The supernatural in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Terror of Blue John Gap

The paper is focused on the supernatural in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s
story The Terror of Blue John Gap (1910). Eventually, the paper engages
with a complex semantic structure of Doyle’s narrative and makes an
attempt at the demystification of the mysterious and the naturaliza-
tion of the supernatural. Through the portrayal of the bear-like and
elephant-sized animal, which is believed to inhabit the depths of a
cave, the paper explores the impact of the mystifying, supernatural
force ravaging the English countryside and tantalizing the locals. Ter-
ror-inspiring and unsettling, the subterraneous creature perseveres in
being a living threat; consequently, the entrance to the Blue John cave,
which it supposedly inhabits, is closed off for good. Therefore, by the
story’s end, the supernatural in Doyle’s story defies being demystified,
demythologized or naturalized since the locals’ preferred alternative is
to have the place of brooding terror and the seat of mythos permanent-
ly sealed off. Eventually, despite Dr. Hardcastle’s scientifically-aligned
version of the existence of the creature from the Blue John cave, the
unexplained from the beginning of the story largely remains within the
semantic boundaries of the non-transparent or the opaque.

The Terror of Blue John Gap aligns Doyle with the other Victorian and
Edwardian novelists/short-story writers who were preoccupied with
the supernatural, especially those who combined the natural and the
supernatural. The narrative of the story, which is a synchronized ver-
sion of Dr. James Hardcastle’s diary entries, is in fact a very personal
account of a scientist who falls for the superstitious and the supernatur-
al. Throughout the story, the writer explores this relationship between
the natural, rationally explained and knowable on the one hand and the
mysterious, the mythical and the supernatural on the other. Arguably,
Doyle, as the late-Victorian and early-Edwardian writer, progressively
explicates the losing grip of the scientific explanation as an ultimate sig-
nified and points to the supernatural as a complex signifier. Thus what
the Blue John cave is hiding is irreducible to an undoubted, unques-
tionable interpretation of Dr. Hardcastle’s scientific mind. In fact, the
scientist himself re-emphasizes his own interpretative insecurity and
doubtfulness in his last diary entry: “I leave these facts behind me, and
if you can explain them, do so; or if you choose to doubt them, do so.
Neither your belief nor your incredulity can alter them, nor affect one
whose task is nearly over” (Doyle 2009: 40). In addition, the scientist’s
account is further disrupted and unsettled since he is suffering from tu-
berculosis and is prone to hallucinations: the existence of the subterran-
eous creature could, therefore, only be a supernatural manifestation of
the hallucinating mind.
At the beginning of the story, Dr. Hardcastle arrives at a remote
upland area of Derbyshire, England, with a view to recuperating from
tuberculosis. There he stays at the suspicion-minded farming family of
Allertons. Interestingly, the opening scene is both suggestive and sym-
bolic of the contrast self-contained in their names: the scientifically
minded, firmly rationalistic James Hardcastle is sharply contrasted
with the legend-prone, suspicious Allertons whose task is to literally
‘alert’ him to the mysterious, terror-inspiring, otherworldly creature
of Blue John Gap. Metaphorically, the seat of logos, personified in the
figure of Dr. Hardcastle, is gradually challenged and disturbed by the
seat of mythos, embodied in the unearthly, subterraneous creature
residing in Blue John Gap in the Derbyshire uplands. What is progres-
sively being tested is the sustainability of the compactness of human
mind and its rational capacities if a man is displaced onto the marginal
or peripheral, both physically and psychologically.
The first scene, which depicts Mr Hardcastle’s impression of the
countryside, is very detailed, even scientifically precise:
“It is a most lonely spot, and the walks are picturesque in the ex-
treme. The farm consists of grazing land lying at the bottom of an ir-
regular valley. On each side are the fantastic limestone hills, formed
of rock so soft that you can break it away with your hands. All this
country is hollow [...] A great sea there must surely be, for on all sides
the streams run into the mountain itself, never to reappear. There are
gaps everywhere amid the rocks, and when you pass through them you
find yourself in great caverns, which wind down into the bowels of the
earth” (Doyle 2009: 22).

Despite the geographical isolation, the hollowness of the countryside
and the rock-strewn mountain with gaps winding deep down and
under, Mr. Hardcastle is fascinated to be in these “weird solitudes”
(Doyle 2009: 22). Among other things, his attention is unremittingly
focused on Blue John Gap – an unusual-looking gap or passage inter-
secting several caves. Being in poor health, however, he is unable to
descend into the hidden depths of the mysterious-looking passage;
still, he gives himself a promise to explore it once he has recovered.
As a man of unusual curiosity, he is determined to find out how deep
into the hills the Romans went while digging underneath the Derby-
shire hills.
Soon, he learns about the legend which lives on among the locals
and which is inseparable from the countryside itself: it is the legend
about a mysterious, terror-inspiring creature lurking in the Blue John
Gap and plaguing the countryside, the locals and their sheep. On the
one hand, Mr Hardcastle, in the fashion of a true scientist, is unwilling
to accept the locals’ accounts of the existence of the nameless Creature
and smiles away at the plausibility of their superstition-ridden stor-
ies. On the other, his mind becomes seriously unsettled by a sudden,
indescribable, indistinct sound coming from the bellows of the Blue
John Gap and making his experience both mystifying and queer. Ex-
pectedly, he ascribes the queer noise to his hallucinating mind and is
strong-willed to rationally explain away the queer, the strange or the
otherworldly. In fact, what the scientist is attempting to do is to de-
mythologize the space and provide a scientific and objective explana-
tion for the purportedly supernatural – even alarmingly supernatural.
To that end, he repeatedly goes to the place of the brooding terror,
hoping to thoroughly investigate and ultimately demystify the legend.
However, the process of demystification of the mystifying and the nat-
uralization of the seemingly supernatural is an unsettling experience
in itself. On one occasion, he is literally shocked to find some blood-
smeared tufts of wool at the mouth of the Blue John Gap: “my reason
tells me that if sheep wander into such rocky places they are likely to
injure themselves, and yet somehow that splash of crimson gave me
a sudden shock, and for a moment I found myself shrinking back in
horror from the old Roman arch. A fetid breath seemed to ooze from
the black depths into which I peered” (Doyle 2009: 25). And once again
he refuses to acknowledge any unnaturalness down below. He would
rather ascribe it all to his ill health and to his still recuperating, hal-
lucination-prone mind: “one grows more nervous and fanciful when
one’s health is shaken” (Doyle 2009: 26).
Finally, Mr Hardcastle descends into the locus of the terror and the
residence of the much-feared creature – the Creature of the Blue John
Gap. Importantly, he must go down into the depths of the gap in order
to investigate the validity of the locals’ accounts of the existence of
the mysterious, unearthly and gigantic monster. Put differently, he is
eager to demystify the supernatural side of their story and to satiate the
thirst of a scientist’s mind for the rational, the reasonable, the explic-
able, the fathomable and the logical. Set out on a know-it-all quest, he
walks through the dark, shadowy corridors of the cavern whose floor
is mostly bestrewn with rocky pieces of boulders and overlaid with
lime incrustations. Suddenly, he is bewildered to see a strange-looking
impression in “a patch of soft mud” (Doyle 2009: 27). In fact, what he
comes across is “a huge mark – an ill-defined blotch, deep, broad and
irregular, as if a great boulder had fallen upon it” (Doyle 2009: 27).
Using his logic, he deduces that the shapeless mark cannot be the result
of either a boulder (there is not any loose one around) or an imprint of
the foot of an animal (the size of the mark far overreaches the foot size
even of an elephant). His bodily sensations, the trembling of the hand
and the sinking of his heart, immediately evince the scientist’s loss of
self-assumed superiority of reason in the subterraneous world, which
is dark, shadowy, labyrinthine and unexplored. Metaphorically, it is at
the heart of darkness that the prowess of reason is challenged.
In a veiled way, though, the scene is suggestive of the way abso-
lute rational certainty is questioned and subverted. Being previous-
ly geographically isolated to this far-off spot in England, Mr Hardcastle
is now physically and psychologically isolated, too. In the ambience