The Philosophy of Sherlock Holmes

Eliminating the Impossible

77 Eliminating the Impossible Sherlock Holmes and the Supernatural Kyle Blanchette Two Tales of Holmes and Haunting In the opening scene of Guy Ritchie’s first movie adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s beloved and enduring literary franchise, Sherlock Holmes (2009), the audience promptly makes the acquaintance of a most sinister character by the name of Lord Blackwood. Looming over a young woman as she lies flat in a trance, dagger in hand, ready to take her own life, Blackwood is engaged in what appears to be a form of black arts. In a move that typifies the clash between Holmes and Blackwood throughout the movie, Holmes and Watson manage to save the young woman in the nick of time through sheer ingenuity and brute force. We soon find out that five other women have already been successfully sacrificed at Blackwood’s hand in the service of his greater purpose, during which time he has eluded the grasp of the shrewd detective. Blackwood is finally tried, condemned, and hanged for his crimes, but as he ominously points out just before his execution, “Death is only the beginning.”1 Indeed, starting with his alleged resurrection, the rest of the movie follows Blackwood as he performs a series of what appear to be dark miracles, simultaneously arousing the fears of his countrymen and piquing the insatiable curiosity of Sherlock Holmes. But things might not be as they seem. Guy Ritchie’s recasting of both the character of Holmes and the style of Holmesian storytelling was destined to garner its detractors, considering the directorial liberties Ritchie takes with Conan Doyle’s eminently familiar creation. Despite some clear differences and elaborations, there is significant overlap between Ritchie’s treatment of Holmes and the classic one. One salient point of continuity is the motif of the supernatural as 78 Kyle Blanchette a possible explanation for the events of a particular case, a theme that can be found throughout Conan Doyle’s Sherlock corpus, including within the pages of The Hound of the Baskervilles. In this novel, a case of potentially supernatural proportions is brought to the attention of Holmes and Watson by Dr. James Mortimer. Through a mutual interest in science, Mortimer was a close friend of the recently deceased Sir Charles Baskerville, owner and resident of Baskerville Hall and keeper of the Baskerville fortune and legacy. Sir Charles was walking on the moor one night outside his estate when he suddenly died of a heart attack. Though he was known to have a heart condition , one curious piece of evidence at the scene of his demise suggested that his death was likely the result of something more than a simple heart attack: near the body were the paw prints of a gigantic hound! Although this odd fact would be interesting in and of itself, it is made all the more provocative by the legend that haunts the Baskerville family line—that of the hound of the Baskervilles. According to family legend, a demonic hound with characteristics fantastically beyond those of ordinary earthly hounds has been the cause of several violent deaths in the Baskerville line. The first appearance of this horrifying hound was at the lethal expense of Hugo Baskerville, a man of godless repute who held the manor of Baskerville long ago, at the time of the Great Rebellion. Hugo was smitten with a local daughter of a yeoman, and as she was insistent on avoiding Hugo, he and several of his companions resolved to kidnap her and tie her up in the upper chamber of his manor. The young lady managed to escape from the estate, though not before overhearing the debauched carousing and fiendish affairs of Hugo and his dark cohorts in the rooms below. Immediately upon discovering her absence, Hugo set out with his horse after the unhappy maiden in hopes of overtaking her, but regrettably both met their grisly end through the agency of the hellish hound, “a foul thing, a great black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye has rested upon . . . [with] blazing eyes and dripping jaws.”2 Appealing to supernatural explanations for various phenomena in human experience, whether we have in mind answers to prayer, the purported macabre happenings of haunted houses, or the existence of the universe itself, is as fascinating as it is pervasive. In the world of fiction, all sorts of narratives, particularly Gothic, mystery, and detective stories, allude to the supernatural as a possible...