Mystery fiction and Horror fiction are fruit from the same tree. The Gothics of the 1760-1820s spawned many different varieties of tales. Some were actually supernatural, such as the very first, The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole, while others resolve with no actual monsters appearing. The very popular novels of Ann Radcliffe, such as The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), were of this ilk. Later Mary Shelley would take Radcliffe’s formula of explaining away all the monsters at the end and put the explanation on the front, thus creating the first Science Fiction novel in Frankenstein (1818). Mystery, Horror and SF all from the same tree.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote the first Mystery story with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (Graham’s Magazine, April 1841). With this single tale he penned not only the first fair play Mystery, but also the first occult detective tale with a false monster. Should it be any surprise that Mystery stories often contain the appearance of the supernatural but resolve with a logical ending in the manner of Ms. Radcliffe? Writers like J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Bradden and others wrote both Mysteries (called Sensation novels at the time) and true Horror or ghost stories. They were not specialists but fans of both branches of the tree.
I have written at length on the occult detective, one of my favorite sub-genres, but here I want to focus on the stories that offer the appearance of ghosts and boogies but ultimately prove to be earthly enough. I wrote about A. Conan Doyle’s Sherlock tales of this sort here. Doyle was one of those writers who told tales of both sorts but it is his The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) that stands has the supreme achievement. Here is a Mystery that sets the rules for longer false monster Mysteries. Poe did it at the shorter length but Doyle expands the idea to a full novel, and a brilliant one at that.
Uncle Silas (1864) by J. Sheridan Le Fanu For more on Le Fanu, go here.
Wylder’s Hand (1864) by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
The Wyvern Mystery (1869) by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Johnny Ludlow (1874) by Mrs. Henry Wood
Kalee’s Shrine (1886) by Grant Allen
The Mount Marunga Mystery (1890) by Harrison Owen
The Sign of Four (1890) by A. Conan Doyle
Trilby (1894) by George DuMaurier For more on mesmerists, go here.
A Bid For Fortune (1895) by Guy Boothby
The Parasite (1895) by A. Conan Doyle
Prince Zaleski (1895) by M. P. Shiel
From Whose Bourne (1896) by Robert Barr
The Master of Mysteries (1899) by L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace For more L. T. Meade, go here.
The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings (1900) by L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace
Farewell Nikola (1901) by Guy Boothby
The Sorceress of the Strand (1903) by L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace
In Search of the Unknown (1905) by Robert W. Chambers
The Flying Death (1908) by Samuel Hopkins Adams For more on this story, go here.
The House of Whispers (1910) by William Le Queux
The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) by G. K. Chesterton For more on Father Brown, go here.
The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (1913) by Sax Rohmer For more Sax Rohmer, go here.
The Lodger (1913) by Mary Belloc Lowdnes
Max Carrados (1914) by Ernest Bramah
The Quest of the Sacred Slipper (1914) by Sax Rohmer
The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914) by G. K. Chesterton
Police!!! (1915) by Robert W. Chambers
Sinister Island (1915) by Wadsworth Camp
The Yellow Claw (1915) by Sax Rohmer
The House of Fear (1916) by Wadsworth Camp
The Return of Fu Manchu (1916) by Sax Rohmer
The Hand of Fu Manchu (1917) by Sax Rohmer
Uncle Abner (1918) by Melville Davisson Post
Tales of Secret Egypt (1919) by Sax Rohmer
The House of Fear (1920) by Robert W. Service
Raspberry Jam (1920) by Carolyn Wells
The Come Back (1921) by Carolyn Wells
Sight Unseen (1921) by Mary Robert Rinehart
Fire-Tongue (1922) by Sax Rohmer
The Hairy Arm (1924) by Edgar Wallace
“The Tragedy at Marsden Manor” (1924) by Agatha Christie For more on the false monsters of Agatha Christie, go here.
The Eyes of Max Carrados (1924) by Ernest Bramah
The Black Abbot (1926) by Edgar Wallace
Two Stolen Idols (1927) by Frank L. Packard
Conclusion
The Supernatural Mystery, A Quintessential Library, would not be complete without writers from the Golden Age (1920-1930s) and not yet in the Public Domain. The works of writers like Dorthy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Cyril Hare, John Creasey, and most prominent of all, the master of the Locked Room Mystery, John Dickson Carr. All of these writers spiced up regular Mystery tales with some gloss of supernaturalism.
The idea of a Mystery that looks supernatural but ultimately has Principal Dingwell unmasked by those meddling kids is quite familiar to us all from childhood. Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? presented this to us every week with Shaggy and Scoob running from ghostly figures, witch-doctor’s in scary masks, suits of armor, etc. while the rest of the gang remained quite firmly on solid ground. The big reveal always reinforced the message to children that there are no real monsters in the world, just greedy heirs who find gold in that old mine after all. No ghosts need apply! This message, ironically, would have been proudly endorsed by Ann Radcliffe’s ghost.
The idea that Frankenstein is the first science-fiction novel was first proposed on very dubious grounds by Brian Aldiss and Darko Suvin, and has been thoroughly disproven by Gary Westfall in his groundbreaking work, The Mechanics of Wonder, which aptly notes that there was no science-fiction genre at the time (a genre that wouldn’t emerge until 1926 when that term was coined and defined by Hugo Gernsback in Amazing Stories); and that the novel is firmly in the Gothic and Romantic camp. If anything it’s these are actually anti-science-fiction in their condemnation of amoral scientific progress. That it’s been influential on science-fiction has no bearing on the matter whatsoever. Tristan and Isolde was influential on The Lord of the Rings; that doesn’t make Old-English poetry Fantasy fiction.
I like Eric Rabkin’s ideas around the Gothic Explique. If you read a ton of Old Pulp you see the Frankenstein tropes over and over. I think it is valid.