"Recent Psychic Evidence": The Visit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Utah in 1923 BY MICHAEL W. HOMER
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Frontispiece from O u r Second American Adventure, 1924.
W H E N S I R A R T H U R C O N A N D O Y L E B R O U G H T his spiritualist crusade to Utah in 1923 he was apprehensive about the reception he would receive because his spiritualist ideas — which included a belief that spiritualism was the simplification and purification of decadent Christianity, that the spirit continues to live after death, and that a person has the ability to communicate with deceased relatives through mediums — were seemingly not compatible with Mormon beliefs.1 Worse yet, Doyle had criticized Mormonism's venerated leadership, history, and institutions in his first Sherlock Holmes detective story published thirty-five years earlier and reiterated his criticism of early territorial Utah in a book written several years Mr. Homer is an attorney in Salt Lake City. 1 For Doyle's treatment of spiritualist ideals see Arthur Conan Doyle, The New Revelation (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1917); Arthur Conan Doyle, The Vital Message (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1919); and Arthur Conan Doyle, The History of Spiritualism, 2 vols. (London: Cassell and Co., Ltd., 1926).
