ABSTRACT
In Conan Doyle’s life the clash between religion and science had its nodal points in his native Catholicism and his medical training. Doyle’s medics are there not only to represent the sceptical reader, but also to reassure “the subject for the physician” that the doctor may well be both a sceptic and an eyewitness. In Doyle’s life the clash between religion and science had its nodal points in his native Catholicism and his medical training In The New Revelation he makes clear that the latter shaped his attitude to any form of supernaturalism, to the effect that he rejected conventional religion but was never tempted by atheism. One of Doyle’s ghost stories bears a slightly stronger Spiritualist imprint than its fellows. Written with what Michael Dirda aptly refers to as Doyle’s “crisp narrative economy”, “How It Happened” is a sharply focused little tale with a spectral twist in its final line.
