Hello!

My name is Matt Wingett. I'm a freelance writer with a passionate interest in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in ghosts, unexplained phenomena and in my home town of Portsmouth.

I've aleady published several books through my publishing imprint Life Is Amazing. I need your help to take my book publishing to the next stage - and tell an extraordinary true life story.

The Story

Some years ago I realised that give or take a hundred and thirty years or so, Sir Arthur and I were near neighbours in Southsea, Portsmouth.

During his years in Southsea, Sir Arthur did two things that affected the rest of his life in a major way:

1) He invented the ultra-rationalist detective, Sherlock Holmes, and 

2) he performed experiments and attended seances which convinced him of the existence of ghosts, messages from beyond the grave, clairvoyance, poltergeists and telepathy.

How could the creator of the ultimate reasoning machine also believe in ghosts?

To find out I went to Portsmouth's Arthur Conan Doyle Archive, a massive collection of Sir Arthur's personal documents and effects, where I discovered Light - a journal of psychical mystical and occult research that he wrote for.

Here I traced his amazing story, read spine-tingling accounts of hauntings and spirit manifestations and met the people he knew and investigated alongside. I read his public announcement of himself as a Spiritualist in 1916, his conversations with his dead son who was killed in World War I, and how the people of Britain responded to the shock of the Great War by turning en masse to Spiritualism.

I realised many of Conan Doyle's fascinating articles and letters had never been collected together and published. I decided I would do that.

I also decided to give a flavour of these extraordinary times by following the arguments and beliefs of the people he knew.

That's the book I'm close to finishing. It covers Conan Doyle's early psychic experiments in 1887 all the way through to his leaving the shores of Britain to become a Spiritualist missionary in 1920.

It's a rich seam, and is the first in a three part series that will follow Conan Doyle's story. Later volumes will include his controversies with close friend Harry Houdini, the Hope psychic photography case and of course, the extraordinary tale of his belief in the Cottingley Fairies among many other stories.

And all the while, he was still writing his Sherlock Holmes stories.

This first book is called Conan Doyle and the Mysterious World of Light, and you can read the introduction here:

Introduction to Conan Doyle and the Mysterious World of Light

Why I need your help...

I've lived and breathed Conan Doyle over the last 6 months, focussing efforts on the book while living on my savings, and I am just a few chapters from completion.

But the truth is now I need your help.

To make the book happen, complete, typeset, proof, edit, and ensure there's a decent print run, I need your advance order.

It's that simple!

Remember: Your order will help make it happen.

What You Get

For £50 You'll get a collector's signed limited numbered hardback edition of Conan Doyle and the World of Light.

This hardback edition will be limited to only 100 copies and will not be reprinted. You'll also receive a newly printed edition of the Conan Doyle / Joseph McCabe debate. The debate gives a fascinating insight into a time when Europe was still in shock from the Great War, and has never been reprinted in its original form. These will be sent to you anywhere in the world.

For £14.99 you'll get the paperback edition of Conan Doyle and the Mysterious World of Light, along with two classic Conan Doyle Spiritualist books, in ebook format: The New Revelation and The Vital Message. You'll also get the Conan Doyle McCabe debate.

You'll also receive: in both cases, a pdf / ebook of some of some the great articles from Light that I couldn't fit in the book, but which have some lovely ghostly vibes.

These include further accounts of seances, hauntings, how an army used water divining to survive, and much more.

There will also be choices of other goodies that will help make this book happen.

What's more, you'll receive my undying gratitude! :-)

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

Publication date: 31st January, 2016