The Ghostbreakers Before the Pulps

The occult detective was a product of the Gothic movement in fiction though there were precursors before 1765. There were early investigators who did not go on to a series of tales. Many of these characters and stories can be found in the Quintessential Supernatural Mystery Library. Later in the Pulps, in cartoons, movies, television and comics, the investigator of the supernatural would become a standard character type. (To be clear, many of the ghostbreakers listed here got their start in magazines first, but not PULP magazines. Even Sherlock Holmes appeared in The Strand before book publication. The soft weeklies gave us Semi-Dual, Shiela Crerar and Moris Klaw. The episode or case of the occult detective makes a good story length piece and a popular series keeps them coming back.)

Today’s post is brought to you by my new collection: Strange Detectives (available soon!) I enjoy writing the pseudo-Victorian or Edwardian tale (with monsters, of course.) My detectives include Dr. Drayk, Richard Delamare and his Watson, Bainbridge, and the Athenodorians, led by the dapper Baron von Klarnstein. These are largely tales of days when Hansom cabs roamed the streets of London, the train was the best way to get anywhere and the first motor carriages puffed their way through an America not yet dominated by highways.

The list below is not complete by any means. These are more like a list of highlights. Both the Ghost Story and Mystery fields produced detectives who solved real and fake monster mysteries. During this time period, readers enjoyed not knowing if the ghost would prove to be real or Uncle Silas trying to get the inheritance money. Today we are far more aware of the Scooby-Doo school of fake monster tales. (And if you think that type of tale doesn’t fly anymore, go watch True Detective, and you will see we haven’t thrown it out, only become more adept.)

1830

Samuel Warren’s Physician had seven cases between 1830 and 1849. These were collected in Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician. Presented as medical cases, they are not as Mystery-centered as later tales will be. For more go here.

1840

Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin gave us the first false monster detective story as well as the bones of all Mystery fiction to follow. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” appeared in Graham’s Magazine, April 1841. Dupin solves what looks like a supernatural case and gives us the template for Sherlock Holmes.

1870

J.Sheridan le Fanu’s Dr. Martin Hesselius was a frame character for five unrelated stories in In a Glass Darkly (1872). The most famous of these are “Green Tea” and “Carmilla”. For more go here.

1880

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes had six cases that bordered on the weird from 1887 to 1926 with “The Speckled Band” being my favorite and “The Creeping Man” the second. Working from Poe’s frame work, Holmes and Watson become the format for ghostbreaker teams. For more go here

1890

L. T. Meade and Clifford Halifax’s Doctor had twenty four cases from 1893 to 1895. Some of these stories were collected in Stories From the Diary of a Doctor (1894) .For more go here.

Arthur Machen’s Dyson has three cases from 1894 to 1895 including his most famous story, “The Great God Pan”. For more go here.

Arabella Kenealy’s Lord Syfret had eleven cases from 1896 to 1897. For more go here.

Bram Stoker’s Abraham van Helsing had one adventure in Dracula (1897) For more go here.

L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace’s John Bell has six adventures in The Master of Mysteries (1898) For more go here.

E. and H. Heron’s Flaxman Low had twelve cases between 1898 and 1899. E. and H. Heron were really Hesketh and Katherine Prichard, a mother and son team. For more go here.

1900

Allen Upward’s Hargreaves & Sargent had five adventures under the name “The Ghost Hunters” in 1905 to 1906. For more go here.

Gelett Burgess’s The Ghost Extinguisher had one adventure in 1905.  For more go here.

Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence had five cases in 1908 with another in 1914. For more go here.

William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki had nine cases from 1909 to 1947. For more go here.

1910

Alice and Claude Askew’s Aylmer Vance had eight cases in 1914. These authors were a married couple. For more go here.

Elliott O’Donnell is a little different here. He was a non-fiction writer who had done some actual ghost hunting. Twenty Years Experience as a Ghost Hunter (1916) and Confessions of a Ghost Hunter (1928) were his accounts of actual cases. He wrote fiction too.  For more go here.

Rose Champion de Crespigny’s Norton Vyse had six cases in 1919.

G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown had a dozen or so cases (a matter of opinion) between 1910 and 1933. “The Black of the Book” is a classic. For more go here.

J. U. Giesy and Junius B. Smith’s Semi-Dual had thirty cases from 1912 to 1934. For more go here.

Sax Rohmer’s Moris Klaw had ten cases from 1913 to 1914. These were collected in The Dream Detective in 1920. For more, go here.

1920

Ella Mary Scrymsour-Nichol’s Shiela Crerar had six cases in 1920. For more go here.

Jessie Douglas Kerruish’s Miss Bartendale had one case in 1922. This was the novel The Undying Monster, a werewolf story.  For more go here.

Conclusion

With the coming of Weird Tales in 1923, we can draw the curtain closed on non-Pulp ghostbreakers. I know 1923 is not conclusive. Dion Fortune had Dr. Taverner in 1926 and Margery Lawrence gave us Miles Pennoyer after that date though these were not technically Pulp characters. They appeared in hard cover books as did Dennis Wheatley’s Neils Orson. But you have to draw the line somewhere. So 1923 will do. If you are more interested in Pulp based occult detectives, try The Book of the Black Sun II: The Book Collector. That character is descended from the hard-punching Noir of the 1920s and later. A new Book Collector story  “Big Man” is currently available in Iron Faerie Publishing’s Hallowed.