Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, and the Isle of Wight

When I visited Portsmouth and Southsea earlier this year, I thought about extending my explorations to another, nearby, seaside town - Ryde on the Isle of Wight. After walking around Southsea looking at places of interest, I didn’t have enough energy or inclination left, so I decided to leave it for another day. I had hoped to go much sooner, but I have finally made the trip.

Significant dates

Geoffrey Stavert, the author of A Study in Southsea: The Unrevealed Life of Doctor Arthur Conan Doyle, did some detective work and was reasonably confident that Conan Doyle arrived at Clarence Pier in Southsea on Saturday, June 24th 1882.

By coincidence, June 24th 2017 was a Saturday too, and I first intended to visit the island on that day; it seemed fitting that I would leave Clarence Pier on the same day and date that Conan Doyle arrived. However, it was a day when the weather was not very good and I didn’t feel like going anywhere.

I kept postponing this trip in favour of other things, until I realised that autumn was upon us. September 22nd was the day of the Autumn Equinox, so I thought that would be a good day to go.

Journey to Ryde on the Isle of Wight

I returned to Southsea, then travelled by Hovercraft over the Solent to Ryde.

I have made this journey before, but on those occasions Kipling and Doyle were not involved. I lived in Ryde for a short time when I was four years old, and I went back there just for personal reasons. This time, I was aware of some relevant associations.

Unseen influences on the Isle of Wight

The Isle of Wight has a bad reputation. There are allegations of Satanism, black magic and mysterious goings on. Freemasons in business and local government are alleged to have inordinate influence on the island’s affairs. David Icke, who lives in Ryde, is one of the many people who have written about this.

I will never know why my family moved to Ryde – and some other places with interesting and sinister connections. I suspect that someone was following some kind of psychic trail.

Unseen influences: Washington and other places with sinister associations

The idea that some locations are psychically dangerous and unpleasant to visit or live in is very old. For example, scenes of murders, houses where there was a lot of pain and suffering, former prisons, battlefields, plague pits and places where black magic rituals have been performed are all often full of bad energy and evil vibrations. Sensitive people often avoid pubs and butchers’ shops for similar reasons.

There is another side to this: while some people might avoid such places, others might be drawn to them, consciously or unconsciously, as if following a psychic trail. I have personal experience of this.

I remember thinking to myself, “I might have known!” and, “Why am I not surprised?” when I first read that Sussex, where I lived for some years as a child, is a place with strong black magic connections.

When I read in one of David Icke’s books that Ryde on the Isle of Wight also has bad occult connections, I had the same reaction. I stayed there for a short time as a child; a younger sister was actually born there – perhaps this explains her behaviour!

Worthing 
I have always thought of Worthing in Sussex as my home town. I have always seen it as a quiet, rather boring place compared with nearby Brighton. I learned only very recently that it was a stronghold of Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and was known as ‘The Munich of the South’. We lived there for a short time, moved away, returned, moved away and returned once more. 

My father and step-mother were involved with very left-wing organisations and I was force-fed with the ideology that they were obsessed with, yet there was in parallel an undercurrent of and fascination with extreme right-wing views, activities and people too. No wonder they were drawn to Worthing. Now my good memories of the place are poisoned.