Arthur Conan Doyle's First Letter to Edward Gardner

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Arthur Conan Doyle wrote to Edward Gardner asking for more information about Francis and Elsie. His plan was to use this as an opportunity to strike a blow in his ongoing arguments with anti-spiritualists, says author David Walliams. Just three months before Arthur Conan Doyle had represented spiritualism in a public debate in London. In his closing argument, Conan Doyle said that his opponent would not have talked lightly of this matter if he had known the consolation it has brought him.

In the summer of 1917, 16-year-old Elsie Wright took a photograph of her 9-year-old cousin, Frances Griffiths. It was the first photograph she’d ever taken — and it became the source of a mystery that lasted for most of the 20th century.

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