The Parasite

Originally published in Harper's Weekly in 1894 and illustrated by Howard Pyle (1853-1911), this is Conan Doyle's novella of psychic vampirism. In his preface to The Crowborough Edition (1930), Arthur Conan Doyle wrote that "the small book, The Parasite, has also a psychic, or at any rate a psychological, interest." Published only a year after he joined the Society for Psychical Research, it deals with mesmerism and obsession.