woman who called herself"Katie King" and claimed to be the daughter of the long-dead buccaneer Henry Morgan. Doyle received messages spelled out at seances through "table tirring," Iike one from a spirit who told him, among other things, "that Mars was inhabited by a race more advanced than us, and that the canals were artificial." When a young woman living with the Doyles, Lily Lodes-Symonds, developed tfie power of "automatic writing," in effect taking dictation from the dead, Doyle found her messages generally convincing. "Altogether, no one could douht the reality of her inspiration, though the lapses were notable," he wrote. "It was like getting a good message through a very imperfect telephone."  

There's also little doubt that the great slaughter of World War I increased Doyle's susceptibility. The war's agony, he wrote, made him realize that Spiritualism was "really something tremendous, a breaking down of the walls between two worlds, a direct undeniable messagc fi-om beyond, a call of hope and of guidance to the human race at the time of its deepest affliction." Some thought the World War Irelated deaths of his son Kingsley and his brother, Innes, sent Doyle into the arms of Spiritualism, but both men died aftey his conversion.  

For Doyle, Spiritualism's great appeal was its offer of a religion that could be tested by scientific means. He wanted to have his faith-but prove it, too. "I must have definite demonstration," he wrote, "for if it were to be a matter of faith then I might as well go back to the faith of my fathers." Spiritualism also filled the void ]eft by his rejection of Catholicism. In an early autobiographical novel, Tne Stdrk Mvnro Letters, the protagonist turns away from Wesleyanism and says, "When first I came out of the faith in which I had been reared, I certainly did feel for a time as if my life-belt had burst." In Spiritualism, Doyle fbund the "life-belt" he needed.  

Once converted, he set out to convert others. He traveled all through Britain, generating great publicity for the movement. The combination of his crusading and the public's profound grief over the war led to a doubling of societies associated with Britain's Spiritualists' National Union between 1g14 and 1g1g. After the war, he made trips to Australia, the United States, Canada and South Africa, speaking to thousands. "He was probably the greatest propagandist the Spiritualist movement ever had and a truly charismatic figure," wrote Geoffrey K. Nelson in Spiritudlism dnd Society.  

The message Doyle delivered at his lectures was the promise of life after death that was much like life before death-only better. Death freed the "etheric body," which looked like the living one, minus all imperfections. The dead continued to pursue their interests or hobbies. Mismatched couples would not meet in the afterlife; marriages after death were reserved for ideal mates, though there was no sex.  

There were, however, pets, alcohol, tobacco and books. Children continued to grow to aduIthood in the afterlife. The dead also wore robes-"modesty does not cease with this life." As souls developed spiritually, they could move on to higher planes.  

An early biographer detected a glaring contradiction. Doyle went out of his way to criticize "materialists" who he believed were too attached to the solid pleasures of the flesh. In his own view of the afterlife, however, "Conan Doyle, the recognizable and conscious entity of this material world, went on for ever after death, presumably enjoying all the things that had made life so delightful...." Perhaps the contradiction isn't so surprising in one who insisted that his faith be proven.  

Doyle's friendships were strained by his unyielding belief: "He carried it to extreme lengths," an acquaintance observed, "showing impatience with anyone who expressed the slightest doubt."  

One friendship that ended badly was with the famed magician and escape artist Harry Houdini, with whom Doyle began corresponding in Igso. "Some of our people think that you have yourself some psychic power," Doyle wrote in a postscript to a letter that year, "but I feel it is art and practise." That feeling would change.  

Houdini approached the subject of Spiritualism with great skepticism. He knew about fake mediums, having been one for a brief time early in his career. But Doyle kepr trying to bring Houdini around. "I have had very conclusive evidence since my two books were written-six times I have spoken face to face with my son, twice with my brother, once with my nephewall beyond doubt in their own voices and on private matters.... I know it is true, but we can't communicate that certainty to others. It will come-or not, according to how far we work for it," he wrote to his friend.  

Things began to unravel after a stance in Atlantic City. Acting as medium was Doyle's wife Jean, whom he had married after his first wife died of tuberculosis. Lady Doyle had become a convert to Spiritualism, and she showed a talent for automatic writing.  

"Presently, Lady Doyle was 'seized by a Spirit,"' recalled Houdini of the stance. "Her hands shook and beat the table, her voice trembled and she called to the Spirits to give her a message. Sir Arthur tried to quiet her, asked her to restrain herself, but her hand thumped on the table, her whole body shook and at last, making a cross at the head of the page, started writing." When she finished she had given Houdini 15 pages of messages purportedly from his late mother.  

This was no small matter to Houdini. "If there ever was a son who idolized and worshipped his Mother ... that son was myself," he wrote. Yet he was not convinced. His mother was Jewish-why the crossl She never leamed to speak or write English-why was the message in that language?  

Doyle found Houdini's objections without foundation. His wife always marked her pages with a cross to ward off evil, he said. Furthermore, "when a medium is not in trance, but writing by inspiration, it is the flood of thought and of emotion which strikes her, and has to be translated by her in her own vocabulary as best she can." When Houdini told the New York Sun that he had never seen anything to convlnce him oflife after death, Doyle resyonded. "I felt rather sore about it," he said. "I know by many examples the purity of my wife's mediumship, and I saw what you got and what the effect was upon you at the time." The gulfbetween the two men grew. After an exchange of increasingly tart letters, they stopped corresponding, and Houdini died two years later. The founders of modern Spiritualism, the Fox sisters made "raps" with their toes.  

Yet Doyle remained fascinated by the magician. In the years since stating that Houdini's effects were done by "art and practise," he began to suspect there was something more at work. In a letter to Houdini's biographer, he said, "I have no more doubt that he used psychic powers than I have that I am dictating this letter."  

Perhaps the greatest blow to Doyle's reputation was his championing of the Cottingley fairy photographs. In 1gr7, two cousins, Frances Griffiths, lo, and msie Wright, lCi, from the Yorkshire village of Cottingley, took pictures of themseIves cavorting with fairies and goblins. Doyle saw the pictures several years later and wrote to Houdini that he had "two photos, one of a goblin, the other of four fairies in a Yorkshire wood. A fake! you will say. No, sir, I think not. However, all inquiry will be made... The fairies are about eight inches high. In one there is a single goblin dancing. In the other four beautiful, luminous creatures. Yes, it is a revelation."  

In 1920, Doyle published the results of his inquiries in the Strand magazine and then expanded the account in a book titled The Coming of the Fairies. He was quick to distance the fairy issue from that of life after death-"I would add that this whole subject of the objective existence of a subhuman form oflife has nothing to do with the larger and far more vital question of spiritualism," he wrote. That said. he was off and running. "I will now make a few comments upon the two pictures, which I have studied long and earnestly with a high-power lens.  

"One fact of interest is this presence of a double pipe-the very sort which the ancients associated with fauns and naiads-in each picture. But if pipes, why not everything else! Does it not suggest a complete range of utensils and instruments for their own life? Their clothing is substantial enough.... And what joy is in the complete abandon of their little graceful figures as they let themselves go in the dance! They may have their shadows and trials [but] there is a great gladness manifest in this demonstration of their life." 

Few took the fairies seriously. When Doyle showed the photographs to Sir Oliver Lodge, whose psychic studies he had found so influential, the physicist suggested that perhaps pictures of dancers had been "superimposed upon a rural British landscape." In his book, Doyle also quoted "Major HallEdwards, the famous authority upon radium," who said, "[As] a medical man, I believe that the inculcation of such absurd ideas into the minds of children will result in later life in manifestations of nervous disorder. . . ." The girls themselves did not confess until 1983, when Frances, then 76, and Elsie, 82, finally came clean. The wee folk were actually cutouts on stiff paper, propped up with hatpins.  

Eventually Doyle's obsession crept into his fiction. The occult had been featured in many of his stories, but Spiritualism was handIed differently. In The Land of Mist, he had Professor Challenger, the star of his book The Lost World and second only to Holmes in popularity, convert. "I was justified in my scientific scepticism, but you have to-day offered me some incontroven-ible evidence," the professor finally admitted-words Doyle no doubt longed to hear spoken by skeptics all over the worrd. (Doyle liked the character of Challenger as much as he grew to dislike Holmes. Perhaps that's why the detective never converted-to Doyre he must have represented all the scoffers who refused to accept the "incontrovertible evidence" he offered.) 

The public's faith in Doyle, however, was wearing thin. "He's Beginning to Strain Our Patience," was the headline of a New York 7imes editorial written during the author's Igz3 lecture tour. "Again Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is placing on many of this country's inhabitants the embarrassing task of trying to strike a balance between their long-established liking for him and their equally well-settled dislike for what he is doing." During the same lecture tour, John F. Hylan, the mayor of New York City, was moved to attack Doyle's beliefs. "If he really believes all he says he does, I'm just sorry for him," said the mayor.  

Eventually Doyle decided to devote most of his energy to Spiritualism (although he occasionally delivered a Sherlock Holmes story-after all, they paid the bills for his important work). "He could not be persuaded to write on any theme apart from the psychic," recalled George H. Doran. "His enthusiasms carried him into speculative ventures such as photography of fairies; he invited the Fity and the scorn of the disbeliever; he brought upon himself the criticism of his associates and followers, and not all the ardour and force of his philippics quite restored him to the invmcibility of his earlier authority and leadership."  

It's easy to sense that Doyle relished the chance to fight the good fight, come what may. After all, this was the man who would have the words "Steel True, Blade Straight" carved on his tombstone. Wrote his son Adrian, "Just as his forbears had sacrificed their all for the Catholic faith, so did Conan Doyle follow devotedly in their footsteps in regard to Spiritualism."  

Was Doyle gullible? To his credit, in light of the times some of the phenomena he investigated defied easy explanation. On the other hand, he was so eager to believe that he would even defend mediums who had been caught cheating. "We must not argue that because a man once forges, therefore he has never signed an honest cheque in his life," he said.  

For Doyle, a man of great honesty and integrity, the existence of the spirit world was more likely than the idea that people of good reputation would go to such great lengths to lie and cheat-especially when those involved were children. "Sir Arthur was bighearted, zealous, sincere, and 'an earnest godly man,"' wrote psychic researcher Walter Franklin Prince, "but these qualities, admirable as they are, do not define an astute psychic researcher." According to Houdini, Doyle was "good-natured, very bright, but a monomaniac on the subject of spiritualism. Being uninitiated in the world of mystery, never having been taught the artifices of conjuring, it was the simplest thing in the world for anyone to ... hoodwink him."  

Faith can be a powerful force. It was faith, after all, that drove the members of the Heaven's Gate cult this year to eagerly embrace suicide, for reasons that seemed absurd to outsiders. Once he converted to the Spiritualist faith, Doyle never wavered. No doubt he breathed his last with confidence that he would be moving on to a better place, if not a terribly dissimilar one. In a letter written shortly before his death he said, "I write this in bed, as I have broken down badly, and have developed Angina Pectoris. So there is just a chance that I may talk it all over with Houdini himselfbefore very long. I view the prospect with perfect equanimity. That is one thing that psychic knowledge does. Tt removes all fear of the future. . . ." He died on July 7, 1930.  

More than two decades before his conversion, Doyle wrote a Sherlock Holmes tale titled "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box." At the end, Sherlock Holmes says something that surely echoed his creator's feelings. "What is the meaning of it, Watson?" the detective asks. "What object is sewed by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever." It was a problem Sherlock Holmes never attempted to solve. His creator, at least, made the effort. 

Tom Huntington is the editor of Historic Traveler magazine. He profiled Fenluay Park in the October 1994 SMITHSONIAN.