We all know Arthur Conan Milk primarily as the author of immortal detective stories about the London detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr. John Watson. But few have heard of the outstanding master of the pen as a passionate collector and propagandist of the facts of inexplicable communication between the souls of the dead and living people. In a broad sense, he was a researcher of the existence of spirits in another, other world. Sir Arthur's interest in the afterlife was not accidental. Well, the finale of his long-term epic of communicating with souls and accumulating more and more evidence of their existence became absolutely amazing for his family and admirers of the writer. With life and death, Arthur Conan Doyle refuted the disbelief of skeptics and atheists.
Fairy apparition
As it turned out later, this incident was a big fiasco for Arthur Conan Doyle. However, he did not admit defeat. And all his work, begun in 1891 at the Society for Psychical Research, was the story of Sir Arthur's righteousness. But here … However, about everything in order.
In December 1922, the English magazine Strand Magazine published five photographs of … fairies and a gnome. The pictures were taken near the village of Cottingley in Yorkshire by cousins, sixteen-year-old Elsie Wright and ten-year-old Francis Griffith. Arthur Conan Doyle became interested in publishing. To ensure the authenticity of the photos and stories of the girls, he gave them his own, new photographic plates, secretly marked - in order to avoid substitution. The new photographs of the fairies were not very sharp, but there was a certain glow in them. Sir Arthur believed that this is a magnetic field that fairies form. In 1921, his book "The Phenomenon of Fairies" was published, where he wrote: "There is a whole people that can be as numerous as the human race, which leads its own life and is separated from us by some difference in vibrations." The writer sincerely believed in the authenticity of photographs of tiny fairies dancing next to the girls. Arthur Conan Doyle put forward his own theory about the nature of the phenomenon - the life of fairies next to people.
But … the photographs turned out to be a joke of the girls. But Arthur Conan Doyle sent startling and suspicious photos to one of the UK's leading physicists, Oliver Lodge. The scientist's answer should have alerted the writer, if not completely disappointed: the physicist categorically spoke out that the photographs were fake and that the fairies on them were portrayed by a group of dancers. Lodge also sarcastically remarked that the fairies' hairstyles were too fashionable … But for some reason Sir Arthur stood his ground.
Lovers meet again
A sober-minded person and a practitioner, Sir Arthur, unexpectedly for many, realized that the afterlife, the presence of spirits in the real world, the ability to communicate with the dead is not an invention.
They say that inexplicable phenomena - telekinesis, telepathy and others - interested him from a young age. Conan Doyle visited places where poltergeists were observed more than once, even spent the night in houses where, according to rumors, ghosts were found.
At the end of the 19th century, seances became fashionable in Europe, during which mediums spoke with the spirits of the dead. The first such session, attended by Arthur Conan Doyle, took place in 1886. Arthur was able to communicate through a medium with the spirit of a person whom he had once met in Egypt. Incredibly, the spirit conveyed the old conversation in great detail, telling about things and events about which, except for the two of them, no one could know. Sir Arthur was shocked.
Gradually, from year to year, from session to session, the writer found out from the spirits how they live in that other mysterious world. It turned out that life there is similar to ours, earthly. People come to another world in a spiritual body, as if repeating an ordinary, physical one. It is remarkable that low passions, hobbies, diseases, vices. weaknesses remain in our world. The spirits seem to continue the same relationship that was between them in earthly life. Those who loved each other on Earth meet again in another world. If here, in ordinary life, the spirit remains a dear or close person, then communication with the living will help the soul to settle in a different space. For people, however, communication with spirits is not dangerous.
Son's hand
During the First World War, a real disaster struck in the family of Sir Arthur. The elder son, brother and nephews of the writer went to the front, and none of them returned from the battlefield. But Sir Arthur could not believe that loved ones left him forever. Communication with their souls was for Doyle a ray of light in the darkness. However, later he denied that it was the events of the hard times of war that influenced his beliefs: after all, he believed in communicating with spirits much earlier, and he conducted seances, as we know, long before the war …
In 1915-1930, Arthur Conan Doyle persistently practiced sessions of communication with the other world in his Windlesham estate. The medium was his second wife Jin, because this woman had the gift of a spiritualist and a clairvoyant. Once, in one of the gloomy English evenings, during a session, the hand of his deceased son Kingsley fell on the shoulder of Sir Arthur … The hand is quite palpable, warm. alive … And Conan Doyle was convinced once again. that another world exists.
Arthur Conan Doyle spoke a lot, telling people about his encounters with the spirits and souls of deceased loved ones. He tirelessly led educational work. In the famous article "Unknown Shores," Sir Arthur wrote about how ghosts appear. In his opinion, they arise from ectoplasm, a mysterious white substance that is secreted by mediums.
The information that Conan Doyle received from another world through his spouse gave people hope. The Doyle spouses told everyone that people who have gone to another world do not know grief, worries and suffering and have a good time. In 1922, the mystic and writer went on a lecture tour of the United States of America to tell that even after death, life does not end at all. Many people who had lost their loved ones on the fronts listened to the famous Englishman with excitement and hope.
I will leave this world on the seventh of July …
Upon his return from the United States, a significant incident occurred with Arthur Conan Doyle. At a seance, during a conversation with his late mother, he learned that soon an unknown visionary and assistant would appear in their house. His name sounded strange: Fenea. According to the spirit of the mother, five thousand years ago, this Fenea was a Babylonian scribe.
A spirit named Fenea contacted Sir Arthur in late 1922. From that time on, the Babylonian had been invisibly present among the Doyle family for several years. Fenea gave advice on raising children and housekeeping. It's funny that the spirit advised the writer to walk more and not to abuse … strong brewed tea. Fenea spoke of the impending end of the world, and Arthur Conan Doyle believed him. But Armageddon still did not come, and they began to laugh at the writer. The newspapermen explained the writer's fascination with the world of spirits by the heavy heredity of Sir Arthur: after all, his father, a chronic alcoholic, ended his days in a hospital for mentally ill people.
Arthur Conan Doyle, with true British calm, ignored the ridicule. Together with his faithful wife, he settled in the Bignel Wood estate. The green oasis outside the city had everything to survive the apocalypse. On the advice of Fenea. one of the rooms in the house was repainted in the “protecting everyone” purple color. It was in it that Sir Arthur spoke for a long time with the spirit of Charles Dickens himself, who asked Conan Doyle to finish the novel "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" in his place.
In March 1930, an event occurred that had a tremendous impact on the adherents of spiritualism. Suddenly, the writer called Jean into his office and said, “The spirit has informed me. that on the seventh of July I will leave this world."
Incredibly, this is what happened. Arthur Conan Doyle passed away on the day predicted to him from the spirit world.
About eight thousand people gathered for a memorial ceremony in London's Albert Hall on July 13, 1930. The armchair in the first row, intended, at the request of the writer, for him, remained empty. Among those invited was the famous medium Ethel Roberts.
Sir Arthur's widow Jean addressed those gathered for the mournful ceremony:
- Ladies and gentlemen! Before he died, my husband gave me this envelope, sealed with his personal seal. Now Mrs. Roberts will learn from the spirit of Sir Arthur the content of the message, and we will check if it is correct by comparing it with his own words, written by him in his own hand.
Standing in a trance in front of an empty chair, Ethel does not sound like a man's (and even more so - to the voice of Arthur Conan Doyle). said:
- I have defeated you, gentlemen, unbelievers! There is no death. See you soon! - after these words, Ethel Roberts opened the envelope. Those present were able to make sure that exactly the same phrase was written on a piece of paper enclosed in an envelope, which Jean opened …
So Arthur Conan Doyle, with his life and death, proved the existence of another world and the souls in it. And we still have to read the books of Sir Arthur about the incomprehensible: "New Revelation", "Land of Fog" and "History of Spiritualism."
