The man who killed Sherlock Holmes and believed in fairies

May 22 marks the 165th birthday of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—the man who gave us Sherlock Holmes…and then tried to get rid of him.

He was never particularly fond of his most famous creation. Holmes, he once said, was “a thinking machine without a heart,” and Doyle dreamed of being known for something more “serious”—historical novels, philosophical reflections, or at the very least, some science fiction involving dinosaurs (which, by the way, he actually wrote).

But the truth was—Sherlock paid well. Really well. Especially in the United States, where magazines paid Doyle several times what he earned back home for every new Holmes story. He was one of the first internationally famous authors, long before book tours and hashtags.

Eventually, Doyle had had enough. In the 1893 story “The Final Problem,” he threw Holmes off the Reichenbach Falls. That was it. The end. Full stop.

The public did not take it well. Black armbands were worn in mourning. Readers flooded newspaper offices with letters begging for Holmes’s return. One outraged fan even struck Doyle with a walking stick. 

And—spoiler—Holmes did return.

In the 1893 story “The FInal Problem,” Doyle “killed” Holmes in dramatic fashion

People didn’t just read Holmes — they wrote to him. Real letters arrived at Baker Street:
“Help me find my lost dog.”
“Someone’s stealing my mail.”
“Please solve my romantic crisis.”

Indeed, Conan Doyle himself was solving real-life mysteries. He helped clear the names of at least two men wrongly convicted of murder, one of whom—George Edalji—had been the victim of police prejudice and incompetence. Doyle’s stories often described investigative methods not yet in use at the time, and ironically, those very books inspired the police to start adopting them.

He also loved a good prank. Once, he sent anonymous telegrams to five upstanding gentlemen:
“All is discovered. Flee at once.”
One of them reportedly vanished that very night.
But even the master of deduction could be fooled — and spectacularly so.

The “fairies” that fooled Sherlock’s creator

In 1917, two girls—Elsie and Frances from Yorkshire—claimed they were playing with fairies by a stream. Their parents were skeptical. So the girls took a photograph. And there it was: a fairy with delicate wings, hovering in the grass.

The image was picked up by a theosophical magazine…and spotted by Arthur Conan Doyle.
He was ecstatic.

He wrote an article titled “Fairies Photographed!”, then another, and finally an entire book called The Coming of the Fairies. At his request, the girls produced several more photos—each featuring new fairy sightings. The public split into two camps: skeptics, who rolled their eyes, and believers, who claimed the veil between worlds was finally lifting.

Newspapers ran cartoons of Doyle with wings and a magic wand. He didn’t mind. In fact, he replied, quite seriously: “Truth is mightier than ridicule.”

Sixty-six years later, the girls admitted it was all a hoax. Elsie had copied the fairies from a children’s book, cut them out of cardboard, pinned them into the grass with a hatpin, and snapped the photo. When it unexpectedly hit the papers—and especially when Doyle got involved—they panicked.

Then quietly agreed to keep the secret until after his death, so as not to embarrass him.

Literary vibrations

Alongside his belief in ghosts, mediums, and telepathy, Conan Doyle also believed that certain novels had “healing vibrations.” He recommended specific books for things like low spirits or liver troubles. Essentially, he invented bibliotherapy — about a hundred years before it trended on Instagram.

And frankly, I couldn’t agree more.

Tanya Sedneva is the owner of Beyond Text Bookstore, located at 318 N. Santa Cruz Ave.