A study in survival
by Tom Ruffles
[ bookreviews ]
Roger Straughan's dog died at home one night from a malignant sarcoma. Naturally upset, and wondering if the animal had suffered, Straughan climbed into bed and as a distraction reached for a book on his bedside table. This happened to be a volume of short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Opening it at random, he read: "his exit was as speedy and painless as could be desired." Somewhat startled by this coincidence, he checked the context and discovered that it referred to the death of a dog. To add to the strangeness, when he glanced at the preceding page he found a reference to "a frightful sarcoma." A couple of pages later, at the start of a different story, he read the words "a lucky dog", an epithet often used about his own deceased canine (though not actually about a dog in the story).
This cluster of seemingly appropriate references was the beginning of a peculiar relationship in which Straughan became convinced that somehow Conan Doyle was communicating, in a meaningful way, via the medium of books by or about him. Similar 'coincidences' would occur when he picked up a book by Doyle; he would read something - a few words, a sentence, sometimes more - that seemed applicable to an event in his life or in the wider world. Soon he discovered that he could frame a question, take a book at random from his extensive Doylean collection, glance at a passage also at random, and frequently, though not always, read something apposite to the question he had asked. Much of what he received was fairly trivial in broad terms, but struck him as pertinent to his own situation, and all the more credible for it.
Forced to conclude that the frequency with which he read passages relevant to his life could not be dismissed as chance, he examined an obvious alternative explanation: was he subconsciously choosing pages that matched the situation? That would have been a remarkable feat of memory, but he approached the books - occupying about six feet of shelf - with his eyes closed, and afterwards he always reshelved the book in a different place, so the order constantly changed. He also found accurate readings in books he had just bought and not yet read. He was left with the conclusion that for some reason the long-dead author had selected him to continue the work of promulgating the doctrine of Spiritualism that had been Conan Doyle's major obsession in his later years.
Although convinced that some intelligence was involved, Straughan had to consider the possibility that it was not Conan Doyle. It could be another spirit, impersonating Sir Arthur for its own gratification, or even some kind of demon for all he knew. The best way to decide between these alternatives was to see how the sorts of responses he obtained mapped on to what he knew about Conan Doyle's personality and interests while alive. From an analysis of the communications he concluded that many did match, and much of the book is taken up with a categorisation of them based on Conan Doyle's earthly activities. These include medicine, sports, military matters, current affairs (indicating that he was keeping his eye on events just as he had in his own day), puzzles, and of course spiritual and religious views. They seemed to Straughan to be utterly consistent with Conan Doyle's opinions when he was alive, and convinced him that it was Conan Doyle, and not an imposter of some kind, who was 'talking' to him.
Straughan also entered into correspondence with Conan Doyle's last surviving child, Dame Jean Conan Doyle, who as well as providing encouragement, was able to give Straughan information that helped him in his search for evidence. Crucially, he was able to give her a reading that seemed to clinch the identity, as it involved a ring her father had given her and which nobody outside the family had known about. This had been a 'test question' that only Conan Doyle would have been able to answer, was never transmitted before by any medium, and which "astonished" Dame Jean by its accuracy. Straughan concedes that he cannot supply absolute proof, but feels that the material gathered in his book is evidence of the sort that might be put before a jury to evaluate in coming to a verdict acceptable in law.
As such jurors, what are we to make of Straughan's remarkable story? There is no doubt that many of the passages reproduced do seem to reflect on the questions asked with uncanny accuracy. While possible (as we only have his word), it does not seem to be a hoax, and of his sincerity there can be little doubt. The other possibility is coincidence, which Straughan dismisses as unlikely given the number of hits, particularly when they occur in clusters. That is a fair point, but I think does not take sufficient account of our ability to find patterns in the random. Straughan admits he considered less than half of the total number of readings he accumulated during this project to be significant, and has omitted some of the most startling but most personal ones. Ploughing through the entire corpus from beginning to end might give an outsider a different perspective.
The latitude of interpretation he gave himself is wide, and some correspondences seem forced. He says that the most convincing readings were those that struck him with their ingenuity, but one sometimes feels that the ingenuity is Straughan's rather than Conan Doyle's. Straughan found that he could tell when a result would be a strong one because he had a feeling of confidence, but this correlation, so persuasive to the experient, is just what cannot be conveyed in print. Also, the messages not only commented on affairs, they were able to predict them. This takes them to a different level and increases the possibility that Straughan was selecting passages himself rather than being directed to them, and was then imposing meaning on them post-hoc. Straughan is convinced he was provided over a long period with Conan Doyle's personal assurance that he had survived death, but the case is not as compelling to someone who did not go through the process but only hears about it second-hand; a general problem in psychical research.
The final section of the book opens out the discussion to include other strands of evidence that Straughan feels lends support to the survival hypothesis, focusing particularly on instances where Conan Doyle was said to have communicated after his death. Straughan is part of a tradition, beginning as soon as Conan Doyle died, of mediums channelling messages from him. Some of this support is not particularly strong, however. Straughan mentions (p136) a picture resembling Conan Doyle that appeared on Polaroid film at Scole in Norfolk, and states that the Scole Group, Straughan himself, and a friend knowledgeable about Conan Doyle, were all unable to track down a picture that replicated the image produced by the Group. The implication is that if it does not correspond to a photograph of Conan Doyle taken during life, it strengthens the case for his post-mortem survival. I am sorry to have to disabuse Straughan on this point, because the picture is identifiable. The source is not actually a photograph, it is the 1927 painting of Conan Doyle by Henry L Gates (NPG4115) in the National Portrait Gallery. It has however been reversed, closely cropped, converted to black and white and badly degraded. A comparison of the Polaroid reproduced in the book The Scole Experiment by Grant and Jane Solomon (opposite p53) with the NPG portrait similarly manipulated shows remarkable similarity.
One of the difficulties in evaluating Straughan's interpretations is not having a control condition. Could Straughan be reading more into the selected passages than was warranted, a case of the will to believe in action? Straughan notes that a friend tried the same procedure without telling him, and also obtained a message, so they were not confined to Straughan. I too decided to try it. To succeed would mean either that ACD - or someone or something - was communicating with me as he/it had with Straughan and his friend, or that I was subject to the same sorts of error that had led Straughan to read meaning into random passages. To fail might just mean that Conan Doyle preferred Straughan to me. I also decided to try a further condition in which I applied the same technique to the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, but abandoned this fairly quickly as responses tended to be of the variety: "What do you think of gay rights today, Mr Wilde? " to which 'Oscar' replied: "Mrs Cheveley: I wanted to interest him in this Argentine Canal scheme of which I dare say you have heard." (An Ideal Husband). Unless we are using the word "canal" in a way which I doubt Oscar would have, I did not see how this could be regarded as anywhere close to a hit. Yet if I had first seen a line further down the page, said by Lady Chiltern, "There must be some mistake, That scheme could never have my husband's support", I could have argued, with no more forcing than Straughan allowed himself in some of his examples, that Wilde was communicating but did not want to participate in any tomfool experiment to prove he had survived death.
With the works of Conan Doyle and his biographers, I carried out the procedure over a two week period, with intriguing results. Like Straughan I let my hand stray to a book, opened it idly and read the first words which caught my eye. Books were not returned to the same place afterwards. Unlike him, I never had any feeling of confidence that a reading would be particularly significant. My questions were a mixture of personal and general. The first was whether I would have a successful trip to Newmarket the following day. My hand went without my willing it to The Lost World. Opening it at random and glancing down, the first line I read was, "'It can have only one name,' said he. 'It is called after the pioneer who discovered it. It is Maple White Land.'" (The Lost World, Hodder and Stoughton, 16 ed, p131) It didn't seem very promising at first glance. I did though intend to stop off at a big furniture warehouse, although it didn't have much maple, white or otherwise. Perhaps Sir Arthur was playing with me, or merely displaying an entirely understandable lack of interest in home furnishings. Next asked whether I would enjoy a film being shown as part of a Ukrainian film season, the reply seemed to suggest it would be an ordeal: "'Courage! I answered. Piré took Leipzig with fifty hussars.'" ('How the Brigadier took the Field', in The Complete Brigadier Gerard, Canongate Classics, p142) In the event it was very enjoyable.
Another day, other films. Before going to see The First Day of the Rest of Your Life and The White Ribbon I asked what sort of outing I would have. My hand this time did not stray to ACD's own words but to Julian Symons' Conan Doyle: Portrait of an Artist. "For us the stories are very different. What attracts us is their period charm." (p.30) That seemed a reasonable verdict, if somewhat obvious. They were engaging films, and while set in different periods, were both characterised by a skilful evocation of their times. This looked good, and similar to the sorts of results Straughan got. It was entirely possible that Sir Arthur had taken the trouble to get in touch with me.
Turning from my own interests, I asked him how he had managed to cram so many activities into his life while being such a prolific author. "Nature plays such strange tricks with us at such moments of intensity, and those glimmering lights waxed and waned with a steady rise and fall." ('The Brazilian Cat' in The Great Tales of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Magpie/Parragon, p417) That could refer to his working practices, but it did not answer my question. Perhaps he thought it impertinent. I had recently read Julian Barnes's Arthur and George and wondered what the great man made of it. Oh dear, I wished I hadn't asked: "The man has been murdered, struck down from above by a sharp and heavy weapon." ('The Striped Chest' in The Great Tales, p227) He sounded really annoyed, and clearly not Barnes's greatest fan. Going back to my own activities, I asked if a car service and MOT would be expensive, and the answer was forthright, if opaque: "The brain of Italy has been most generally affected by this new knowledge" (Spiritualism and Rationalism, p17) Who would have thought that news of my Ford Focus's mechanical shortcomings could have spread so far?
These were the responses that appeared to be most relevant to the numerous questions I put to my putative discarnate friend, and some of those were weak. Like many of Straughan's, many replies were definite misses, and feeling that if Conan Doyle were in a position to pierce the veil, he wasn't being particularly energetic with me, I decided to end with, "Are you really communicating with Roger Straughan?" The response to this one was intriguing. Could it be that finally I had asked something worth answering? "Presently we shall meet you and all your little group, as people are met at a station at the end of a journey." (Pheneas Speaks, The Psychic Press, p150) This was curious because Straughan's book begins with a serious train crash in which he was involved, so it seemed linked to his situation. Possibly Conan Doyle was prevaricating in replying to my direct question, but perhaps he was saying that it didn't matter, he would meet us at the end of our journey and tell us himself, face to face, without the need of books as intermediaries.
