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->Matters that seemed almost too curious and fantastic for belief he loved to trace to their hidden sources. To unravel a tangle in the very soul of things--and to release a suffering human soul in the process--was with him a veritable passion. And the knots he untied were, indeed, after passing strange.
-->-- Ancient Sorceries
-->-- Ancient Sorceries
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''John Silence, Physician Extraordinary'' is an early example of the ParanormalInvestigation genre of fiction. First published in 1908, this collection of short stories by Creator/AlgernonBlackwood features the OccultDetective character of Dr. John Silence, a medical doctor by trade and clairvoyant by training. Dr. Silence uses his supernatural powers to help those beset by all manner of what he calls "psychical afflictions." Be they haunted houses, past-life memories, or ancient curses unleashed on unsuspecting modern individuals, Dr. Silence stands ready to rise to the challenge and rescue his patients' in body and soul. Chronicling these exploits is his close friend and occasional assistant Mr. Hubbard.
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''John Silence, Physician Extraordinary'' is an early example of the ParanormalInvestigation genre of fiction. First published in 1908, this collection of short stories by Creator/AlgernonBlackwood features the OccultDetective character of Dr. John Silence, a medical doctor by trade and clairvoyant by training. Dr. Silence uses his supernatural powers to help those beset by all manner of what he calls "psychical afflictions." Be they haunted houses, past-life memories, or ancient curses unleashed on unsuspecting modern individuals, Dr. Silence stands ready to rise to the challenge and rescue his patients' patients in body and soul. Chronicling these exploits is his close friend and occasional assistant Mr. Hubbard.
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->Matters that seemed almost too curious and fantastic for belief he loved to trace to their hidden sources. To unravel a tangle in the very soul of things--and to release a suffering human soul in the process--was with him a veritable passion. And the knots he untied were, indeed, after passing strange.
-->-- Ancient Sorceries
''John Silence, Physician Extraordinary'' is an early example of the ParanormalInvestigation genre of fiction. First published in 1908, this collection of short stories by Creator/AlgernonBlackwood features the OccultDetective character of Dr. John Silence, a medical doctor by trade and clairvoyant by training. Dr. Silence uses his supernatural powers to help those beset by all manner of what he calls "psychical afflictions." Be they haunted houses, past-life memories, or ancient curses unleashed on unsuspecting modern individuals, Dr. Silence stands ready to rise to the challenge and rescue his patients' in body and soul. Chronicling these exploits is his close friend and occasional assistant Mr. Hubbard.
Stories in this collection include:
* ''A Psychical Invasion'': Dr. John Silence is called to aid Felix Pender, a humorist whose experiments with drugs have seen his sense of humor replaced by one of preternatural terror.
* ''Ancient Sorceries'': The peculiar case of Arthur Vezin is examined; an unremarkable everyman whose unplanned detour to a small French town sees him entangled in a centuries-long plot rife with witchcraft, secretive rites, missing time, past lives, and ancestral memories.
* ''The Nemesis of Fire'': A spate of spontaneous incendiary events at his family estate drive Colonel Horace Wragge to seek Dr. Silence's assistance in smoking out a mysterious supernatural force that threatens to flare out of control.
* ''Secret Worship'': When the silk merchant Harris undertakes a visit to his old boarding school, it isn't just the fond memories that threaten to overwhelm him -- fortunately Dr. Silence is on hand to rescue his fellow man when the lingering echoes of a devilish plot put his very soul at risk.
* ''The Camp of the Dog'': Mr. Hubbard relates the story of a pleasant camping trip amongst friends that takes a sudden turn when one of their party suffers a bought of lycanthropy brought on by unrequited love.
* ''A Victim of Higher Space'': Racine Mudge comes to Dr. Silence desperate for help, beset by a truly extraordinary affliction that has robbed him of the ability to remain fixed in 3-dimensional space.
All stories are available to read in their entirety on [[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/John_Silence,_Physician_Extraordinary Wikisource]].
Due to the age of the source material, spoilers in folders below are unmarked.
----
!!Tropes in ''John Silence'' Stories:
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:Tropes in Multiple Short Stories]]
* CharlesAtlasSuperpower: According to Mr. Hubbard's narration, Dr. Silence trained for five years to obtain his psychic powers. From "A Psychical Investigation":
-->In order to grapple with cases of this peculiar kind, he had submitted himself to a long and severe training, at once physical, mental, and spiritual. What precisely this training had been, or where undergone, no one seemed to know,--for he never spoke of it, as, indeed, he betrayed no single other characteristic of the charlatan,--but the fact that it had involved a total disappearance from the world for five years, and that after he returned and began his singular practice no one ever dreamed of applying to him the so easily acquired epithet of quack, spoke much for the seriousness of his strange quest and also for the genuineness of his attainments.
* EvilDetectingDog:
** ''A Psychical Invasion'': Dr. Silence brings one of his own dog and cat along on a case, counting on their strong supernatural senses to help him detect the presence of a malignant spirit.
** ''The Nemesis of Fire'': The hunting dogs of the Wragge estate refuse to enter the plantation that seems to be the origin of the supernatural activity that plagues the grounds. When Dr. Silence sets up a ritual to entrap the entity causing the disturbances, Mr. Hubbard notes that the dogs in the nearby stableyard start barking up a storm moments before the humans detect a paranormal presence in the room with them.
* FirstPersonPeripheralNarrator: The narrator is Mr. Hubbard, a man of little personal description. He maintains a close friendship with the eponymous Dr. Silence and transcribes the intimate details of his cases. He only participates directly in the events of "The Nemesis of Fire" and "The Camp of the Dog" -- all other stories in the collection seem to have been conveyed to him by Dr. Silence at a later date.
* HauntedHouse:
** ''A Psychical Invasion'': The house at the top of Putney Hill didn't seem to be haunted until Felix Pender began experimenting with cannabis indica. Once the drugs [[HigherUnderstandingThroughDrugs made him sensitive to the world of the supernatural]], he was able to sense the specter of a former resident. These interactions appeared to strengthen the apparition, and while Mrs. Pender remained unable to sense the presence that haunted her husband and household Dr. Silence could call on his training to force it into a confrontation.
** ''The Nemesis of Fire'': {{Discussed}} but ultimately {{Downplayed}}. The incendiary events occurring at the Wragge manor are not caused by a spirit tied to the house but by a CurseOfThePharaoh the elder Wragge brother unleashed on the grounds when he brought a mummy back from Egypt.
--->"Haunted house?" I asked, conscious of a distinct shiver down my back.\\
But he smiled gravely at the question.\\
"Haunted House of Life more likely," he replied...
* OccultDetective: Dr. John Silence is a trained psychic who uses his powers to aid patients beset by "psychical afflictions." Though he would consider himself a medical practitioner first and foremost, much of his work involves sussing out the supernatural root cause of his patients' symptoms. His powers include a degree of clairvoyance, psychometry, astral projection, the ability to sense supernatural entities, and extensive knowledge of preternatural phenomena.
-->...the cases that especially appealed to him were of no ordinary kind, but rather of that intangible, elusive, and difficult nature best described as psychical afflictions; and, though he would have been the last person himself to approve of the title, it was beyond question that he was known more or less generally as the "Psychic Doctor."
* OurWerebeastsAreDifferent:
** ''The Nemesis of Fire'': here the werebeasts are were-cats, witches who transform into animals to participate in secret sabbaths.
** ''The Camp of the Dog'': the werewolf of this story is the AstralProjection of one Peter Sangree, described as his "double" that separates from his body when he sleeps. This projection takes on the form of a wolf-dog or werewolf as a reflection of Peter's devotion to and lust for Joan Maloney. He stifles his conscious desires around Joan because he doesn't know if she returns his feelings, and as a result his subconscious seeks to be by her side at all costs -- even to the point of "bathing in her heart's blood," as Dr. Silence puts it, if Peter continues to suffer under these unrequited passions.
* ParanormalInvestigation: Part and parcel of Dr. Silence's practice is examining patients, gathering clues, and tracking down the preternatural cause of their afflictions.
* {{Psychometry}}: Dr. Silence can get a sense of a patient's mental condition just by touching them or an object they have handled.
* QuirkyDoctor: An independently wealthy doctor, a philanthropist who accepts no payment for his work, a trained clairvoyant -- all of these describe Dr. Silence. From ''A Psychical Invasion'':
-->By his friends John Silence was regarded as an eccentric, because he was rich by accident, and by choice--a doctor. That a man of independent means should devote his time to doctoring, chiefly doctoring folk who could not pay, passed their comprehension entirely. The native nobility of a soul whose first desire was to help those who could not help themselves, puzzled them. After that, it irritated them, and, greatly to his own satisfaction, they left him to his own devices.\\
Dr. Silence was a free-lance, though, among doctors, having neither consulting-room, bookkeeper, nor professional manner. He took no fees, being at heart a genuine philanthropist, yet at the same time did no harm to his fellow-practitioners, because he only accepted unremunerative cases, and cases that interested him for some very special reason. He argued that the rich could pay, and the very poor could avail themselves of organised charity, but that a very large class of ill-paid, self-respecting workers, often followers of the arts, could not afford the price of a week's comforts merely to be told to travel. And it was these he desired to help: cases often requiring special and patient study--things no doctor can give for a guinea, and that no one would dream of expecting him to give.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Case I: A Psychical Invasion]]
* AddictionPowered: Overlaps with HigherUnderstandingThroughDrugs, see below.
* CatDogDichotomy: Smoke the cat is brought along to the house on Putney Hill in order to detect the "discarnate entity" with his heightened senses, but Dr. Silence considers the creature too mischievous to be counted on to help drive it off. Flame the collie dog is brought along for his fierce spirit and loyal nature (despite the tendency of dogs to quail in the face of supernatural forces). Dr. Silence is counting on them both to act as psychic barometers for supernatural activity -- Smoke will seek it out, while Flame will shrink away from it.
* CatStereotype: Smoke is a black cat with a white locket. He's chiefly described as "mischievous." Being supernaturally sensitive (as all cats apparently are), Smoke actively courts the attention of the malevolent spirits infesting the house at the top of Putney Hill, even making motions aimed at "introducing" the invisible forces to Dr. Silence and Flame the collie dog. When Smoke comes to the realization that the spirits mean to harm his master, he slinks off in shame and fear.
* TheCorrupter: The "discarnate entity" that latched onto Felix Pender is the spirit of a wicked woman who lived hundreds of years ago. Though her original house was torn down and the House on Putney Hill built on the spot, her powerful evil intentions allowed her spirit to remain rooted on the spot and attract further wicked energies and spirits to her side. When Felix moved into the House on Putney Hill and took several doses of cannabis indica he opened himself up to influences from beyond the mortal world. The spirit of the wicked woman "injected" her evil wiles into Felix's artistic process and made all his writings similarly cruel and malicious, so much so that he destroyed most of his work to prevent her influence from spreading in the world.
* DogStereotype: Flame the yellow collie dog is faultlessly loyal to Dr. Silence. He steadfastly guards his master against all threats (even supernatural ones). He also has a nurturing side, having helped to raise Smoke the cat as a kitten. He gamely tolerates his feline companion's mischief.
* EvilDetectingDog: Dr. Silence brings a cat and a dog with him to investigate the source of the evil "discarnate entity" haunting the house on top of Putney Hill.
-->The animals, by whose sensitiveness he intended to test any unusual conditions in the atmosphere of the building, Dr. Silence selected with care and judgment. He believed (and had already made curious experiments to prove it) that animals were more often, and more truly, clairvoyant than human beings. Many of them, he felt convinced, possessed powers of perception far superior to that mere keenness of the senses common to all dwellers in the wilds where the senses grow specially alert; they had what he termed "animal clairvoyance," and from his experiments with horses, dogs, cats, and even birds, he had drawn certain deductions, which, however, need not be referred to in detail here.\\
Cats, in particular, he believed, were almost continuously conscious of a larger field of vision, too detailed even for a photographic camera, and quite beyond the reach of normal human organs. He had, further, observed that while dogs were usually terrified in the presence of such phenomena, cats on the other hand were soothed and satisfied. They welcomed manifestations as something belonging peculiarly to their own region.
* HigherUnderstandingThroughDrugs: Overlaps with AddictionPowered.
** Felix Pender's sensitivity to the world of the supernatural began when he imbibed cannabis extract in an attempt to give himself the giggles:
--->"I mention this only in passing, and to give you confidence before you approach the account of your real affliction," continued the doctor. "All perception, as you know, is the result of vibrations; and clairvoyance simply means becoming sensitive to an increased scale of vibrations. The awakening of the inner senses we hear so much about means no more than that. Your partial clairvoyance is easily explained. The only thing that puzzles me is how you managed to procure the drug, for it is not easy to get in pure form, and no adulterated tincture could have given you the terrific impetus I see you have acquired. But, please proceed now and tell me your story in your own way."\\
"This Cannabis indica," the author went on, "came into my possession last autumn while my wife was away. I need not explain how I got it, for that has no importance; but it was the genuine fluid extract, and I could not resist the temptation to make an experiment..."
** Dr. Silence later goes on to explain that drugs can affect a person's sensitivity to the supernatural by altering their "vibrations" and therefore their perception:
---> "In the first place, I am very familiar with the workings of this extraordinary drug, this drug which has had the chance effect of opening you up to the forces of another region; and, in the second, I have a firm belief in the reality of supersensuous occurrences as well as considerable knowledge of psychic processes acquired by long and painful experiment. The rest is, or should be, merely sympathetic treatment and practical application. The hashish has partially opened another world to you by increasing your rate of psychical vibration, and thus rendering you abnormally sensitive."
* LaughingMad: Felix purposefully ingested a dose cannabis indica to induce a case of the giggles in himself. The potent combination of this altered state of mind and his sudden psychic sensitivity (also brought on by the drug use) made him a prime target for a malevolent spirit to latch onto his consciousness. Felix describes a state of manic laughter that overtook him while gripped with terror as such:
-->"The laughter, too, kept bubbling up inside me--great wholesome laughter that shook me like gusts of wind--so that even my terror almost made me laugh. Oh, but I may tell you, Dr. Silence, it was altogether vile, that mixture of fear and laughter, altogether vile!"
* {{Psychometry}}: Dr. Silence takes a baseline reading of Felix Pender's condition by touching his hand:
-->John Silence leaned forward a moment and took the speaker's hand and held it in his own for a few brief seconds, closing his eyes as he did so. He was not feeling his pulse, or doing any of the things that doctors ordinarily do; he was merely absorbing into himself the main note of the man's mental condition, so as to get completely his own point of view, and thus be able to treat his case with true sympathy. A very close observer might perhaps have noticed that a slight tremor ran through his frame after he had held the hand for a few seconds.
* TastesLikePurple: Felix's second dose of cannabis triggers an experience of multiple forms of synesthesia:
-->"-another extraordinary effect came to me, and I experienced a curious changing of the senses, so that I perceived external things through one large main sense-channel instead of through the five divisions known as sight, smell, touch, and so forth. You will, I know, understand me when I tell you that I heard sights and saw sounds. No language can make this comprehensible, of course, and I can only say, for instance, that the striking of the clock I saw as a visible picture in the air before me. I saw the sounds of the tinkling bell. And in precisely the same way I heard the colours in the room, especially the colours of those books in the shelf behind you. Those red bindings I heard in deep sounds, and the yellow covers of the French bindings next to them made a shrill, piercing note not unlike the chattering of starlings. That brown bookcase muttered, and those green curtains opposite kept up a constant sort of rippling sound like the lower notes of a wood-horn. But I only was conscious of these sounds when I looked steadily at the different objects, and thought about them. The room, you understand, was not full of a chorus of notes; but when I concentrated my mind upon a colour, I heard, as well as saw, it."
* TemporaryBlindness: Flame the collie dog goes blind after a ferocious battle against the intangible forces attacking Dr. Silence. His blindness is suddenly cured after Dr. Silence meets with Felix to explain the case.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Case II: Ancient Sorceries]]
* AllJustADream: Dr. Silence's investigation into Arthur Vezin's stay in a sleepy French town in the countryside proves that the man's fantastic escapades were the product of his imagination. Silence goes on to speculate that they were caused by Vezin accessing the ancestral memory of his forefathers who lived in the very same town, two of whom were burned at the stake for witchcraft.
-->"But that the entire affair took place subjectively in the man's own consciousness, I have no doubt," he went on, in reply to my questions; "for my secretary who has been to the town to investigate, discovered his signature in the visitors' book, and proved by it that he had arrived on September 8th, and left suddenly without paying his bill. He left two days later, and they still were in possession of his dirty brown bag and some tourist clothes. I paid a few francs in settlement of his debt, and have sent his luggage on to him. The daughter was absent from home, but the proprietress, a large woman very much as he described her, told my secretary that he had seemed a very strange, absent-minded kind of gentleman, and after his disappearance she had feared for a long time that he had met with a violent end in the neighbouring forest where he used to roam about alone."
* AnimalMotifs: Cats.
** Arthur Vezin's first impression of the small French town is that of ''purring'' contentment, and he continues to describe it in terms that would not be out of place when describing a cat. Even the weather gets this description after a while as "-the air, soft and cool, caressed his cheek like the touch of a great furry paw."
** The proprietress of the inn is described like a cat sitting lazily in the courtyard, appearing half asleep as she knits but always with half an eye on Arthur. He gets the sense that she could leap up and "pounce" upon him at any moment.
** Mademoiselle Ilsé, daughter of the inn's proprietress, is described as having "the silken movements of the panther, going smoothly, silently to and fro..." and being "lithe as a young leopard..." When Vezin becomes better acquainted with Ilsé, he notes how he mimics "her own purring softness of voice."
** Arthur's final impression of the town as he flees draws more feline comparison:
--->"I remember pausing somewhere on the road and looking back to where the hill-town of my adventure stood up in the moonlight, and thinking how exactly like a great monstrous cat it lay there upon the plain, its huge front paws lying down the two main streets, and the twin and broken towers of the cathedral marking its torn ears against the sky."
* BurnTheWitch: Ilsé gives Vezin a tour of the little town, pointing out "the ancient market-place where several hundred years before the witches had been burnt by the score." With the revelation that [[AllJustADream the tour was likely a product of Vezin's imagination]], Dr. Silence sends one of his underlings to investigate the region. They find that Vezin's ancestors were among the dozens of alleged witches burnt at the stake in that same village.
-->... the doctor had made investigations on his own account, and one of his secretaries had discovered that Vezin's ancestors had actually lived for generations in the very town where the adventure came to him. Two of them, both women, had been tried and convicted as witches, and had been burned alive at the stake. Moreover, it had not been difficult to prove that the very inn where Vezin stayed was built about 1700 upon the spot where the funeral pyres stood and the executions took place. The town was a sort of headquarters for all the sorcerers and witches of the entire region, and after conviction they were burnt there literally by scores.
* FilleFatale: {{Downplayed}} -- Ilsé is 17 and she actively attempts to seduce the 45 year old Arthur Vezin. {{Subverted}} in that Ilsé's flirtations are later revealed to be the product of Arthur's imagination.
* ExtremeDoormat: Arthur Vezin, often referred to as "little Vezin," is described as "-a timid, gentle, sensitive soul, rarely able to assert himself, tender to man and beast, and almost constitutionally unable to say No, or to claim many things that should rightly have been his." His meek personality and dogged ordinariness make it all the more unbelievable that something so extraordinary should happen to him.
* KillItWithFire: Arthur notes that Ilsé is terrified of open flames when they pass a bonfire on their tour. He later scares off the werebeasts and witches by setting fire to some dried leaves.
* ReincarnationRomance:
** PlayedStraight as Ilsé claims that Arthur was her lover in a past life and that she used their connection to summon him to her side.
--->"Yet I came here wholly by chance--" he heard himself saying.\\
"No," she cried with passion, "you came here because I called to you. I have called to you for years, and you came with the whole force of the past behind you. You had to come, for I own you, and I claim you."
** {{Subverted}} when it is revealed that Arthur's experiences were AllJustADream, though Dr. Silence ''does'' put forth the theory that he may have been overwhelmed by the ancestral memories of his murdered forefathers or "swept into the vortex of forces arising out of the intense activities of a past life..."
* ShoutOut: Vezin describes the waiter at the French inn as having "Dundreary whiskers", a reference to the exaggerated sideburns of Lord Dundreary in the 1850's play [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_American_Cousin Our American Cousin]].
* TownWithADarkSecret: PlayedStraight when Arthur Vezin makes an unplanned stop in a small French town. The longer he stays there, the more he feels the residents are carefully observing him. At last they reveal themselves to be a society of witches and devil-worshiping were-cats who have surreptitiously studied his fitness to join them in their satanic revelry. {{Subverted}} when Arthur's experiences are revealed to be the product of his imagination. Dr. Silence's secretary discovers the town ''was'' the center of persecution against alleged witches some centuries ago, but there's no indication that the town is currently filled with witches or lycanthropes.
* OurWerebeastsAreDifferent:
** PlayedStraight -- Arthur Vezin discovers that the townsfolk are all witches and werecats, able to shift at will from human to feline form.
--->...he saw that the windows all about him were being softly opened, and that to each window came a face. A moment later figures began dropping hurriedly down into the yard. And these figures, as they lowered themselves down from the windows, were human, he saw; but once safely in the yard they fell upon all fours and changed in the swiftest possible second into--cats--huge, silent cats.
** {{Discussed}} but ultimately {{Downplayed}} -- Dr. Silence calls out the persecution so-called witches faced during the dark ages when belief in lycanthopy was widespread, but there's no evidence that the modern residents of the French town where Vezin stayed are ''actual'' werecats (since his experiences in the town were all imagined).
--->"One has only to read the histories of the times to know that these witches claimed the power of transforming themselves into various animals, both for the purposes of disguise and also to convey themselves swiftly to the scenes of their imaginary orgies. Lycanthropy, or the power to change themselves into wolves, was everywhere believed in, and the ability to transform themselves into cats by rubbing their bodies with a special salve or ointment provided by Satan himself, found equal credence. The witchcraft trials abound in evidences of such universal beliefs."
* YearInsideHourOutside: Arthur Vezin passes what seems like a week or more in the small French town, but when he returns to London he finds he's only been gone for two days:
-->"And how long altogether," asked John Silence quietly, "do you think you stayed in the town of the adventure?"\\
Vezin looked up sheepishly.\\
"I was coming to that," he resumed, with apologetic wrigglings of his body. "In London I found that I was a whole week out in my reckoning of time. I had stayed over a week in the town, and it ought to have been September 15th,--instead of which it was only September 10th!"\\
"So that, in reality, you had only stayed a night or two in the inn?" queried the doctor.\\
Vezin hesitated before replying. He shuffled upon the mat.\\
"I must have gained time somewhere," he said at length--"somewhere or somehow. I certainly had a week to my credit. I can't explain it. I can only give you the fact."
* YourMindMakesItReal: Even months after his visit to France, Vezin retains the strange bruise-like markings on his neck and back where he imagines Ilsé embraced him, her hands dripping with the salve that would transform him into a cat like the other residents of the town. Dr. Silence compares the marks to the stigmata that manifests on particularly religious individuals or welts that appear on the bodies of people who were hypnotized into thinking they'd been struck, blaming the "subliminal up-rushes of memory" that ensnared Vezin for his condition.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Case III: The Nemesis of Fire]]
* ArtisticLicenseSpace: Of the "Spacey Schedule Errors" variety -- Dr. Silence claims that the night's full moon will exacerbate the fire elemental's attacks, but also provide an opportunity to bind and dispel it [[WhenTheClockStrikesTwelve at midnight]]. When Hubbard slips out of the house at a quarter to twelve, he sees "the broken, yellow disc of the half-moon just rising in the east..." [[https://museumsvictoria.com.au/learning/little-science/teacher-support-materials/phases-of-the-moon/ Full moons rise at sunset]]. Last-quarter moons (which are half illuminated, i.e. half-moons) rise around midnight, and they certainly don't grow from half-moons to full moons in the course of 15 minutes.
* BlackMagic: {{Discussed}} briefly -- Dr. Silence describes the ElementalEmbodiment they're dealing with as a foundational force of magic that is neither good nor evil in and of itself. He explains that "it is the motive behind them that constitutes the magic 'black' or 'white'; they can be the vehicles of curses or of blessings..."
* BloodMagic: In order to bind and dispel the ElementalEmbodiment, Dr. Silence tells Colonel Wragge and Mr. Hubbard they'll need blood to construct a physical body for it. Wragge initially thinks they mean a human sacrifice until Dr. Silence tells him they can use the blood of a freshly killed pig.
* CurseOfThePharaoh: The [[ElementalEmbodiment fire elemental]] haunting the grounds of Twelve Acre Plantation is a protective spirit bound to the mummy of a high ranking Ancient Egyptian figure. Colonel Wragge's older brother unearthed the mummy in Egypt, brought it to the family estate in Great Britain, unwrapped the body and pilfered some of the protective amulets (including a green jasper scarab amulet that he gifted to his sister Miss Wragge); this unleashed the fire elemental meant to guard the mummy's tomb on the grounds of the Wragge estate. It appears that the elder Wragge brother and his groundskeeper were killed by the elemental after trying to rebury the mummy in the plantation: the groundskeeper had injuries consistent with suffocation, while the brother's face was "blasted and burned" as if by a great heat. For the next twenty years the elemental continued to set small random fires in the woods and eventually escalated to spontaneous fires in the Wragge house and laundry building. Dr. Silence, Mr. Hubbard, and Colonel Wragge move to dispel the elemental and put the mummy's curse to rest, but not before it claims the life of Miss Wragge -- she suffers the same fate as the elder Wragge brother when she tries to return the stolen scarab amulet.
-->"The mummy of some important person--a priest most likely--protected from disturbance and desecration by the ceremonial magic of the time. For they understood how to attach to the mummy, to lock up with it in the tomb, an elemental force that would direct itself even after ages upon any one who dared to molest it. In this case it was an elemental of fire."
* DemonicPossession: Colonel Wragge winds up briefly possessed when the men attempt to summon and bind the fire elemental.
-->But what has left an even sharper impression on my memory was the blackness that then began crawling over his face, obliterating the features, concealing their human outline, and hiding him inch by inch from view. This was my first realisation that the process of materialisation was at work. His visage became shrouded. I moved from one side to the other to keep him in view, and it was only then I understood that, properly speaking, the blackness was not upon the countenance of Colonel Wragge, but that something had inserted itself between me and him, thus screening his face with the effect of a dark veil... The signature of a new power had crept into the face and left its traces there--an expression dark, and in some unexplained way, terrible.\\
Then suddenly he opened his mouth and spoke, and the sound of this changed voice, deep and musical though it was, made me cold and set my heart beating with uncomfortable rapidity. The Being, as he had dreaded, was already in control of his brain, using his mouth.
* ElementalEmbodiment: Twelve Acre Plantation (and by extension Colonel Wragge's household) is haunted by a fire elemental. The elemental's presence gives the house a stuffy, oppressive air like the heat of summer even in October, and it causes random fires to break out in the house and forest.
-->"But 'it'--what is 'it'?" began the soldier, fuming. "What, in the name of all that's dreadful, is a fire-elemental?"\\
"I cannot give you at this moment," replied Dr. Silence, turning to him, but undisturbed by the interruption, "a lecture on the nature and history of magic, but can only say that an Elemental is the active force behind the elements,--whether earth, air, water, or fire,--it is impersonal in its essential nature, but can be focused, personified, ensouled, so to say, by those who know how--by magicians, if you will--for certain purposes of their own, much in the same way that steam and electricity can be harnessed by the practical man of this century.\\
"Alone, these blind elemental energies can accomplish little, but governed and directed by the trained will of a powerful manipulator they may become potent activities for good or evil. They are the basis of all magic, and it is the motive behind them that constitutes the magic 'black' or 'white'; they can be the vehicles of curses or of blessings, for a curse is nothing more than the thought of a violent will perpetuated
* EvilDetectingDog: The hunting dogs refuse to enter the woods of Twelve Acre Plantation, sensing the supernatural presence lurking there. When Dr. Silence, Colonel Wragge, and Mr. Hubbard conduct their ritual to bind and dispel the elemental in the laundry building, the baying of the dogs in the nearby stableyard is one of the first signs that the spirit is upon them.
* HauntedHouse: {{Discussed}} -- Dr. Silence asks Hubbard for his impression of the case when they two arrive at the Wragge estate, and Hubbard initially believes they may be dealing with either a haunted house or a haunted individual (being Colonel Wragge or his sister Miss Wragge). It's later revealed that they're dealing with a [[ElementalEmbodiment fire elemental]] attached to a mummy the late elder Wragge brother disinterred. It's not haunting the ''house'' per se, but it ''is'' lashing out at anyone who disturbed the mummy (and anything in the vicinity of the mummy's new resting place).
-->Personally, I was glad to be in the open air, for the atmosphere of the house was heavy with presentiment. The sense of impending disaster hung over all. Fear stalked the passages, and lurked in the corners of every room. It was a house haunted, but really haunted; not by some vague shadow of the dead, but by a definite though incalculable influence that was actively alive, and dangerous. At the least smell of smoke the entire household quivered. An odour of burning, I was convinced, would paralyse all the inmates. For the servants, though professedly ignorant by the master's unspoken orders, yet shared the common dread; and the hideous uncertainty, joined with this display of so spiteful and calculated a spirit of malignity, provided a kind of black doom that draped not only the walls, but also the minds of the people living within them.
* GraveRobbing: The elder Wragge brother dug up a mummy in Egypt and brought it home with him as a souvenir. Then he unwrapped it and [[RobbingTheDead took its protective amulets]], unleashing a CurseOfThePharaoh on his household.
* NoodleIncident: As Dr. Silence describes to Mr. Hubbard how they've come to be involved in Horace Wragge's affairs, he mentions people and cases not native any other Dr. John Silence stories. Mr. Hubbard even describes a reference to "the Anderson case, the horror of which lay still vivid in my memory, may have touched the sense of something rather ominous and alarming."
-->"He heard of me, you see, through Captain Anderson," the doctor explained modestly, as though his fame were not almost world-wide; "you remember that Indian obsession case--"
* ObsessivelyNormal: Colonel Horace Wragge is a man of concrete facts and action. He's distressed by the notion that there are supernatural forces besieging his family home (and possibly responsible for the death of his brother and paralytic illness of his sister), but even more upset that there's nothing he as a layman can do to confront those forces. As Hubbard describes it, "He hated this mystery. It was poisonous to his nature, and he longed to meet something face to face--something he could gauge and fight."
* PsychicBlockDefense: Dr. Silence prompts Hubbard to imagine a protective shell around himself as they enter the plantation to shield Hubbard's mind from psychic interference. The shield seems to be powered by belief rather than innate psychic power.
-->"And, for your safety," he said earnestly, "imagine now--and for that matter, imagine always until we leave this place--imagine with the utmost keenness, that you are surrounded by a shell that protects you. Picture yourself inside a protective envelope, and build it up with the most intense imagination you can evoke. Pour the whole force of your thought and will into it. Believe vividly all through this adventure that such a shell, constructed of your thought, will and imagination, surrounds you completely, and that nothing can pierce it to attack."
* {{Psychometry}}: Dr. Silence can tell just by touching Horace Wragge's short letter that the writer was distressed and disturbed by supernatural forces:
-->"The man's mind was charged to the brim when he wrote that; full of vivid mental pictures. Notice the restraint of it. For the main character of his case psychometry could be depended upon, and the scrap of paper his hand has touched is sufficient to give to another mind--a sensitive and sympathetic mind--clear mental pictures of what is going on. I think I have a very sound general idea of his problem."
* RobbingTheDead: The elder Wragge brother unearthed a mummy in Egypt and brought it home to Great Britain to keep in his personal museum of souvenirs. He also unwrapped the body and took one of the protective amulets to make a brooch for his sister Miss Wragge. In [[GraveRobbing desecrating the mummy]], he unleashed the ElementalEmbodiment that'd been bound to the body to protect it.
* WhenTheClockStrikesTwelve: The ritual to draw out the fire elemental and bind it in a physical form is to begin at midnight. Dr. Silence claims that the ritual should be performed at night because the full moon will lend power to their enterprise (and because the rest of the Wragge household will have turned in for the night and thusly won't interfere with the rites). Although they start the ritual at precisely midnight (according to Wragge's watch), Hubbard estimates that at least an hour passes before the elemental strikes. It's nearly morning by the time they finish.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Case IV: Secret Worship]]
* BoardingSchoolOfHorrors: ZigZagged -- Harris spent two years at a strict boarding school in the remote German countryside run by protestants Brüders. The students were never allowed a moment of solitude, always watched by one of the masters. He and his 200 classmates woke up at five every morning and were punished for speaking in their native tongues (Harris recalls an incident where he and another boy were given half-rations for leaving the walking path to chase a butterfly). Despite this harsh treatment, Harris has fond memories of the place and believes the discipline it instilled in him made him into a successful businessman. It isn't until Harris learns that the brothers who ran the school were secretly practicing devil-worship and human sacrifice AND he almost falls victim to their malevolent spirits that he loses the rose-colored glasses.
* PoorCommunicationKills: The Catholic priest at the railroad Gasthaus tries to warn Harris that his old school has been abandoned, and when Harris protests the priests only warns Harris he will find it different from how he remembers. If the Catholic priest (or Dr. Silence, who had been listening to their conversation) had up and told Harris that the school burned down after the brothers' devil worship and human sacrifice was discovered, Harris wouldn't have hiked out to the site of the abandoned school and put himself in mortal danger.
-->The little priest lapsed into silence. Only once he said, looking up and speaking in a low voice that was not intended to be overheard, but that evidently was overheard, "You will find it different."
* SinisterMinister: The seemingly devout brotherhood of Protestant priests that ran a boarding school for boys in the remote German countryside was actually a sect of devil-worshipers who practiced human sacrifice.
-->"It was your abrupt conversation with the priest at supper that first put me upon the track of this remarkable occurrence," he heard the man's quiet voice beside him in the darkness, "and it was from him I learned after you left the story of the devil-worship that became secretly established in the heart of this simple and devout little community."\\
"Devil-worship! Here--!" Harris stammered, aghast.\\
"Yes--here;--conducted secretly for years by a group of Brothers before unexplained disappearances in the neighbourhood led to its discovery. For where could they have found a safer place in the whole wide world for their ghastly traffic and perverted powers than here, in the very precincts--under cover of the very shadow of saintliness and holy living?"
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Case V: The Camp of the Dog]]
* AstralProjection: Overlaps with OurWerebeastsAreDifferent -- Peter Sangree's repressed desire for Joan Maloney is causing his "astral body" to manifest as a tangible wolfdog. Dr. Silence is familiar many cases of astral projection, referring to the portion of the soul and vitality that leave the sleeping corpus behind as the "etheric Body of Desire", a "Double", or "fluidic body of a man." He and Mr. Hubbard discuss certain circumstances that might bring about the manifestation of an astral projection, including the use of drugs, illness, special training, and in Peter's case the passionate depths of unrequited love:
-->"And a man with strong desires, you say, might change?"\\
"Without being aware of it, yes; he might turn savage, his instincts and desires turn animal. And if"--he lowered his voice and turned for a moment towards the bows, and then continued in his most weighty manner--"owing to delicate health or other predisposing causes, his Double--you know what I mean, of course--his etheric Body of Desire, or astral body, as some term it--that part in which the emotions, passions and desires reside--if this, I say, were for some constitutional reason loosely joined to his physical organism, there might well take place an occasional projection--"
* EstablishingCharacterMoment: Mr. Hubbard introduces each of his companions on the camping trip in a manner that speaks to their personality:
** Reverend Timothy Maloney is introduced setting up the camp alongside Hubbard, totally immersed in his element, and with "-his coat off, his flannel collar flying open without a tie, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that he was cut out for the life of a pioneer rather than the church. He was fifty years of age, muscular, blue-eyed and hearty, and he took his share of the work, and more, without shirking."
** Mrs. Maloney is introduced making dinner for the campers. In contrast to her husband, Mrs. Maloney is described as enjoying the wilderness but not belonging to it the same way her husband does: "-there was no doubt she enjoyed the trips, for she possessed, though in less degree, the same joy of the wilderness that was his own distinguishing characteristic. The only difference was that while he regarded it as the real life, she regarded it as an interlude. While he camped out with his heart and mind, she played at camping out with her clothes and body. None the less, she made a splendid companion, and to watch her busy cooking dinner over the fire we had built among the stones was to understand that her heart was in the business for the moment and that she was happy even with the detail."
** Peter Sangree is described looking out of place, following Mrs. Maloney's orders happily if only because it grants him a chance to be near Joan. Hubbard says "with his pale skin, and his loose, though not ungainly figure, stood beside her in very unfavourable contrast as he scraped potatoes and sliced bacon with slender white fingers that seemed better suited to hold a pen than a knife."
** Joan Maloney is the only one more suited to their "primitive" life at the campsite than her father, seeming to blossom in the wilderness when compared to her constrained life back home. Of Joan, Hubbard says "This slim creature before me, flitting to and fro with the grace of the woodland life, swift, supple, adroit, on her knees blowing the fire, or stirring the frying-pan through a veil of smoke, suddenly seemed the only way I had ever really seen her. Here she was at home; in London she became some one concealed by clothes, an artificial doll overdressed and moving by clockwork, only a portion of her alive. Here she was alive all over."
* HaveAGayOldTime: Hubbard describes his long acquaintance with Dr. Silence as "My years of intercourse with him..."
* MagicalNativeAmerican: Reverend Maloney reveals to Dr. Silence that "Sangree has in him an admixture of savage blood--of Red Indian ancestry--", believing this to make Sangree more susceptible to occult phenomena like astral projection and lycanthropy. Dr. Silence agrees and describes "the strain of the untamed wild-man in his blood" as being too much for Peter Sangree's modern sensibilities to handle.
* NeverWakeUpASleepwalker: When Hubbard and Dr. Silence find Joan sleepwalking, Dr. Silence orders his companion not to wake the girl because it could harm her:
-->"No," he cried, "don't wake her!"\\
"What do you mean?" I replied aloud, struggling in his grasp.\\
"She's asleep. It's somnambulistic. The shock might injure her permanently."
* NinjaPirateZombieRobot: A case of OurWerebeastsAreDifferent where lycanthropy is based on one's AstralProjection running wild.
* OurWerebeastsAreDifferent: Overlaps with AstralProjection -- Peter Sangree's repressed desire for Joan Maloney is causing his "astral body" to separate from his physical form and manifest as a tangible wolfdog. Mr. Hubbard is the first to recognize the phenomenon when he catches the projection reuniting with Peter's unconscious body. On learning what Hubbard has seen, Dr. Silence is immediately able to diagnose the trouble as "-nothing more than a werewolf--rare enough, I am glad to say, but often very sad, and sometimes very terrible."
-->The Canadian, thank God! lay upon his bed of branches. His arm was stretched outside, across the blankets, the fist tightly clenched, and the body had an appearance of unusual rigidity that was alarming. On his face there was an expression of effort, almost of painful effort, so far as the uncertain light permitted me to see, and his sleep seemed to be very profound. He looked, I thought, so stiff, so unnaturally stiff, and in some indefinable way, too, he looked smaller--shrunken.\\
I called to him to wake, but called many times in vain. Then I decided to shake him, and had already moved forward to do so vigorously when there came a sound of footsteps padding softly behind me, and I felt a stream of hot breath burn my neck as I stooped. I turned sharply. The tent door was darkened and something silently swept in. I felt a rough and shaggy body push past me, and knew that the animal had returned. It seemed to leap forward between me and Sangree--in fact, to leap upon Sangree, for its dark body hid him momentarily from view, and in that moment my soul turned sick and coward with a horror that rose from the very dregs and depths of life, and gripped my existence at its central source.\\
The creature seemed somehow to melt away into him, almost as though it belonged to him and were a part of himself, but in the same instant--that instant of extraordinary confusion and terror in my mind--it seemed to pass over and behind him, and, in some utterly unaccountable fashion, it was gone. And the Canadian woke and sat up with a start.
* RemoteYetVulnerable: Sangree's body is vulnerable to any injury inflicted on his AstralProjection. When Reverend Maloney shoots the double and the bullet goes through both wolfish cheeks, it is Sangree who bears the wounds on his face.
* TheSavageIndian: Overlaps with MagicalNativeAmerican -- Reverend Maloney and Dr. Silence agree that Peter Sangree's "savage" "wild-man" blood from his "Red Indian" ancestors makes him uniquely vulnerable to atavism or regressing to primitive behaviors. They take the wolfish appearance of his AstralProjection as proof of the this.
* SceneryPorn: The beauty of the Swedish wilderness is effusively described:
-->Although the larger islands boasted farms and fishing stations, the majority were uninhabited. Carpeted with moss and heather, their coast-lines showed a series of ravines and clefts and little sandy bays, with a growth of splendid pine-woods that came down to the water's edge and led the eye through unknown depths of shadow and mystery into the very heart of primitive forest.\\
The particular islands to which we had camping rights by virtue of paying a nominal sum to a Stockholm merchant lay together in a picturesque group far beyond the reach of the steamer, one being a mere reef with a fringe of fairy-like birches, and two others, cliff-bound monsters rising with wooded heads out of the sea.
* {{Sleepwalking}}: Joan Maloney sleepwalks across the island on the night that Dr. Silence, Mr. Hubbard, and her father Reverend Maloney attempt to deal with the mysterious canine apparition that's been attacking her in her sleep. It's implied to be an innate connection between her and Peter that prompted her to awaken and respond to his calls.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Case VI: A Victim of Higher Space]]
* AcidTripDimension: Overlaps with HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace -- although he's initially awed and wonderstruck by his experiences in higher dimensions, Racine soon becomes quite exhausted by his abilities. The strange higher dimensions he experiences, the uncontrollable nature of his shifting between them, the dissociation from the familiar confines of 3-dimensional space, and the lack of empathy from those around him all become extremely stressful.
* AlienGeometries: Study of higher mathematics and geometry unlock and understanding of 4-dimensional space in Racine Mudge, followed by the ability to travel into higher dimensions.
-->"I procured the implements and the coloured blocks for practical experiment, and I followed the instructions carefully till I had arrived at a working conception of four-dimensional space. The tessaract, the figure whose boundaries are cubes, I knew by heart. That is to say, I knew it and saw it mentally, for my eye, of course, could never take in a new measurement, or my hands and feet handle it."
* AnotherDimension: Racine Mudge accidentally unlocks the ability to traverse higher dimensions, citing an infinite number of possible dimensions beyond the fourth that he might unwittingly slip into:
-->"For, you see, space does not stop at a single new dimension, a fourth. It extends in all possible new ones, and we must conceive it as containing any number of new dimensions.
* TheEmpath: Expanding his consciousness to comprehend and travel through higher dimensions has granted Racine Mudge a decree of psychic-adjacent powers. In perceiving the higher-dimensional forms of the people around him (of which their 3-dimensional bodies are only a tiny fragment) he can easily pick up on inner thoughts and feelings, essentially becoming a mind reader. He's extremely sensitive to the emotional "vibrations" of those around him. He can even tell when he's being observed, as when Dr. Silence and his doorman Barker utilize the peephole in the green reception room to try and spy on him.
* HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace: Overlaps with AcidTripDimension -- Racine's uncontrollable shifts into higher dimensions were at first a novelty, but swiftly became a thing of dread. He's terrified of the sudden journeys that fling him off into horrific higher dimensions and leave him stranded outside of 3-dimensional space for unknown periods of time.
* PowerIncontinence: Advance studies of higher mathematics have granted Racine Mudge the ability to travel to higher dimensions, but unlocking the ability to slip out of the third dimension didn't come with control over when these slips happened. As he tells Dr. Silence, practically anything can set him off on an uncontrollable jaunt into other dimensions -- certain colors, human voices, moods, musical compositions (especially Wagner) can all send him tripping off without warning or recourse to return to the mundane world:
-->"It was simply this," he resumed with a sudden rush of words, "that, accidentally, as the result of my years of experiment, I one day slipped bodily into the next world, the world of four dimensions, yet without knowing precisely how I got there, or how I could get back again. I discovered, that is, that my ordinary three-dimensional body was but an expression--a projection--of my higher four-dimensional body!\\
"Now you understand what I meant much earlier in our talk when I spoke of chance. I cannot control my entrance or exit. Certain people, certain human atmospheres, certain wandering forces, thoughts, desires even--the radiations of certain combinations of colour, and above all, the vibrations of certain kinds of music, will suddenly throw me into a state of what I can only describe as an intense and terrific inner vibration--and behold I am off! Off in the direction at right angles to all our known directions! Off in the direction the cube takes when it begins to trace the outlines of the new figure! Off into my breathless and semi-divine Higher Space! Off, inside myself, into the world of four dimensions!"\\
He gasped and dropped back into the depths of the immovable chair.\\
"And there," he whispered, his voice issuing from among the cushions, "there I have to stay until these vibrations subside, or until they do something which I cannot find words to describe properly or intelligibly to you--and then, behold, I am back again. First, that is, I disappear. Then I reappear."
* PowerLimiter: Alcohol can help to "deaden the vibrations" that send Racine slipping off into higher dimensions, but even the temporary relief granted by a few gulps of brandy can't help when a German band resumes playing Wagner right outside the window.
* SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic: Overlaps with AlienGeometries -- by studying advanced mathematics and geometry ''very'' hard, Racine Mudge unlocked the preternatural ability to travel to other dimensions.
* YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm: Racine Mudge has witnessed indescribable horrors while traversing dimensional gulfs. When he's back in his 3-dimensional body he can't exactly recall what it was that so frightened him, but he ''can'' recall the horrified impression those unfamiliar sights made on him.
-->"For, unable to control my movements, I wandered to and fro, attracted, owing to my partial development and premature arrival, to parts of this new world that alarmed me more and more. It was the awful waste and drift of a monstrous world, so utterly different to all we know and see that I cannot even hint at the nature of the sights and objects and beings in it. More than that, I cannot even remember them. I cannot now picture them to myself even, but can recall only the memory of the impression they made upon me, the horror and devastating terror of it all. To be in several places at once, for instance--"
[[/folder]]
----
%%[[caption-width-right:500:some caption text]]
->Matters that seemed almost too curious and fantastic for belief he loved to trace to their hidden sources. To unravel a tangle in the very soul of things--and to release a suffering human soul in the process--was with him a veritable passion. And the knots he untied were, indeed, after passing strange.
-->-- Ancient Sorceries
''John Silence, Physician Extraordinary'' is an early example of the ParanormalInvestigation genre of fiction. First published in 1908, this collection of short stories by Creator/AlgernonBlackwood features the OccultDetective character of Dr. John Silence, a medical doctor by trade and clairvoyant by training. Dr. Silence uses his supernatural powers to help those beset by all manner of what he calls "psychical afflictions." Be they haunted houses, past-life memories, or ancient curses unleashed on unsuspecting modern individuals, Dr. Silence stands ready to rise to the challenge and rescue his patients' in body and soul. Chronicling these exploits is his close friend and occasional assistant Mr. Hubbard.
Stories in this collection include:
* ''A Psychical Invasion'': Dr. John Silence is called to aid Felix Pender, a humorist whose experiments with drugs have seen his sense of humor replaced by one of preternatural terror.
* ''Ancient Sorceries'': The peculiar case of Arthur Vezin is examined; an unremarkable everyman whose unplanned detour to a small French town sees him entangled in a centuries-long plot rife with witchcraft, secretive rites, missing time, past lives, and ancestral memories.
* ''The Nemesis of Fire'': A spate of spontaneous incendiary events at his family estate drive Colonel Horace Wragge to seek Dr. Silence's assistance in smoking out a mysterious supernatural force that threatens to flare out of control.
* ''Secret Worship'': When the silk merchant Harris undertakes a visit to his old boarding school, it isn't just the fond memories that threaten to overwhelm him -- fortunately Dr. Silence is on hand to rescue his fellow man when the lingering echoes of a devilish plot put his very soul at risk.
* ''The Camp of the Dog'': Mr. Hubbard relates the story of a pleasant camping trip amongst friends that takes a sudden turn when one of their party suffers a bought of lycanthropy brought on by unrequited love.
* ''A Victim of Higher Space'': Racine Mudge comes to Dr. Silence desperate for help, beset by a truly extraordinary affliction that has robbed him of the ability to remain fixed in 3-dimensional space.
All stories are available to read in their entirety on [[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/John_Silence,_Physician_Extraordinary Wikisource]].
Due to the age of the source material, spoilers in folders below are unmarked.
----
!!Tropes in ''John Silence'' Stories:
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:Tropes in Multiple Short Stories]]
* CharlesAtlasSuperpower: According to Mr. Hubbard's narration, Dr. Silence trained for five years to obtain his psychic powers. From "A Psychical Investigation":
-->In order to grapple with cases of this peculiar kind, he had submitted himself to a long and severe training, at once physical, mental, and spiritual. What precisely this training had been, or where undergone, no one seemed to know,--for he never spoke of it, as, indeed, he betrayed no single other characteristic of the charlatan,--but the fact that it had involved a total disappearance from the world for five years, and that after he returned and began his singular practice no one ever dreamed of applying to him the so easily acquired epithet of quack, spoke much for the seriousness of his strange quest and also for the genuineness of his attainments.
* EvilDetectingDog:
** ''A Psychical Invasion'': Dr. Silence brings one of his own dog and cat along on a case, counting on their strong supernatural senses to help him detect the presence of a malignant spirit.
** ''The Nemesis of Fire'': The hunting dogs of the Wragge estate refuse to enter the plantation that seems to be the origin of the supernatural activity that plagues the grounds. When Dr. Silence sets up a ritual to entrap the entity causing the disturbances, Mr. Hubbard notes that the dogs in the nearby stableyard start barking up a storm moments before the humans detect a paranormal presence in the room with them.
* FirstPersonPeripheralNarrator: The narrator is Mr. Hubbard, a man of little personal description. He maintains a close friendship with the eponymous Dr. Silence and transcribes the intimate details of his cases. He only participates directly in the events of "The Nemesis of Fire" and "The Camp of the Dog" -- all other stories in the collection seem to have been conveyed to him by Dr. Silence at a later date.
* HauntedHouse:
** ''A Psychical Invasion'': The house at the top of Putney Hill didn't seem to be haunted until Felix Pender began experimenting with cannabis indica. Once the drugs [[HigherUnderstandingThroughDrugs made him sensitive to the world of the supernatural]], he was able to sense the specter of a former resident. These interactions appeared to strengthen the apparition, and while Mrs. Pender remained unable to sense the presence that haunted her husband and household Dr. Silence could call on his training to force it into a confrontation.
** ''The Nemesis of Fire'': {{Discussed}} but ultimately {{Downplayed}}. The incendiary events occurring at the Wragge manor are not caused by a spirit tied to the house but by a CurseOfThePharaoh the elder Wragge brother unleashed on the grounds when he brought a mummy back from Egypt.
--->"Haunted house?" I asked, conscious of a distinct shiver down my back.\\
But he smiled gravely at the question.\\
"Haunted House of Life more likely," he replied...
* OccultDetective: Dr. John Silence is a trained psychic who uses his powers to aid patients beset by "psychical afflictions." Though he would consider himself a medical practitioner first and foremost, much of his work involves sussing out the supernatural root cause of his patients' symptoms. His powers include a degree of clairvoyance, psychometry, astral projection, the ability to sense supernatural entities, and extensive knowledge of preternatural phenomena.
-->...the cases that especially appealed to him were of no ordinary kind, but rather of that intangible, elusive, and difficult nature best described as psychical afflictions; and, though he would have been the last person himself to approve of the title, it was beyond question that he was known more or less generally as the "Psychic Doctor."
* OurWerebeastsAreDifferent:
** ''The Nemesis of Fire'': here the werebeasts are were-cats, witches who transform into animals to participate in secret sabbaths.
** ''The Camp of the Dog'': the werewolf of this story is the AstralProjection of one Peter Sangree, described as his "double" that separates from his body when he sleeps. This projection takes on the form of a wolf-dog or werewolf as a reflection of Peter's devotion to and lust for Joan Maloney. He stifles his conscious desires around Joan because he doesn't know if she returns his feelings, and as a result his subconscious seeks to be by her side at all costs -- even to the point of "bathing in her heart's blood," as Dr. Silence puts it, if Peter continues to suffer under these unrequited passions.
* ParanormalInvestigation: Part and parcel of Dr. Silence's practice is examining patients, gathering clues, and tracking down the preternatural cause of their afflictions.
* {{Psychometry}}: Dr. Silence can get a sense of a patient's mental condition just by touching them or an object they have handled.
* QuirkyDoctor: An independently wealthy doctor, a philanthropist who accepts no payment for his work, a trained clairvoyant -- all of these describe Dr. Silence. From ''A Psychical Invasion'':
-->By his friends John Silence was regarded as an eccentric, because he was rich by accident, and by choice--a doctor. That a man of independent means should devote his time to doctoring, chiefly doctoring folk who could not pay, passed their comprehension entirely. The native nobility of a soul whose first desire was to help those who could not help themselves, puzzled them. After that, it irritated them, and, greatly to his own satisfaction, they left him to his own devices.\\
Dr. Silence was a free-lance, though, among doctors, having neither consulting-room, bookkeeper, nor professional manner. He took no fees, being at heart a genuine philanthropist, yet at the same time did no harm to his fellow-practitioners, because he only accepted unremunerative cases, and cases that interested him for some very special reason. He argued that the rich could pay, and the very poor could avail themselves of organised charity, but that a very large class of ill-paid, self-respecting workers, often followers of the arts, could not afford the price of a week's comforts merely to be told to travel. And it was these he desired to help: cases often requiring special and patient study--things no doctor can give for a guinea, and that no one would dream of expecting him to give.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Case I: A Psychical Invasion]]
* AddictionPowered: Overlaps with HigherUnderstandingThroughDrugs, see below.
* CatDogDichotomy: Smoke the cat is brought along to the house on Putney Hill in order to detect the "discarnate entity" with his heightened senses, but Dr. Silence considers the creature too mischievous to be counted on to help drive it off. Flame the collie dog is brought along for his fierce spirit and loyal nature (despite the tendency of dogs to quail in the face of supernatural forces). Dr. Silence is counting on them both to act as psychic barometers for supernatural activity -- Smoke will seek it out, while Flame will shrink away from it.
* CatStereotype: Smoke is a black cat with a white locket. He's chiefly described as "mischievous." Being supernaturally sensitive (as all cats apparently are), Smoke actively courts the attention of the malevolent spirits infesting the house at the top of Putney Hill, even making motions aimed at "introducing" the invisible forces to Dr. Silence and Flame the collie dog. When Smoke comes to the realization that the spirits mean to harm his master, he slinks off in shame and fear.
* TheCorrupter: The "discarnate entity" that latched onto Felix Pender is the spirit of a wicked woman who lived hundreds of years ago. Though her original house was torn down and the House on Putney Hill built on the spot, her powerful evil intentions allowed her spirit to remain rooted on the spot and attract further wicked energies and spirits to her side. When Felix moved into the House on Putney Hill and took several doses of cannabis indica he opened himself up to influences from beyond the mortal world. The spirit of the wicked woman "injected" her evil wiles into Felix's artistic process and made all his writings similarly cruel and malicious, so much so that he destroyed most of his work to prevent her influence from spreading in the world.
* DogStereotype: Flame the yellow collie dog is faultlessly loyal to Dr. Silence. He steadfastly guards his master against all threats (even supernatural ones). He also has a nurturing side, having helped to raise Smoke the cat as a kitten. He gamely tolerates his feline companion's mischief.
* EvilDetectingDog: Dr. Silence brings a cat and a dog with him to investigate the source of the evil "discarnate entity" haunting the house on top of Putney Hill.
-->The animals, by whose sensitiveness he intended to test any unusual conditions in the atmosphere of the building, Dr. Silence selected with care and judgment. He believed (and had already made curious experiments to prove it) that animals were more often, and more truly, clairvoyant than human beings. Many of them, he felt convinced, possessed powers of perception far superior to that mere keenness of the senses common to all dwellers in the wilds where the senses grow specially alert; they had what he termed "animal clairvoyance," and from his experiments with horses, dogs, cats, and even birds, he had drawn certain deductions, which, however, need not be referred to in detail here.\\
Cats, in particular, he believed, were almost continuously conscious of a larger field of vision, too detailed even for a photographic camera, and quite beyond the reach of normal human organs. He had, further, observed that while dogs were usually terrified in the presence of such phenomena, cats on the other hand were soothed and satisfied. They welcomed manifestations as something belonging peculiarly to their own region.
* HigherUnderstandingThroughDrugs: Overlaps with AddictionPowered.
** Felix Pender's sensitivity to the world of the supernatural began when he imbibed cannabis extract in an attempt to give himself the giggles:
--->"I mention this only in passing, and to give you confidence before you approach the account of your real affliction," continued the doctor. "All perception, as you know, is the result of vibrations; and clairvoyance simply means becoming sensitive to an increased scale of vibrations. The awakening of the inner senses we hear so much about means no more than that. Your partial clairvoyance is easily explained. The only thing that puzzles me is how you managed to procure the drug, for it is not easy to get in pure form, and no adulterated tincture could have given you the terrific impetus I see you have acquired. But, please proceed now and tell me your story in your own way."\\
"This Cannabis indica," the author went on, "came into my possession last autumn while my wife was away. I need not explain how I got it, for that has no importance; but it was the genuine fluid extract, and I could not resist the temptation to make an experiment..."
** Dr. Silence later goes on to explain that drugs can affect a person's sensitivity to the supernatural by altering their "vibrations" and therefore their perception:
---> "In the first place, I am very familiar with the workings of this extraordinary drug, this drug which has had the chance effect of opening you up to the forces of another region; and, in the second, I have a firm belief in the reality of supersensuous occurrences as well as considerable knowledge of psychic processes acquired by long and painful experiment. The rest is, or should be, merely sympathetic treatment and practical application. The hashish has partially opened another world to you by increasing your rate of psychical vibration, and thus rendering you abnormally sensitive."
* LaughingMad: Felix purposefully ingested a dose cannabis indica to induce a case of the giggles in himself. The potent combination of this altered state of mind and his sudden psychic sensitivity (also brought on by the drug use) made him a prime target for a malevolent spirit to latch onto his consciousness. Felix describes a state of manic laughter that overtook him while gripped with terror as such:
-->"The laughter, too, kept bubbling up inside me--great wholesome laughter that shook me like gusts of wind--so that even my terror almost made me laugh. Oh, but I may tell you, Dr. Silence, it was altogether vile, that mixture of fear and laughter, altogether vile!"
* {{Psychometry}}: Dr. Silence takes a baseline reading of Felix Pender's condition by touching his hand:
-->John Silence leaned forward a moment and took the speaker's hand and held it in his own for a few brief seconds, closing his eyes as he did so. He was not feeling his pulse, or doing any of the things that doctors ordinarily do; he was merely absorbing into himself the main note of the man's mental condition, so as to get completely his own point of view, and thus be able to treat his case with true sympathy. A very close observer might perhaps have noticed that a slight tremor ran through his frame after he had held the hand for a few seconds.
* TastesLikePurple: Felix's second dose of cannabis triggers an experience of multiple forms of synesthesia:
-->"-another extraordinary effect came to me, and I experienced a curious changing of the senses, so that I perceived external things through one large main sense-channel instead of through the five divisions known as sight, smell, touch, and so forth. You will, I know, understand me when I tell you that I heard sights and saw sounds. No language can make this comprehensible, of course, and I can only say, for instance, that the striking of the clock I saw as a visible picture in the air before me. I saw the sounds of the tinkling bell. And in precisely the same way I heard the colours in the room, especially the colours of those books in the shelf behind you. Those red bindings I heard in deep sounds, and the yellow covers of the French bindings next to them made a shrill, piercing note not unlike the chattering of starlings. That brown bookcase muttered, and those green curtains opposite kept up a constant sort of rippling sound like the lower notes of a wood-horn. But I only was conscious of these sounds when I looked steadily at the different objects, and thought about them. The room, you understand, was not full of a chorus of notes; but when I concentrated my mind upon a colour, I heard, as well as saw, it."
* TemporaryBlindness: Flame the collie dog goes blind after a ferocious battle against the intangible forces attacking Dr. Silence. His blindness is suddenly cured after Dr. Silence meets with Felix to explain the case.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Case II: Ancient Sorceries]]
* AllJustADream: Dr. Silence's investigation into Arthur Vezin's stay in a sleepy French town in the countryside proves that the man's fantastic escapades were the product of his imagination. Silence goes on to speculate that they were caused by Vezin accessing the ancestral memory of his forefathers who lived in the very same town, two of whom were burned at the stake for witchcraft.
-->"But that the entire affair took place subjectively in the man's own consciousness, I have no doubt," he went on, in reply to my questions; "for my secretary who has been to the town to investigate, discovered his signature in the visitors' book, and proved by it that he had arrived on September 8th, and left suddenly without paying his bill. He left two days later, and they still were in possession of his dirty brown bag and some tourist clothes. I paid a few francs in settlement of his debt, and have sent his luggage on to him. The daughter was absent from home, but the proprietress, a large woman very much as he described her, told my secretary that he had seemed a very strange, absent-minded kind of gentleman, and after his disappearance she had feared for a long time that he had met with a violent end in the neighbouring forest where he used to roam about alone."
* AnimalMotifs: Cats.
** Arthur Vezin's first impression of the small French town is that of ''purring'' contentment, and he continues to describe it in terms that would not be out of place when describing a cat. Even the weather gets this description after a while as "-the air, soft and cool, caressed his cheek like the touch of a great furry paw."
** The proprietress of the inn is described like a cat sitting lazily in the courtyard, appearing half asleep as she knits but always with half an eye on Arthur. He gets the sense that she could leap up and "pounce" upon him at any moment.
** Mademoiselle Ilsé, daughter of the inn's proprietress, is described as having "the silken movements of the panther, going smoothly, silently to and fro..." and being "lithe as a young leopard..." When Vezin becomes better acquainted with Ilsé, he notes how he mimics "her own purring softness of voice."
** Arthur's final impression of the town as he flees draws more feline comparison:
--->"I remember pausing somewhere on the road and looking back to where the hill-town of my adventure stood up in the moonlight, and thinking how exactly like a great monstrous cat it lay there upon the plain, its huge front paws lying down the two main streets, and the twin and broken towers of the cathedral marking its torn ears against the sky."
* BurnTheWitch: Ilsé gives Vezin a tour of the little town, pointing out "the ancient market-place where several hundred years before the witches had been burnt by the score." With the revelation that [[AllJustADream the tour was likely a product of Vezin's imagination]], Dr. Silence sends one of his underlings to investigate the region. They find that Vezin's ancestors were among the dozens of alleged witches burnt at the stake in that same village.
-->... the doctor had made investigations on his own account, and one of his secretaries had discovered that Vezin's ancestors had actually lived for generations in the very town where the adventure came to him. Two of them, both women, had been tried and convicted as witches, and had been burned alive at the stake. Moreover, it had not been difficult to prove that the very inn where Vezin stayed was built about 1700 upon the spot where the funeral pyres stood and the executions took place. The town was a sort of headquarters for all the sorcerers and witches of the entire region, and after conviction they were burnt there literally by scores.
* FilleFatale: {{Downplayed}} -- Ilsé is 17 and she actively attempts to seduce the 45 year old Arthur Vezin. {{Subverted}} in that Ilsé's flirtations are later revealed to be the product of Arthur's imagination.
* ExtremeDoormat: Arthur Vezin, often referred to as "little Vezin," is described as "-a timid, gentle, sensitive soul, rarely able to assert himself, tender to man and beast, and almost constitutionally unable to say No, or to claim many things that should rightly have been his." His meek personality and dogged ordinariness make it all the more unbelievable that something so extraordinary should happen to him.
* KillItWithFire: Arthur notes that Ilsé is terrified of open flames when they pass a bonfire on their tour. He later scares off the werebeasts and witches by setting fire to some dried leaves.
* ReincarnationRomance:
** PlayedStraight as Ilsé claims that Arthur was her lover in a past life and that she used their connection to summon him to her side.
--->"Yet I came here wholly by chance--" he heard himself saying.\\
"No," she cried with passion, "you came here because I called to you. I have called to you for years, and you came with the whole force of the past behind you. You had to come, for I own you, and I claim you."
** {{Subverted}} when it is revealed that Arthur's experiences were AllJustADream, though Dr. Silence ''does'' put forth the theory that he may have been overwhelmed by the ancestral memories of his murdered forefathers or "swept into the vortex of forces arising out of the intense activities of a past life..."
* ShoutOut: Vezin describes the waiter at the French inn as having "Dundreary whiskers", a reference to the exaggerated sideburns of Lord Dundreary in the 1850's play [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_American_Cousin Our American Cousin]].
* TownWithADarkSecret: PlayedStraight when Arthur Vezin makes an unplanned stop in a small French town. The longer he stays there, the more he feels the residents are carefully observing him. At last they reveal themselves to be a society of witches and devil-worshiping were-cats who have surreptitiously studied his fitness to join them in their satanic revelry. {{Subverted}} when Arthur's experiences are revealed to be the product of his imagination. Dr. Silence's secretary discovers the town ''was'' the center of persecution against alleged witches some centuries ago, but there's no indication that the town is currently filled with witches or lycanthropes.
* OurWerebeastsAreDifferent:
** PlayedStraight -- Arthur Vezin discovers that the townsfolk are all witches and werecats, able to shift at will from human to feline form.
--->...he saw that the windows all about him were being softly opened, and that to each window came a face. A moment later figures began dropping hurriedly down into the yard. And these figures, as they lowered themselves down from the windows, were human, he saw; but once safely in the yard they fell upon all fours and changed in the swiftest possible second into--cats--huge, silent cats.
** {{Discussed}} but ultimately {{Downplayed}} -- Dr. Silence calls out the persecution so-called witches faced during the dark ages when belief in lycanthopy was widespread, but there's no evidence that the modern residents of the French town where Vezin stayed are ''actual'' werecats (since his experiences in the town were all imagined).
--->"One has only to read the histories of the times to know that these witches claimed the power of transforming themselves into various animals, both for the purposes of disguise and also to convey themselves swiftly to the scenes of their imaginary orgies. Lycanthropy, or the power to change themselves into wolves, was everywhere believed in, and the ability to transform themselves into cats by rubbing their bodies with a special salve or ointment provided by Satan himself, found equal credence. The witchcraft trials abound in evidences of such universal beliefs."
* YearInsideHourOutside: Arthur Vezin passes what seems like a week or more in the small French town, but when he returns to London he finds he's only been gone for two days:
-->"And how long altogether," asked John Silence quietly, "do you think you stayed in the town of the adventure?"\\
Vezin looked up sheepishly.\\
"I was coming to that," he resumed, with apologetic wrigglings of his body. "In London I found that I was a whole week out in my reckoning of time. I had stayed over a week in the town, and it ought to have been September 15th,--instead of which it was only September 10th!"\\
"So that, in reality, you had only stayed a night or two in the inn?" queried the doctor.\\
Vezin hesitated before replying. He shuffled upon the mat.\\
"I must have gained time somewhere," he said at length--"somewhere or somehow. I certainly had a week to my credit. I can't explain it. I can only give you the fact."
* YourMindMakesItReal: Even months after his visit to France, Vezin retains the strange bruise-like markings on his neck and back where he imagines Ilsé embraced him, her hands dripping with the salve that would transform him into a cat like the other residents of the town. Dr. Silence compares the marks to the stigmata that manifests on particularly religious individuals or welts that appear on the bodies of people who were hypnotized into thinking they'd been struck, blaming the "subliminal up-rushes of memory" that ensnared Vezin for his condition.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Case III: The Nemesis of Fire]]
* ArtisticLicenseSpace: Of the "Spacey Schedule Errors" variety -- Dr. Silence claims that the night's full moon will exacerbate the fire elemental's attacks, but also provide an opportunity to bind and dispel it [[WhenTheClockStrikesTwelve at midnight]]. When Hubbard slips out of the house at a quarter to twelve, he sees "the broken, yellow disc of the half-moon just rising in the east..." [[https://museumsvictoria.com.au/learning/little-science/teacher-support-materials/phases-of-the-moon/ Full moons rise at sunset]]. Last-quarter moons (which are half illuminated, i.e. half-moons) rise around midnight, and they certainly don't grow from half-moons to full moons in the course of 15 minutes.
* BlackMagic: {{Discussed}} briefly -- Dr. Silence describes the ElementalEmbodiment they're dealing with as a foundational force of magic that is neither good nor evil in and of itself. He explains that "it is the motive behind them that constitutes the magic 'black' or 'white'; they can be the vehicles of curses or of blessings..."
* BloodMagic: In order to bind and dispel the ElementalEmbodiment, Dr. Silence tells Colonel Wragge and Mr. Hubbard they'll need blood to construct a physical body for it. Wragge initially thinks they mean a human sacrifice until Dr. Silence tells him they can use the blood of a freshly killed pig.
* CurseOfThePharaoh: The [[ElementalEmbodiment fire elemental]] haunting the grounds of Twelve Acre Plantation is a protective spirit bound to the mummy of a high ranking Ancient Egyptian figure. Colonel Wragge's older brother unearthed the mummy in Egypt, brought it to the family estate in Great Britain, unwrapped the body and pilfered some of the protective amulets (including a green jasper scarab amulet that he gifted to his sister Miss Wragge); this unleashed the fire elemental meant to guard the mummy's tomb on the grounds of the Wragge estate. It appears that the elder Wragge brother and his groundskeeper were killed by the elemental after trying to rebury the mummy in the plantation: the groundskeeper had injuries consistent with suffocation, while the brother's face was "blasted and burned" as if by a great heat. For the next twenty years the elemental continued to set small random fires in the woods and eventually escalated to spontaneous fires in the Wragge house and laundry building. Dr. Silence, Mr. Hubbard, and Colonel Wragge move to dispel the elemental and put the mummy's curse to rest, but not before it claims the life of Miss Wragge -- she suffers the same fate as the elder Wragge brother when she tries to return the stolen scarab amulet.
-->"The mummy of some important person--a priest most likely--protected from disturbance and desecration by the ceremonial magic of the time. For they understood how to attach to the mummy, to lock up with it in the tomb, an elemental force that would direct itself even after ages upon any one who dared to molest it. In this case it was an elemental of fire."
* DemonicPossession: Colonel Wragge winds up briefly possessed when the men attempt to summon and bind the fire elemental.
-->But what has left an even sharper impression on my memory was the blackness that then began crawling over his face, obliterating the features, concealing their human outline, and hiding him inch by inch from view. This was my first realisation that the process of materialisation was at work. His visage became shrouded. I moved from one side to the other to keep him in view, and it was only then I understood that, properly speaking, the blackness was not upon the countenance of Colonel Wragge, but that something had inserted itself between me and him, thus screening his face with the effect of a dark veil... The signature of a new power had crept into the face and left its traces there--an expression dark, and in some unexplained way, terrible.\\
Then suddenly he opened his mouth and spoke, and the sound of this changed voice, deep and musical though it was, made me cold and set my heart beating with uncomfortable rapidity. The Being, as he had dreaded, was already in control of his brain, using his mouth.
* ElementalEmbodiment: Twelve Acre Plantation (and by extension Colonel Wragge's household) is haunted by a fire elemental. The elemental's presence gives the house a stuffy, oppressive air like the heat of summer even in October, and it causes random fires to break out in the house and forest.
-->"But 'it'--what is 'it'?" began the soldier, fuming. "What, in the name of all that's dreadful, is a fire-elemental?"\\
"I cannot give you at this moment," replied Dr. Silence, turning to him, but undisturbed by the interruption, "a lecture on the nature and history of magic, but can only say that an Elemental is the active force behind the elements,--whether earth, air, water, or fire,--it is impersonal in its essential nature, but can be focused, personified, ensouled, so to say, by those who know how--by magicians, if you will--for certain purposes of their own, much in the same way that steam and electricity can be harnessed by the practical man of this century.\\
"Alone, these blind elemental energies can accomplish little, but governed and directed by the trained will of a powerful manipulator they may become potent activities for good or evil. They are the basis of all magic, and it is the motive behind them that constitutes the magic 'black' or 'white'; they can be the vehicles of curses or of blessings, for a curse is nothing more than the thought of a violent will perpetuated
* EvilDetectingDog: The hunting dogs refuse to enter the woods of Twelve Acre Plantation, sensing the supernatural presence lurking there. When Dr. Silence, Colonel Wragge, and Mr. Hubbard conduct their ritual to bind and dispel the elemental in the laundry building, the baying of the dogs in the nearby stableyard is one of the first signs that the spirit is upon them.
* HauntedHouse: {{Discussed}} -- Dr. Silence asks Hubbard for his impression of the case when they two arrive at the Wragge estate, and Hubbard initially believes they may be dealing with either a haunted house or a haunted individual (being Colonel Wragge or his sister Miss Wragge). It's later revealed that they're dealing with a [[ElementalEmbodiment fire elemental]] attached to a mummy the late elder Wragge brother disinterred. It's not haunting the ''house'' per se, but it ''is'' lashing out at anyone who disturbed the mummy (and anything in the vicinity of the mummy's new resting place).
-->Personally, I was glad to be in the open air, for the atmosphere of the house was heavy with presentiment. The sense of impending disaster hung over all. Fear stalked the passages, and lurked in the corners of every room. It was a house haunted, but really haunted; not by some vague shadow of the dead, but by a definite though incalculable influence that was actively alive, and dangerous. At the least smell of smoke the entire household quivered. An odour of burning, I was convinced, would paralyse all the inmates. For the servants, though professedly ignorant by the master's unspoken orders, yet shared the common dread; and the hideous uncertainty, joined with this display of so spiteful and calculated a spirit of malignity, provided a kind of black doom that draped not only the walls, but also the minds of the people living within them.
* GraveRobbing: The elder Wragge brother dug up a mummy in Egypt and brought it home with him as a souvenir. Then he unwrapped it and [[RobbingTheDead took its protective amulets]], unleashing a CurseOfThePharaoh on his household.
* NoodleIncident: As Dr. Silence describes to Mr. Hubbard how they've come to be involved in Horace Wragge's affairs, he mentions people and cases not native any other Dr. John Silence stories. Mr. Hubbard even describes a reference to "the Anderson case, the horror of which lay still vivid in my memory, may have touched the sense of something rather ominous and alarming."
-->"He heard of me, you see, through Captain Anderson," the doctor explained modestly, as though his fame were not almost world-wide; "you remember that Indian obsession case--"
* ObsessivelyNormal: Colonel Horace Wragge is a man of concrete facts and action. He's distressed by the notion that there are supernatural forces besieging his family home (and possibly responsible for the death of his brother and paralytic illness of his sister), but even more upset that there's nothing he as a layman can do to confront those forces. As Hubbard describes it, "He hated this mystery. It was poisonous to his nature, and he longed to meet something face to face--something he could gauge and fight."
* PsychicBlockDefense: Dr. Silence prompts Hubbard to imagine a protective shell around himself as they enter the plantation to shield Hubbard's mind from psychic interference. The shield seems to be powered by belief rather than innate psychic power.
-->"And, for your safety," he said earnestly, "imagine now--and for that matter, imagine always until we leave this place--imagine with the utmost keenness, that you are surrounded by a shell that protects you. Picture yourself inside a protective envelope, and build it up with the most intense imagination you can evoke. Pour the whole force of your thought and will into it. Believe vividly all through this adventure that such a shell, constructed of your thought, will and imagination, surrounds you completely, and that nothing can pierce it to attack."
* {{Psychometry}}: Dr. Silence can tell just by touching Horace Wragge's short letter that the writer was distressed and disturbed by supernatural forces:
-->"The man's mind was charged to the brim when he wrote that; full of vivid mental pictures. Notice the restraint of it. For the main character of his case psychometry could be depended upon, and the scrap of paper his hand has touched is sufficient to give to another mind--a sensitive and sympathetic mind--clear mental pictures of what is going on. I think I have a very sound general idea of his problem."
* RobbingTheDead: The elder Wragge brother unearthed a mummy in Egypt and brought it home to Great Britain to keep in his personal museum of souvenirs. He also unwrapped the body and took one of the protective amulets to make a brooch for his sister Miss Wragge. In [[GraveRobbing desecrating the mummy]], he unleashed the ElementalEmbodiment that'd been bound to the body to protect it.
* WhenTheClockStrikesTwelve: The ritual to draw out the fire elemental and bind it in a physical form is to begin at midnight. Dr. Silence claims that the ritual should be performed at night because the full moon will lend power to their enterprise (and because the rest of the Wragge household will have turned in for the night and thusly won't interfere with the rites). Although they start the ritual at precisely midnight (according to Wragge's watch), Hubbard estimates that at least an hour passes before the elemental strikes. It's nearly morning by the time they finish.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Case IV: Secret Worship]]
* BoardingSchoolOfHorrors: ZigZagged -- Harris spent two years at a strict boarding school in the remote German countryside run by protestants Brüders. The students were never allowed a moment of solitude, always watched by one of the masters. He and his 200 classmates woke up at five every morning and were punished for speaking in their native tongues (Harris recalls an incident where he and another boy were given half-rations for leaving the walking path to chase a butterfly). Despite this harsh treatment, Harris has fond memories of the place and believes the discipline it instilled in him made him into a successful businessman. It isn't until Harris learns that the brothers who ran the school were secretly practicing devil-worship and human sacrifice AND he almost falls victim to their malevolent spirits that he loses the rose-colored glasses.
* PoorCommunicationKills: The Catholic priest at the railroad Gasthaus tries to warn Harris that his old school has been abandoned, and when Harris protests the priests only warns Harris he will find it different from how he remembers. If the Catholic priest (or Dr. Silence, who had been listening to their conversation) had up and told Harris that the school burned down after the brothers' devil worship and human sacrifice was discovered, Harris wouldn't have hiked out to the site of the abandoned school and put himself in mortal danger.
-->The little priest lapsed into silence. Only once he said, looking up and speaking in a low voice that was not intended to be overheard, but that evidently was overheard, "You will find it different."
* SinisterMinister: The seemingly devout brotherhood of Protestant priests that ran a boarding school for boys in the remote German countryside was actually a sect of devil-worshipers who practiced human sacrifice.
-->"It was your abrupt conversation with the priest at supper that first put me upon the track of this remarkable occurrence," he heard the man's quiet voice beside him in the darkness, "and it was from him I learned after you left the story of the devil-worship that became secretly established in the heart of this simple and devout little community."\\
"Devil-worship! Here--!" Harris stammered, aghast.\\
"Yes--here;--conducted secretly for years by a group of Brothers before unexplained disappearances in the neighbourhood led to its discovery. For where could they have found a safer place in the whole wide world for their ghastly traffic and perverted powers than here, in the very precincts--under cover of the very shadow of saintliness and holy living?"
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Case V: The Camp of the Dog]]
* AstralProjection: Overlaps with OurWerebeastsAreDifferent -- Peter Sangree's repressed desire for Joan Maloney is causing his "astral body" to manifest as a tangible wolfdog. Dr. Silence is familiar many cases of astral projection, referring to the portion of the soul and vitality that leave the sleeping corpus behind as the "etheric Body of Desire", a "Double", or "fluidic body of a man." He and Mr. Hubbard discuss certain circumstances that might bring about the manifestation of an astral projection, including the use of drugs, illness, special training, and in Peter's case the passionate depths of unrequited love:
-->"And a man with strong desires, you say, might change?"\\
"Without being aware of it, yes; he might turn savage, his instincts and desires turn animal. And if"--he lowered his voice and turned for a moment towards the bows, and then continued in his most weighty manner--"owing to delicate health or other predisposing causes, his Double--you know what I mean, of course--his etheric Body of Desire, or astral body, as some term it--that part in which the emotions, passions and desires reside--if this, I say, were for some constitutional reason loosely joined to his physical organism, there might well take place an occasional projection--"
* EstablishingCharacterMoment: Mr. Hubbard introduces each of his companions on the camping trip in a manner that speaks to their personality:
** Reverend Timothy Maloney is introduced setting up the camp alongside Hubbard, totally immersed in his element, and with "-his coat off, his flannel collar flying open without a tie, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that he was cut out for the life of a pioneer rather than the church. He was fifty years of age, muscular, blue-eyed and hearty, and he took his share of the work, and more, without shirking."
** Mrs. Maloney is introduced making dinner for the campers. In contrast to her husband, Mrs. Maloney is described as enjoying the wilderness but not belonging to it the same way her husband does: "-there was no doubt she enjoyed the trips, for she possessed, though in less degree, the same joy of the wilderness that was his own distinguishing characteristic. The only difference was that while he regarded it as the real life, she regarded it as an interlude. While he camped out with his heart and mind, she played at camping out with her clothes and body. None the less, she made a splendid companion, and to watch her busy cooking dinner over the fire we had built among the stones was to understand that her heart was in the business for the moment and that she was happy even with the detail."
** Peter Sangree is described looking out of place, following Mrs. Maloney's orders happily if only because it grants him a chance to be near Joan. Hubbard says "with his pale skin, and his loose, though not ungainly figure, stood beside her in very unfavourable contrast as he scraped potatoes and sliced bacon with slender white fingers that seemed better suited to hold a pen than a knife."
** Joan Maloney is the only one more suited to their "primitive" life at the campsite than her father, seeming to blossom in the wilderness when compared to her constrained life back home. Of Joan, Hubbard says "This slim creature before me, flitting to and fro with the grace of the woodland life, swift, supple, adroit, on her knees blowing the fire, or stirring the frying-pan through a veil of smoke, suddenly seemed the only way I had ever really seen her. Here she was at home; in London she became some one concealed by clothes, an artificial doll overdressed and moving by clockwork, only a portion of her alive. Here she was alive all over."
* HaveAGayOldTime: Hubbard describes his long acquaintance with Dr. Silence as "My years of intercourse with him..."
* MagicalNativeAmerican: Reverend Maloney reveals to Dr. Silence that "Sangree has in him an admixture of savage blood--of Red Indian ancestry--", believing this to make Sangree more susceptible to occult phenomena like astral projection and lycanthropy. Dr. Silence agrees and describes "the strain of the untamed wild-man in his blood" as being too much for Peter Sangree's modern sensibilities to handle.
* NeverWakeUpASleepwalker: When Hubbard and Dr. Silence find Joan sleepwalking, Dr. Silence orders his companion not to wake the girl because it could harm her:
-->"No," he cried, "don't wake her!"\\
"What do you mean?" I replied aloud, struggling in his grasp.\\
"She's asleep. It's somnambulistic. The shock might injure her permanently."
* NinjaPirateZombieRobot: A case of OurWerebeastsAreDifferent where lycanthropy is based on one's AstralProjection running wild.
* OurWerebeastsAreDifferent: Overlaps with AstralProjection -- Peter Sangree's repressed desire for Joan Maloney is causing his "astral body" to separate from his physical form and manifest as a tangible wolfdog. Mr. Hubbard is the first to recognize the phenomenon when he catches the projection reuniting with Peter's unconscious body. On learning what Hubbard has seen, Dr. Silence is immediately able to diagnose the trouble as "-nothing more than a werewolf--rare enough, I am glad to say, but often very sad, and sometimes very terrible."
-->The Canadian, thank God! lay upon his bed of branches. His arm was stretched outside, across the blankets, the fist tightly clenched, and the body had an appearance of unusual rigidity that was alarming. On his face there was an expression of effort, almost of painful effort, so far as the uncertain light permitted me to see, and his sleep seemed to be very profound. He looked, I thought, so stiff, so unnaturally stiff, and in some indefinable way, too, he looked smaller--shrunken.\\
I called to him to wake, but called many times in vain. Then I decided to shake him, and had already moved forward to do so vigorously when there came a sound of footsteps padding softly behind me, and I felt a stream of hot breath burn my neck as I stooped. I turned sharply. The tent door was darkened and something silently swept in. I felt a rough and shaggy body push past me, and knew that the animal had returned. It seemed to leap forward between me and Sangree--in fact, to leap upon Sangree, for its dark body hid him momentarily from view, and in that moment my soul turned sick and coward with a horror that rose from the very dregs and depths of life, and gripped my existence at its central source.\\
The creature seemed somehow to melt away into him, almost as though it belonged to him and were a part of himself, but in the same instant--that instant of extraordinary confusion and terror in my mind--it seemed to pass over and behind him, and, in some utterly unaccountable fashion, it was gone. And the Canadian woke and sat up with a start.
* RemoteYetVulnerable: Sangree's body is vulnerable to any injury inflicted on his AstralProjection. When Reverend Maloney shoots the double and the bullet goes through both wolfish cheeks, it is Sangree who bears the wounds on his face.
* TheSavageIndian: Overlaps with MagicalNativeAmerican -- Reverend Maloney and Dr. Silence agree that Peter Sangree's "savage" "wild-man" blood from his "Red Indian" ancestors makes him uniquely vulnerable to atavism or regressing to primitive behaviors. They take the wolfish appearance of his AstralProjection as proof of the this.
* SceneryPorn: The beauty of the Swedish wilderness is effusively described:
-->Although the larger islands boasted farms and fishing stations, the majority were uninhabited. Carpeted with moss and heather, their coast-lines showed a series of ravines and clefts and little sandy bays, with a growth of splendid pine-woods that came down to the water's edge and led the eye through unknown depths of shadow and mystery into the very heart of primitive forest.\\
The particular islands to which we had camping rights by virtue of paying a nominal sum to a Stockholm merchant lay together in a picturesque group far beyond the reach of the steamer, one being a mere reef with a fringe of fairy-like birches, and two others, cliff-bound monsters rising with wooded heads out of the sea.
* {{Sleepwalking}}: Joan Maloney sleepwalks across the island on the night that Dr. Silence, Mr. Hubbard, and her father Reverend Maloney attempt to deal with the mysterious canine apparition that's been attacking her in her sleep. It's implied to be an innate connection between her and Peter that prompted her to awaken and respond to his calls.
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[[folder:Case VI: A Victim of Higher Space]]
* AcidTripDimension: Overlaps with HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace -- although he's initially awed and wonderstruck by his experiences in higher dimensions, Racine soon becomes quite exhausted by his abilities. The strange higher dimensions he experiences, the uncontrollable nature of his shifting between them, the dissociation from the familiar confines of 3-dimensional space, and the lack of empathy from those around him all become extremely stressful.
* AlienGeometries: Study of higher mathematics and geometry unlock and understanding of 4-dimensional space in Racine Mudge, followed by the ability to travel into higher dimensions.
-->"I procured the implements and the coloured blocks for practical experiment, and I followed the instructions carefully till I had arrived at a working conception of four-dimensional space. The tessaract, the figure whose boundaries are cubes, I knew by heart. That is to say, I knew it and saw it mentally, for my eye, of course, could never take in a new measurement, or my hands and feet handle it."
* AnotherDimension: Racine Mudge accidentally unlocks the ability to traverse higher dimensions, citing an infinite number of possible dimensions beyond the fourth that he might unwittingly slip into:
-->"For, you see, space does not stop at a single new dimension, a fourth. It extends in all possible new ones, and we must conceive it as containing any number of new dimensions.
* TheEmpath: Expanding his consciousness to comprehend and travel through higher dimensions has granted Racine Mudge a decree of psychic-adjacent powers. In perceiving the higher-dimensional forms of the people around him (of which their 3-dimensional bodies are only a tiny fragment) he can easily pick up on inner thoughts and feelings, essentially becoming a mind reader. He's extremely sensitive to the emotional "vibrations" of those around him. He can even tell when he's being observed, as when Dr. Silence and his doorman Barker utilize the peephole in the green reception room to try and spy on him.
* HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace: Overlaps with AcidTripDimension -- Racine's uncontrollable shifts into higher dimensions were at first a novelty, but swiftly became a thing of dread. He's terrified of the sudden journeys that fling him off into horrific higher dimensions and leave him stranded outside of 3-dimensional space for unknown periods of time.
* PowerIncontinence: Advance studies of higher mathematics have granted Racine Mudge the ability to travel to higher dimensions, but unlocking the ability to slip out of the third dimension didn't come with control over when these slips happened. As he tells Dr. Silence, practically anything can set him off on an uncontrollable jaunt into other dimensions -- certain colors, human voices, moods, musical compositions (especially Wagner) can all send him tripping off without warning or recourse to return to the mundane world:
-->"It was simply this," he resumed with a sudden rush of words, "that, accidentally, as the result of my years of experiment, I one day slipped bodily into the next world, the world of four dimensions, yet without knowing precisely how I got there, or how I could get back again. I discovered, that is, that my ordinary three-dimensional body was but an expression--a projection--of my higher four-dimensional body!\\
"Now you understand what I meant much earlier in our talk when I spoke of chance. I cannot control my entrance or exit. Certain people, certain human atmospheres, certain wandering forces, thoughts, desires even--the radiations of certain combinations of colour, and above all, the vibrations of certain kinds of music, will suddenly throw me into a state of what I can only describe as an intense and terrific inner vibration--and behold I am off! Off in the direction at right angles to all our known directions! Off in the direction the cube takes when it begins to trace the outlines of the new figure! Off into my breathless and semi-divine Higher Space! Off, inside myself, into the world of four dimensions!"\\
He gasped and dropped back into the depths of the immovable chair.\\
"And there," he whispered, his voice issuing from among the cushions, "there I have to stay until these vibrations subside, or until they do something which I cannot find words to describe properly or intelligibly to you--and then, behold, I am back again. First, that is, I disappear. Then I reappear."
* PowerLimiter: Alcohol can help to "deaden the vibrations" that send Racine slipping off into higher dimensions, but even the temporary relief granted by a few gulps of brandy can't help when a German band resumes playing Wagner right outside the window.
* SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic: Overlaps with AlienGeometries -- by studying advanced mathematics and geometry ''very'' hard, Racine Mudge unlocked the preternatural ability to travel to other dimensions.
* YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm: Racine Mudge has witnessed indescribable horrors while traversing dimensional gulfs. When he's back in his 3-dimensional body he can't exactly recall what it was that so frightened him, but he ''can'' recall the horrified impression those unfamiliar sights made on him.
-->"For, unable to control my movements, I wandered to and fro, attracted, owing to my partial development and premature arrival, to parts of this new world that alarmed me more and more. It was the awful waste and drift of a monstrous world, so utterly different to all we know and see that I cannot even hint at the nature of the sights and objects and beings in it. More than that, I cannot even remember them. I cannot now picture them to myself even, but can recall only the memory of the impression they made upon me, the horror and devastating terror of it all. To be in several places at once, for instance--"
[[/folder]]
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