“The Adventures of John Bell—Ghost-Exposer” was written by “L. T. Meade,” the pseudonym of Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith (1844-1914) and “Robert Eustace,” the pseudonym of Eustace Robert Barton (1854-1943), and first appeared in Cassell’s Family Magazine (June 1897-Dec. 1898). Smith is forgotten today, but in her time she was an important writers of detective fiction and one of the earliest and most prolific authors of girls’ school stories. Barton was a British doctor and mystery writer.

John Bell is notable as an early occult detective. However, unlike other late nineteenth century occult detectives Bell never encounters a legitimately supernatural case. They are all hoaxes created by evil-minded men to appear to be supernatural, so that the weak-minded and suspicious will ascribe the crime to the supernatural and not investigate too closely. This is the case until Bell is summoned. Each time he investigates he uncovers the guilty parties and sees that justice is done. Bell does not think of himself as a detective so much as a ghost breaker. In his own words:

It so happened that the circumstances of fate allowed me to follow my own bent in the choice of a profession. From my earliest youth the weird, the mysterious had an irresistible fascination for me. Having private means, I resolved to follow my unique inclinations, and I am now well-known to all my friends as a professional exposer of ghosts, and one who can clear away the mysteries of most haunted houses.¹

Bell does not believe in the supernatural, and is convinced that thefts and murders described as supernatural in origin are caused by men, not spirits or ghosts. Events always prove him right.

Bell is a youngish looking man in his thirties, well-respected by his friends if not by society at large. (He says that his job is expensive and thankless and exposes him to ridicule and danger; society apparently thinks just fine of superstitious people but not so well of those who try to prove superstitions false). He is called in professionally, usually by the upper classes, to investigate cases and to confirm that foul play, not occult interference, has been done. In this respect he is as much a consulting detective as Sherlock Holmes (see: The Sherlock Holmes Mysteries). Bell uses the same tactics as other detectives to investigate his cases: close examination of crime scenes, disguises to fool criminals, questioning witnesses, and the proper application of education and cynicism. His cases vary from a room that kills to family curses to a diamond-stealing ghost to a talking statue of Siva, and in every case a bad man, rather than a bad spirit, is behind the crime. The stories are told in a straightforward way with unadorned narration and are moderately entertaining if not particularly memorable.

Bell's position in the history of the occult detective is minor, yet enduring. The great majority of the occult detectives who followed Bell—and certainly the most prominent occult detectives who followed Bell—believed in the occult and dealt with actual occult crimes and beings, from ghosts to haunted houses to werewolves and vampires. But the character of the occult debunker did not die with the ending of Bell’s adventures; rather, it persisted, whether in the persons of the Stratemeyer Syndicate’s Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, Leonard Starr’s Dr. Thirteen (for DC Comics), or in the protagonists of Joe Ruby and Ken Spears’ television series Scooby-Doo (1969-present).

"The Adventures of John Bell—Ghost-Exposer” is a moderately entertaining collection of debunked-occult mystery stories. It is of more interest historically than as a reading experience.

Print: L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace, A Master of Mysteries; The Adventures of John Bell—Ghost-Exposer. London: Cassell, 1898.

¹ L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace, “Introduction,” in A Master of Mysteries, Project Gutenberg, accessed Jan. 22, 2019, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22278/22278-h/22278-h.htm.