This is a story that came about from other stories.  Recently, in my job as paranormal writer for Firefox News, I reported on the legends of The Mary Celeste, and The Curse of the Pharaohs.  In the course of my research, I found a common thread: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

While the much-beloved writer is well known for his novels about Sherlock Holmes, he is less well known for propagating rumor and myth.  One might say that he is the late nineteenth century version of the guy who forwards the bogus internet rumors.
 
It is certain that his intent wasn’t to spread urban legends.  Like many writers today, he was simply trying to parlay his hobby into enough money to quit his day job. 

As a medical student, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote, submitted and published his first short stories.  It was then, in his own words, he realized that “shillings might be earned in other ways than by filling phials."

The writer eventually graduated medical school, along the way serving a short stint as a ship’s doctor on a whaling vessel bound for the Arctic Circle.  He then served a stint on a ship bound for Africa and under another unscrupulous doctor before going into practice for himself, where he divided his time between medicine and writing.   Eventually, he penned A Study in Scarlett, where he first introduced the world to the detective Sherlock Holmes.

Like many writers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle explored his own interests, which were often at odds with one another. On one hand, he wrote about deduction and logic, on the other he also wrote about the paranormal and spiritualism.  And while he eventually grew to despise the “commercial” writings dealing with Sherlock Holmes, he hoped to be recognized as a serious author for his historical work.

But getting back to the rumors that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle started: As previously reported by Firefox News, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle played an unintentional part in twisting facts surrounding the mysteries of the Mary Celeste, and the belief that a curse surrounded the mummies of ancient Egyptian rulers.

Many of the “facts” of the Mary Celeste --such as the rescue party finding food on the table and cups of coffee left behind that were still steaming – were purely inventions of the writer’s in his short story The Captain of the Polestar.

  

Later, after the opening of the tomb of Egyptian King Tutankhamen and the subsequent death of the expedition’s patron, Lord Carnarvon, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle put forth speculation on the reason why.  The writer theorized that Lord Carnarvon's demise was caused by mold or deadly bacteria was specifically left behind in the tomb by the ancient Egyptians to bring death to robbers.

His theories were embraced as fact by the general public.

To understand how this could be, one has to understand the mindset of consumers at the turn of the century.  Before the internet or television, the primary source of entertainment and news was the newspaper.  Newspapers and journals of that time period were more literary.  It was common to find news on one page, and serialized action stories on another.  The serialized action story is how novels such as The Three Musketeers as well as many of the Sherlock Holmes novels were first printed. 

The backbone of subscriptions to many journals were made up of fans of a particular serialized story.  In fact, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made the decision to kill Sherlock Holmes, the journal that carried his serialized adventures lost 20,000 subscriptions.

In those days, news traveled slower.  Verification by the general public wasn’t as common.  Reporters of fact weren't above embellishing the truth to make a story more appealing to their readers.  And the general public was more prone to believe it because it was in print.

On top of that, there was a general public obsession with the spiritualist movement.  It was commonly believed that spirits could communicate from the afterlife and could affect events in this world. 

In this climate, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote short mysteries that today would be considered science fiction, but was in those days were called boys books. 

And while there were no Mythbusters or Snopes.com to set the record straight, it’s likely that the entertainment-hungry crowd of that era preferred it that way.

Sources:
http://www.sherlockholmesonline.org/index.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Arthur_Conan_Doyle
http://www.prairieghosts.com/spiritualism.html
http://www.maryceleste.net/doyle.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_Pharaohs