Arguably, this story, the subject of this week’s discussion by the Deep Ones group over at LibraryThing, is an early occult detective story. I don’t recall ever seeing it talked about in that context, but I may have missed it, and I don’t read a lot of history about that sub-genre.
Review: “The Haunted and the Haunters: Or the House and the Brain”, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1859.
You know Bulwer-Lytton, or, at least, some of the phrases he coined: “pursuit of the almighty dollar”, “the great unwashed”, and “the Watcher at the Threshold”. He’s also mocked for the line “It was a dark and stormy night”.
Anyway, this is a ghost busting story before that term was invented. It goes on too long. It has too many coincidences, but it has its good points.
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