The Supernatural and Occult Meets Detective Fiction
By Erin Roll
Anyone who has ever watched Scooby-Doo cartoons at any point in their life will be familiar with the well-worn formula: The gang encounters something strange going on, and it’s believed to be a ghost, ghoul, witch, alien, etc. And at the denouement, the ghoul’s mask is ripped off to reveal a decidedly flesh-and-blood person. Said person shouts, as they’re being led away in handcuffs, “And I would have gotten away with it, if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids!”
Detectives have been coming face-to-face with elements of the supernatural and the occult long before Scooby, Shaggy, Fred, Velma, and Daphne came along in the Mystery Machine, of course.
Mysteries and the supernatural are two genres that go hand in hand. At their core, they both examine something frightening or unpleasant and try to resolve it.
It doesn’t seem often, though, that elements of the occult and the supernatural are portrayed in a positive light in detective fiction. Nine times out of ten, the occult is presented either as superstitious claptrap that will soon be proven false, or as something sinister and evil bordering on devil worship.
Quite a few books involve a detective showing up to a crime scene and finding, say a pentagram drawn on the floor, surrounded by candles, or some type of bizarre symbol carved into the victim’s skin. Or perhaps a detective comes to a small town to investigate a strange crime, and they are told about a mysterious and reclusive cult that makes their home nearby. It happens so frequently that it’s practically a trope in thriller novels.
A History of Hauntings
Ghost stories have always been popular tales throughout human history.
The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a number of tales in which the logical and scientific–often in the form of a detective–came face-to-face with what appeared to be supernatural and fantastic.
Arthur Conan. Doyle; Christopher Frayling (Editor)
Perhaps one of the most popular Sherlock Holmes tales, involves a curse that supposedly hung over the aristocratic Baskervilles for hundreds of years. The dastardly Hugo Baskerville promised his soul to the powers of darkness if he could recapture a farmer’s daughter he had just kidnapped, and the powers of darkness collect their due in the form of a demonic hound. Holmes is initially not interested in the tale, dismissing it as something of interest to collectors of fairy tales, until Dr. Mortimer reveals the circumstances of Sir Charles Baskverville’s recent death. In the end, the curse is revealed to be a decidedly flesh-and-blood dog, manipulated by someone with an almost underwhelming motive: get the other living Baskervilles out of the way in order to claim the family fortune. We see this quite a bit in some of the shorter Holmes stories: more than one ghost, phantom, or curse is revealed to have a logical explanation: a floating phantom image is revealed to be a mask, or a bizarre family catechism is simply a map to finding a buried heirloom, and so on. It is well documented that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had an interest in spiritualism and other elements of the supernatural, which makes for an interesting contrast with the scientifically-minded Holmes.
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The latter nineteenth century also brought Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The occult and the supernatural are not just a figment of the imagination, as Dracula is very much a real figure, but Dracula is ultimately laid low by Van Helsing, Harker, and the rest of the group. But Van Helsing, though a man of method in the way Holmes is, places great faith in what others dismiss as folk remedies or claptrap. He advises Lucy Westenra to hang long strings of garlic around her room and to wear some around her neck, but she laughingly–and fatally–dismisses such advice as nonsense.We see this quite a bit in some of the shorter Holmes stories: more than one ghost, phantom, or curse is revealed to have a logical explanation: a floating phantom image is revealed to be a mask, or a bizarre family catechism is simply a map to finding a buried heirloom, and so on. It is well documented that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had an interest in spiritualism and other elements of the supernatural, which makes for an interesting contrast with the scientifically-minded Holmes.
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William Hope Hodgson; David Stuart Davies (Contribution by, Editor)
In the early twentieth century, English author William Hope Hodgson introduced readers to occult detective Thomas Carnacki: a consulting detective in the vein of Sherlock Holmes, except that Carnacki is called into investigate hauntings and strange phenomena, rather than murders, thefts, and disappearances. Carnacki appeared in six short stories which were later compiled into the volume CARNACKI, THE GHOST-FINDER in 1913.
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Steven-Elliot Altman; Brian Stableford; Michael Reaves (Editor); John Pelan (Editor); Neil Gaiman
The original Sherlock Holmes stories may have been averse to putting faith in the supernatural. But the 2003 anthology Shadows Over Baker Street takes the world of Holmes and combines it (rather jarringly in spots) with the world of H.P. Lovecraft. In other words, if a crime is suspected to be the work of occult powers, then it most likely is. Additionally, these tales are a lot more violent and more gruesome than anything Conan Doyle would have put in writing. Some of the stories include cameos by other fictional detectives, such as Thomas Carnacki, and real-life historical figures like H.G. Wells, Queen Victoria (albeit in the form of a centuries-old Elder God) and the future Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands.
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Dean Koontz is the creator of the Odd Thomas series, in which the titular character can see the spirits of the dead as well as the auras of supernatural beings. Thomas starts his career when the ghost of a murdered girl approaches him, and this starts him on a search for her killer.
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Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs created Special Agent Aloysius X. Pendergast: the New Orleans-raised detective, scholar, and all-around Renaissance man. The Pendergast books dance back and forth over the line between mystery/thriller, fantasy, speculative fiction, and horror (and spend quite a bit of time in horror). Some of the books involve plotlines involving a curse from a long-sealed Egyptian exhibit at a museum (THE BOOK OF THE DEAD), a seemingly cursed Tibetan artifact smuggled aboard a transatlantic liner’s maiden voyage, and rumors of a religious cult with a secret community in Central Park (CEMETERY DANCE).
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But are there books where the supernatural is presented in a not-quite-so-frightening way? There are, yes. The Haunted Bookshop series by Alice Kimberly (in reality, the same husband-and-wife writing team that created the Coffeehouse Mystery series under the name Cleo Coyle) does take a turn for the supernatural. In the 1940s, hardboiled New York detective Jack Shepard is mysteriously killed while he’s investigating a tip at a Rhode Island bookshop. Decades later, Shepard’s ghost–still quite literally haunting the shop–becomes friends with new owner Penelope McClure and her young son Spencer. As is mandatory for all small business owners in cozies, Penelope finds herself investigating murders (which occur at an alarmingly high rate in her small town), and Jack rides along, offering advice, tips, and more than a few wisecracks.
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For younger readers, the first half of the twentieth century brought such favorite series such as Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and the Boxcar Children. In these kid-friendly series, the protagonists will occasionally find themselves in what appears to be haunted houses, or facing what appears to be a ghost or a spirit. But as in the Scooby-Doo series, these phenomena are usually revealed to be the work of someone human.
Contemporary Chillers
So what have the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries brought? There have been a wide variety of approaches to mystery and the occult, ranging from the horrifying and spine-chilling to the humorous. Sometimes the supernatural element is something to be feared or fought against, while other times, the supernatural is an ally of sorts.
Classic computer gamers may remember the Gabriel Knight point-and-click adventure games created by Jane Jensen in the 1990s. Gabriel is a New Orleans bookshop owner and struggling horror writer; he is also descended from a centuries-long line of “shadow hunters” from Germany. The first game, Sins of the Fathers, finds Gabriel helping to investigate a recent string of “voodoo murders” around New Orleans while looking for material for the book he is working on.
As you can see, there is no shortage of tales where sleuths and the supernatural come face to face, and it’s a combination that keeps mystery readers and horror aficionados coming back for more.
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Erin Roll is a freelance writer, editor, and proofreader. Her favorite genres to read are mystery, science fiction, and fantasy, and her TBR pile is likely to be visible on Google Maps. Before becoming an editor, Erin worked as a journalist and photographer, and she has won far too many awards from the New Jersey Press Association. Erin lives at the top floor of a haunted house in Montclair, NJ. She enjoys reading (of course), writing, hiking, kayaking, music, and video games.
