Occult Detectives in Books and Comics.

[Silent Scream Queen]

Mixing the detective genre and horror and the supernatural is often popular.
Here we will list these occult detectives from books and comics, who are called in on cases that involve the stranger side of nature.
The butler didn't do it, the ghost did!



List of occult detectives mentioned below, in order:

Carnacki, the Ghost Finder by William Hope Hodgson

Jules de Grandin by Seabury Quinn

Flaxman Low by Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard and Kate O'Brien Ryall Prichard

Diana Marburg by L.T. Meade ( Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith) and Robert Eustace

John Bell by L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace

Aylmer Vance: Ghost-Seer by Claude and Alice Askew

John Silence by Algernon Blackwood

Dr Taverner by Dion Fortune

[Silent Scream Queen]

One of the most famous of the book occult detectives is Carnacki, the Ghost Finder.
He appeared in stories by the weird fiction writer William Hope Hodgson, who tragically lost his life in the Great War.



He appears in nine stories, first collected together in 1913:

The Gateway of the Monster (The first story published, January 1910)
The House Among the Laurels
The Whistling Room
The Horse of the Invisible
The Searcher of the End House
The Thing Invisible
The Hog
The Haunted Jarvee
The Find





In response to Carnacki's usual card of invitation to have dinner and listen to a story, I arrived promptly at 427, Cheyne Walk, to find the three others who were always invited to these happy little times, there before me. Five minutes later, Carnacki, Arkright, Jessop, Taylor, and I were all engaged in the "pleasant occupation" of dining.

"You've not been long away, this time," I remarked, as I finished my soup; forgetting momentarily Carnacki's dislike of being asked even to skirt the borders of his story until such time as he was ready. Then he would not stint words.

"That's all," he replied, with brevity; and I changed the subject, remarking that I had been buying a new gun, to which piece of news he gave an intelligent nod, and a smile which I think showed a genuinely good-humored appreciation of my intentional changing of the conversation.

Later, when dinner was finished, Carnacki snugged himself comfortably down in his big chair, along with his pipe, and began his story, with very little circumlocution:—

"As Dodgson was remarking just now, I've only been away a short time, and for a very good reason too—I've only been away a short distance. The exact locality I am afraid I must not tell you; but it is less than twenty miles from here; though, except for changing a name, that won't spoil the story. And it is a story too! One of the most extraordinary things ever I have run against.

"I received a letter a fortnight ago from a man I must call Anderson, asking for an appointment. I arranged a time, and when he came, I found that he wished me to investigate and see whether I could not clear up a long-standing and well—too well—authenticated case of what he termed 'haunting.' He gave me very full particulars, and, finally, as the case seemed to present something unique, I decided to take it up.

"Two days later, I drove to the house late in the afternoon. I found it a very old place, standing quite alone in its own grounds. Anderson had left a letter with the butler, I found, pleading excuses for his absence, and leaving the whole house at my disposal for my investigations. The butler evidently knew the object of my visit, and I questioned him pretty thoroughly during dinner, which I had in rather lonely state. He is an old and privileged servant, and had the history of the Grey Room exact in detail. From him I learned more particulars regarding two things that Anderson had mentioned in but a casual manner. The first was that the door of the Grey Room would be heard in the dead of night to open, and slam heavily, and this even though the butler knew it was locked, and the key on the bunch in his pantry. The second was that the bedclothes would always be found torn off the bed, and hurled in a heap into a corner.

"But it was the door slamming that chiefly bothered the old butler. Many and many a time, he told me, had he lain awake and just got shivering with fright, listening; for sometimes the door would be slammed time after time—thud! thud! thud!—so that sleep was impossible.

"From Anderson, I knew already that the room had a history extending back over a hundred and fifty years. Three people had been strangled in it—an ancestor of his and his wife and child. This is authentic, as I had taken very great pains to discover; so that you can imagine it was with a feeling I had a striking case to investigate that I went upstairs after dinner to have a look at the Grey Room.


Read him here:

www.gutenberg.org/files/10832/10832-h/10832-h.htm#2H_4_0006

[Silent Scream Queen]

NDX doesn't Carnacki appear in a couple of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novels? I've only read the first one I'm afraid, so I can't comment on them.

[Silent Scream Queen]

This is Jules de Grandin, described as an occult Hercule Poirot, his stories appeared in the pulp magazine Weird Tales (which published many Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft tales) at its height, and were among the most popular. Of French extraction, his adventures centered around the town of Harrisonville, New Jersey. He had his own Watson, a Dr Trowbridge, to assist him in his investigations.
He appeared in over 90 short stories and one novel, which is an impressive run, between 1925 and 1951.
The author was  Seabury Quinn.

Several of his tales were reprinted in the 1970s by Popular Library in six volumes:

The Adventures of Jules de Grandin (August 1976)

The Casebook of Jules de Grandin (September 1976)

The Skeleton Closet of Jules de Grandin (October 1976)

The Devil's Bride (November 1976. Novel)

The Hellfire Files of Jules de Grandin (December 1976)

The Horror Chambers of Jules de Grandin (February 1977)


Not long ago Night Shade Books brought out his collected tales in a five volume set.

The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin.

The Horror on the Links (covering stories from 1925 to 1928)

The Devil's Rosary (1929 & 1930)

The Dark Angel (1931 to July 1933, including the novel The Devil's Bride)

The Rival from the Grave (August 1933 to March 1938)

Black Moon (June 1938 through to the last story in September 1951)



Nice Virgil Finlay illustration here.





The covers on these were by Vincent DiFate. Interior illustrations Stephen Fabian.

[NDX]

Feb 12, 2022 7:22:49 GMT -5 Silent Scream Queen said:

NDX doesn't Carnacki appear in a couple of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novels? I've only read the first one I'm afraid, so I can't comment on them.

I've never read any of them as I'm not a big Alan Moore fan. He's very hit or miss for me, never finished Watchmen or V but loved his Top 10 series.

[Silent Scream Queen]

Next we have the psychic detective Flaxman Low.



Written by mother and son team  Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard and Kate O'Brien Ryall Prichard, and first published under the pseudonyms "H. Heron" and "E. Heron".
Flaxman Low may be the first of the psychic detectives, someone who uses their own paranormal abilities to solve cases.
The character first appeared in Pearson's Magazine in 1898.
He is apparently a leading Victorian scientist, who uses an assumed name too hide his real identity.



The stories are:

The Story of the Spaniards, Hammersmith (1898)
The Story of Medhans Lea (1898)
The Story of the Moor Road (1898)
The Story of Baelbrow (1898)
The Story of Yand Manor House (1898)
The Story of the Grey House (1899)
The Story of Saddler's Croft (1899)
The Story of Sevens Hall (1899)
The Story of No. 1 Karma Crescent (1899)
The Story of Konnor Old House (1899)
The Story of Crowsedge (1899)
The Story of Mr Flaxman Low (1899)



Read online here:

archive.org/details/1899ghostsbeingtheexpofflaxmanlowpsydic/page/n7/mode/2up

[Silent Scream Queen]

Next we have a rare early female psychic detective.



Diana Marburg, who appeared in three short stories in the early 1900s.
Marburg uses palm reading in her cases.
Her stories appeared in the US version of Pearson's Magazine.
The authors were  L.T. Meade ( Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith) and Robert Eustace

The Dead Hand (February 1902)

Read here: gutenberg.net.au/ebooks18/1800221h.html

Finger Tips (August 1902)

Read here: gutenberg.net.au/ebooks18/1800231h.html

Sir Penn Caryll’s Engagement (December 1902)

Read here: gutenberg.net.au/ebooks18/1800241h.html

They were later collected in The Oracle of Maddox Street (Ward, Lock, 1904), along with seven other tales not connected to her.

[NDX]

Would love to run across some of these older books at the swap or thrift stores. I've been finding older books interesting the last few years.

[Silent Scream Queen]

Feb 16, 2022 2:16:43 GMT -5 NDX said:

Would love to run across some of these older books at the swap or thrift stores. I've been finding older books interesting the last few years.

Some are nicely illustrated too.
Many have been reprinted, being out of copyright, but often the quality isn't there.
Some are just Project Gutenberg texts copied and printed on demand, often with random covers.

[Silent Scream Queen]

The next detective we have is again by L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace.

It is John Bell. He is a debunker of supposed hauntings. 



Find his stories collected in:

A Master of Mysteries by L.T. Meade, Robert Eustace 1898



Contains six stories:

The Mystery of the Circular Chamber
The Warder of the Door
The Mystery of the Felwyn Tunnel
The Eight-Mile Lock
How Siva Spoke
To Prove an Alibi


Read here:

www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22278

[Silent Scream Queen]

Now we come to Aylmer Vance: Ghost-Seer



Originally published in 1914 in The Weekly Tale-Teller. They weren't collected into book form until the 1990s.

The narrator, Dexter, meets Aylmer Vance, a ghost-seer, while on a holiday and Vance recounts ghostly tales to him, later Dexter becomes involved in cases as well. Dexter becomes Vance's Watson:

"Aylmer Vance had rooms in Dover Street, Piccadilly, and now that I had decided to follow in his footsteps and to accept him as my instructor in matters psychic, I found it convenient to lodge in the same house. Aylmer and I quickly became close friends, and he showed me how to develop that faculty of clairvoyance which I had possessed without being aware of it. And I may say at once that this particular faculty of mine proved of service on several important occasions.

At the same time I made myself useful to Vance in other ways, not the least of which was that of acting as recorder of his many strange adventures. For himself, he never cared much about publicity, and it was some time before I could persuade him, in the interests of science, to allow me to give any detailed account of his experiences to the world."

Written by the husband and wife team of Claude and Alice Askew. Both died during the Great War, when their ship was sunk by a German submarine.





Content list:

The Invader
The Stranger
Lady Green-Sleeves
The Fire Unquenchable
The Vampire
The Boy of Blackstock
The Indissoluble Bond
The Fear

Read the story Aylmer Vance and the Vampire here:

gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0605091h.html

[Silent Scream Queen]

This is another famous and influential occult detective.



John Silence.

By Algernon Blackwood, a major name in the ghost story field.

John Silence is a medical doctor with occult training. From the book:

Thus it was that John Silence, this singularly developed doctor, was able to select his cases with a clear knowledge of the difference between mere hysterical delusion and the kind of psychical affliction that claimed his special powers. It was never necessary for him to resort to the cheap mysteries of divination; for, as I have heard him observe, after the solution of some peculiarly intricate problem—

“Systems of divination, from geomancy down to reading by tea-leaves, are merely so many methods of obscuring the outer vision, in order that the inner vision may become open. Once the method is mastered, no system is necessary at all.”

And the words were significant of the methods of this remarkable man, the keynote of whose power lay, perhaps, more than anything else, in the knowledge, first, that thought can act at a distance, and, secondly, that thought is dynamic and can accomplish material results.

“Learn how to think,” he would have expressed it, “and you have learned to tap power at its source.”

To look at—he was now past forty—he was sparely built, with speaking brown eyes in which shone the light of knowledge and self-confidence, while at the same time they made one think of that wondrous gentleness seen most often in the eyes of animals. A close beard concealed the mouth without disguising the grim determination of lips and jaw, and the face somehow conveyed an impression of transparency, almost of light, so delicately were the features refined away. On the fine forehead was that indefinable touch of peace that comes from identifying the mind with what is permanent in the soul, and letting the impermanent slip by without power to wound or distress; while, from his manner,—so gentle, quiet, sympathetic,—few could have guessed the strength of purpose that burned within like a great flame.

He appeared in six stories.



CASE I:   A Psychical Invasion 
CASE II:  Ancient Sorceries 
CASE III: The Nemesis of Fire 
CASE IV:  Secret Worship 
CASE V:   The Camp of the Dog 
CASE VI:  A Victim of Higher Space


First five available here:

www.gutenberg.org/files/49222/49222-h/49222-h.htm#i

[Silent Scream Queen]

I Updated the main entry to add a list of occult detectives mentioned in the thread as a handy guide.

[Silent Scream Queen]

Next we have Dr Taverner.



Created by an actual occultist, Dion Fortune (Violet Mary Firth). Dr Taverner runs a "nursing home" for patients that would in other circumstances be considered mad.



A young Dion Fortune. Fortune practiced ceremonial magic in the Western tradition and was an influential figure in that field in the 20th century. During the second World War she tried to use her occult teachings to aid the Allied cause.




First published in Royal Magazine in 1922. Collected in book form in 1926.
There are twelve stories.

Contents

Blood Lust
The Return of the Ritual
The Man Who Sought
The Soul That Would Not Be Born
The Scented Poppies
The Death Hound
A Daughter of Pan
The Subletting of the Mansion
Recalled
The Sea Lure
The Power House
A Son of the Night


Available on Archive to loan: archive.org/details/secretsofdrtaver00fort/mode/2up