While doing some research for an article
about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s life in Southsea, I discovered that he had written
a short novel about occult forces called The Parasite:
“…his dark
tale of an evil woman possessed of such hypnotic powers that she is able
to induce by remote control not only murder, but passionate love as well, in
the mind of her chosen victim.”
From A Study in Southsea: The
Unrevealed Life of Doctor Arthur Conan Doyle by Geoffrey Stavert.
Stavert’s summary
made the story sound very interesting indeed: I immediately thought of psychic
crime and psychological black magic.
I found The
Parasite on Project Gutenberg. The novella, which was first published in 1894,
is only four chapters long; the plot is simple and there are only a handful of
characters. The language is rather old-fashioned and melodramatic and the story
a bit contrived, but I found The Parasite worth reading as a source of
inspiration for an article or two. It contains some very familiar elements and provides
yet more independent confirmation of some of my ideas.
The
characters in summary
The two main
characters are Miss Helen Penclosa, the evil woman, and Austin Gilroy, the chosen
victim.
Miss Penclosa, who possesses strong hypnotic powers and can project herself into people’s bodies and take command of them, is middle-aged. She is small and frail; she has a pale, peaky face and light brown hair; she has a crippled leg. Her strange, grey-green eyes are both furtive and fierce.
She is silent and colourless,
retiring and lacking presence, except when she talks about and exercises her
powers. She is unscrupulous; she has no ethical sense at all; she is evil. Conan Doyle calls her a parasite and a devil
woman; I would call her an energy vampire and a witch.
Austin Gilroy
is a professor, although he is only 34 years old. Physiology is his field. He
is interested only in the material world, and has trained himself to deal only
with facts, truth, logic and proof. Yet while he operates on pure reason, he is
aware of his real self:
“…by nature I
am, unless I deceive myself, a highly psychic man. I was a nervous, sensitive
boy, a dreamer, a somnambulist, full of impressions and intuitions. My black
hair, my dark eyes, my thin, olive face, my tapering fingers, are all
characteristic of my real temperament…”
