Special Edition: 👻 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Ghosts He Could Not Explain

There is something wonderfully eerie about the man who created Sherlock Holmes going ghost hunting.

Not metaphorically.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle entered reportedly haunted houses after dark. He waited inside an old church for its dead to appear. He investigated strange footsteps, spectral figures and sinister rooms. He claimed that something unseen once crossed his bedroom and whispered beside him.

For this Halloween Special Edition, I’m leaving Sherlock Holmes at the door.

Tonight, we’re following Arthur Conan Doyle into the dark.

🏚️ The Haunted House at Charmouth

Long before Conan Doyle became one of the world’s most famous defenders of Spiritualism, he had already begun investigating hauntings.

After joining the Society for Psychical Research in the 1890s, he was asked to join a small party examining a reportedly haunted house at Charmouth, on the Dorset coast.^[1]

The family living there had reported persistent unexplained noises so severe that Conan Doyle later described the house as becoming almost uninhabitable.

So he went looking for an explanation.

There were no infrared cameras, electronic recorders or modern ghost-hunting equipment. There were witnesses, observation, darkness and whatever chose to make itself heard inside the house.

The creator of literature’s greatest detective had begun investigating ghosts.

🌑 Someone Entered His Bedroom

One of Conan Doyle’s most unsettling paranormal stories happened not in a ruined abbey or abandoned mansion, but inside his own bedroom at Crowborough, Sussex.

He later described it in his 1927 article Ghosts I Have Seen.^[2]

Conan Doyle awakened during the night with the immediate conviction that someone else was in the room.

His back faced the darkness.

He tried to turn around.

He couldn’t.

He described himself as fully conscious but completely unable to move.

Then he heard footsteps.

Measured footsteps crossed the bedroom behind him.

Whatever had entered the room came closer.

Conan Doyle sensed it bending over him.

Then, beside him, he heard a whisper:

“Doyle, I come to tell you that I am sorry.”^[3]

And then there was silence.

Within roughly a minute, Conan Doyle found that he could move again.

He turned around.

The bedroom was dark and still.

His wife had slept through the encounter.

No one was there.

Conan Doyle insisted that he had not been dreaming. He wondered whether the visitor had been a deceased man whom he had once tried to console after a bereavement.

Today, the inability to move while sensing another presence immediately suggests one possible explanation: sleep paralysis.

But Conan Doyle did not believe that was what had happened.

To him, something had entered the bedroom.

And it had spoken his name.

⛪ Midnight in the Haunted Church

Perhaps Conan Doyle’s eeriest investigation took place inside an old church near his Sussex home.

The church already had a reputation for being haunted.

One summer night, Conan Doyle decided to investigate.

His wife, children and several companions went with him. At about ten o’clock, an elderly villager admitted them into the church and locked the door behind them.^[4]

Carrying a lantern, they moved toward the old choir stalls.

Then the lantern went out.

And they waited.

For nearly two hours, little happened.

Conan Doyle noticed strange lights moving near the altar, but at first he considered an ordinary explanation. Perhaps distant automobile headlights were entering the church at an unusual angle.

Then something changed.

A dull, phosphorescent haze appeared near the altar.

Conan Doyle watched it.

Within that pale light, two figures seemed to form.

They appeared dressed in black and white, resembling figures in ecclesiastical clothing.

Several people in the party reportedly saw them.

Jean Conan Doyle finally spoke into the darkness and asked whether there was anything they could do to help.

The figures disappeared.^[5]

Other members of the group later reported seeing another taller figure near the altar.

At midnight, Conan Doyle decided it was time to leave.

He did not leave believing they had simply watched headlights crossing an old wall.

He believed they had seen ghosts.

👻 The Monk Who Walked There by Day

The story became stranger afterward.

Conan Doyle later met a man he identified as Mr. Munro, who claimed that he had experienced something unusual inside the same church years earlier.

His encounter had not happened at midnight.

It happened in daylight.

Munro said he became aware of an ancient monk walking beside him.

He described a strong, hawk-like face, a prominent nose and a robe of an unusual yellowish color.

For a time, the monk simply walked with him.

Then it vanished.^[6]

Conan Doyle later encountered another story claiming that the church was haunted by a religious figure associated with the reign of Henry VIII and with treasures supposedly hidden during the upheavals of the Reformation.

There is no surviving historical evidence establishing the identity of a dead monk haunting the building.

But to Conan Doyle, the stories appeared to circle the same place.

A church already believed to be haunted.

Figures appearing before the altar at night.

And another witness claiming that a monk walked there beneath the light of day.

🌃 The Ghost Near Piccadilly Circus

In 1924, another haunting drew Conan Doyle into the darkness.

This time, it was in London.

Newspapers had reported strange activity in a building only a few hundred yards from Piccadilly Circus.

There were unexplained raps.

An oppressive atmosphere.

A strange luminous streak was said to appear upon the staircase.

And a young woman working in the building claimed that she repeatedly saw the apparition of an elderly man with what Conan Doyle later described as an evil-looking face.^[7]

On the night of May 28, 1924, Conan Doyle went to investigate.

Outside, London was alive.

The theaters were emptying. Crowds poured through the streets after an evening’s entertainment.

Then Conan Doyle stepped inside the supposedly haunted building.

The noise disappeared.

He later remembered the extraordinary contrast between the crowded theater district outside and the absolute silence of the sinister old house.

Somewhere in that darkness, people claimed a dead man walked.

So Conan Doyle waited for him.

No dramatic apparition materialized before the investigators that night.

But perhaps the image is eerie enough on its own.

Thousands of people moving through electric London outside.

And only streets away, the creator of Sherlock Holmes sitting inside a silent house waiting for a ghost.

🕯️ “Father”

Not every spirit Conan Doyle hoped to encounter belonged to a stranger.

His son Kingsley died in 1918.

Later, during a séance, Conan Doyle became convinced that Kingsley had returned.

According to Conan Doyle’s public account, Jean suddenly believed their son was present.

Then Conan Doyle heard a voice.

“Father.”^[8]

He answered.

The voice told him that he was happy.

Conan Doyle later described more than a voice. He said he felt the pressure of a strong hand upon his head and what he believed was his son’s kiss upon his forehead.^[9]

Was Kingsley truly present?

Was grief shaping Conan Doyle’s interpretation of what happened?

Was the experience produced by the séance itself?

Those questions remain.

But there is no question about what Conan Doyle believed.

For him, the ghost he most desperately wanted to find had found him first.

🌒 The Ghost Hunter Behind Sherlock Holmes

Perhaps this is the Arthur Conan Doyle who belongs most naturally to Halloween.

Not simply the famous writer who believed in Spiritualism.

The man who actually went looking for ghosts.

He entered haunted houses.

He waited inside darkened churches.

He investigated apparitions.

He listened to stories of monks walking through daylight and dead men appearing on London staircases.

And one night, according to Conan Doyle, something entered his own bedroom, crossed the floor behind him and whispered beside his bed.

Were they ghosts?

Was the bedroom visitor sleep paralysis?

Did darkness and expectation transform unusual lights into figures inside the church?

Perhaps.

Or perhaps Conan Doyle was right about at least one of them.

Perhaps somewhere inside that old church, something really did emerge from the pale haze.

Perhaps a monk still walked where monks had walked centuries before.

Perhaps there really was something waiting inside that silent London house.

Arthur Conan Doyle spent years trying to discover whether the dead could return.

Sherlock Holmes might have demanded more evidence.

But his creator eventually became convinced that he already had it.

And for a man who made his fortune writing mysteries, Conan Doyle left us with one of his own.

Because when the lights went out and the old buildings became quiet, he believed the ghosts came walking.

And sometimes, they knew his name.

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🕯️ Historical & Paranormal Note

The paranormal experiences in this article are based primarily upon experiences Arthur Conan Doyle himself published or publicly described. These sources document what Conan Doyle reported and believed; they do not independently establish that the phenomena were supernatural.

Possible natural explanations are included where relevant without being presented as proof that every reported experience has been resolved. Accounts involving apparitions, séances, clairvoyance and haunted places are presented as historical paranormal testimony and cultural experience rather than independently verified supernatural events. Historical uncertainty, however, does not itself prove or disprove a paranormal interpretation.

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📚 Footnotes & Sources

1. Arthur Conan Doyle later recalled joining the Society for Psychical Research in 1893 or 1894 and, shortly afterward, taking part in an investigation of a reportedly haunted house at Charmouth. He described extensive reports of unexplained noises that made the house difficult for its occupants to inhabit. See Arthur Conan Doyle, The Edge of the Unknown (1930), “The Law of the Ghost.” Read the text. ↩
2. Arthur Conan Doyle, “Ghosts I Have Seen,” first published in the Weekly Dispatch, 1 May 1927. Conan Doyle introduced the article as an account of occasions when, without the aid of a medium, he believed himself sensitive to the unknown. Read the reproduced article. ↩
3. In the same article, Conan Doyle described awakening in his bedroom at Crowborough unable to move, hearing measured footsteps and then hearing the words, “Doyle, I come to tell you that I am sorry.” He stated that he believed himself fully conscious throughout the experience. Arthur Conan Doyle, “Ghosts I Have Seen”. ↩
4. Conan Doyle’s 1927 account describes a party of seven entering a reportedly haunted church near his home at approximately ten o’clock at night. An elderly villager admitted them and then locked the church behind them while they conducted their vigil. Arthur Conan Doyle, “Ghosts I Have Seen”. ↩
5. Conan Doyle wrote that, after initially considering whether distant headlights might explain some unusual illumination, a dull haze appeared near the altar and two black-and-white figures seemed to take shape within it. Members of the party reportedly observed the figures before they disappeared. Arthur Conan Doyle, “Ghosts I Have Seen”. ↩
6. Conan Doyle subsequently recorded the testimony of a man identified as Mr. Munro, who claimed to have seen an ancient monk walking beside him inside the same church during daylight. Conan Doyle described Munro’s account of the figure’s distinctive face and yellowish robe while making clear that this was Munro’s clairvoyant experience. Arthur Conan Doyle, “Ghosts I Have Seen”. ↩
7. Conan Doyle later described investigating a reportedly haunted London building near Piccadilly Circus on the night of 28 May 1924. Reports associated with the property included rapping sounds, a luminous ray on the stairs, an oppressive atmosphere and repeated sightings of an elderly male apparition. See Arthur Conan Doyle, The Edge of the Unknown (1930), “A London Ghost.” Read “A London Ghost”. ↩
8. In public lectures about his Spiritualist beliefs, Conan Doyle described a séance involving the medium Evan Powell in which he believed his deceased son Kingsley communicated with him. Conan Doyle recalled hearing a voice address him as “Father” and later say that he was happy. Contemporary account of Conan Doyle’s lecture. ↩
9. During his 1920 visit to Australia, Conan Doyle publicly described what he believed had been Kingsley’s materialization, saying that he felt his son’s hand upon his head, a kiss upon his brow and heard his voice tell him that he was happy. Contemporary Brisbane account. ↩