A Tessaract is to a cube as a cube is to a square A later addition by Algernon Blackwood to the series of Dr Silence stories was ‘A Victim of Higher Space’, about a man who became overinvolved in the study of tessaracts and began to lose his own visible dimensions. I am more interested in Dr Silence’s own space, his ‘green study’ – the reception room in which he saw potential patients with psycho-spiritual problems.  He advises his ‘man’, Barker, to speak as little as possible when showing people in, but to think ‘kind, helpful and sympathetic thoughts’. The room itself was:  ‘entire ..read more

The Camberwell Wolf by Leigh Dyer 2009 Another of Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence stories, ‘In the Camp of the Dog’ (1908), is set in an uninhabited island off the coast of Sweden. A group of Dr Silence’s friends are camping there – the Reverend Timothy Maloney; his wife; their pretty daughter Joan; an earnest Canadian student, Peter Sangree, and the narrator, Hubbard. At first all is idyllic, but strange events start to happen at night – it seems from the noise and paw prints as if a large dog is sniffling around Joan’s tent, and once  it tries to attack her. They can find no trace of ..read more

From Wellcome Collection Imagine, many years after leaving, you have decided to visit your far-away old school. You approach it by night (of course) and muse on the frustrations and delights that come to mind connected with the place. You ring the ancient bell and are welcomed in. The corridors and classrooms are familiar and even some of the faces of the shadowy staff – yet how can that be? You are invited to stay overnight, but then suddenly your hands are bound, and you find you are to be a sacrifice to – Asmodelius! Fortunately Dr John Silence has followed you, and intervenes, explaining l ..read more

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JURI AS HE ATTAINS A SIGNIFICANT MILESTONE and to all who have had to limit their celebrations in this time of social distancing.           ..read more

Dr Silence and his assistant are called to the aid of an ex-military man who is concerned about strange events in and near his country house, including the deaths of  his older brother and estate manager who were both found with their faces scorched. After this shock  his sister has been unable to walk. When the investigators arrive they are struck by an unusual sensation of heat, and later hear about weird outbreaks of fire emanating from a large woody area, which has a neolithic stone circle in its centre and is avoided by living creatures. Events worsen as the moon becomes full ..read more

Dr Silence has been discussing a story told by a friend, Vezin, who had once stayed by chance at a little town in France where he underwent an extraordinary and unsettling experience… The people of the town seemed to move stealthily like cats, and watch him. Did they have another, secret, night-time life? And why were they afraid of fire? The inn-mistress’s beautifully feline daughter enchanted Vezin and wanted him to stay – and join their ancient Satanic rites. He escaped and returned to London. But Dr Silence says sadly of Vezin that he was:  swept into a vortex of forces arising out of ..read more

Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) is famous for his ghostly tales, and his stories of the ‘psychic doctor’ John Silence (1908) were extremely successful. This was in part due to the insights of his publisher, Nash, who both suggested that the previously various stories should have the same central character and intrigued the public with the poster above. Blackwood later wrote: Dared I, at the age of thirty-seven, throw up the security of a lucrative, yet uncongenial career? After a week’s careful reflection I left dried milk and went off to a mountain village abroad to try my hand at further b ..read more

Dr Jack Petrie is the narrator and side-kick, and thus a Dr Watson equivalent. He seems to have ordinary rather than startling medical skills, and lives in the suburbs, next to a common (probably Clapham). Denis Naylor Smith is the Sherlock Holmes equivalent, but unmemorable and fairly ludicrous by modern standards. He is a ‘tall, lean man, with his square-cut, clean-shaven face sun-baked to the hue of coffee’. He announces: “I have travelled from Burma not in the interests of the British Government merely, but in the interests of the entire white race, and I honestly believe–though I pra ..read more

“Look at that bird!” Thuggees at work Dacoits, Thuggees and Lascars appear frequently as denizens of an opium den in Limehouse, or as instruments of Dr Fu Manchu’s evil will. As they had appeared as stereotypes in fiction previously, people of the day had readier images to attach to these labels than we do. Lascars were sailors from India or elsewhere in the East employed by the East India Company and other British ships, and commonly set up communities in British port towns. By the eve of World War I, there were over 50,000 Lascars in Britain. The Dacoits were members of a class of robbers i ..read more

Karamaneh is a beautiful eastern-looking girl with fair skin, and not Chinese but Bedouin. Dr Fu Manchu’s  opponent, Dr Petrie, says of her: ” I thought that I never had seen a face so seductively lovely nor of so unusual a type. With the skin of a perfect blonde, she had eyes and lashes as black as a Creole’s, which, together with her full red lips, told me that this beautiful stranger, whose touch had so startled me, was not a child of our northern shores.” She says she is Dr Fu Manchu’s ‘slave’ and must do his bidding – on the other hand if only Dr Petrie and his friend (the white men ..read more