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Denis Percy Stuart Conan Doyle, son of Sherlock Holmes's creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was a dedicated spiritualist like his father. Among other British believers in "the creed of life after death" his collection of "spirit photographs" was famous, and he maintained that he was in constant communication with his father, who died in 1930. Sir Arthur had not once "advised me wrong," he said. "The only time I did not follow his instructions, I was nearly killed." Wrote Doyle in this week's London Sunday Dispatch: "The life and teachings of our Lord showed the existence of a spiritual life and the application of its power to this world. These facts are endorsed and corroborated by the proofs of survival and of spiritual existence after the death of the physical body, which are embodied in the knowledge and teachings of what is known as spiritualism." Once he maintained that "everyone has the capacity to be a seer."

An ardent amateur racing-car driver in his youth, he traveled much, lecturing and big-game hunting--a hobby that brought him to visit his friend, the Maharajah of Mysore. There, Denis Doyle, aged 43, died last week of a heart attack.

On consecrated ground, a strange funeral ceremony took place. Beside the heaped-up wood of a funeral pyre, a Christian read prayers. Then a Hindu lit the dry wood, and the flames leapt up around the body of Denis Doyle, who had died confident that he--and all men --would be happier without a body.

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