When I’m trying to think of the plot for a new book, I often look through histories and biographies to find bits that don’t make apparent sense. When I find such things, I try to imagine possible contexts, which the historians missed, in which those bits do make sense – though admittedly my explanations always involve the supernatural.
A number of people who knew Lord Byron saw him on a street in London in1811, while at that precise time Byron was delirious with a fever in Turkey. Biographers simply note the fact, leaving any possible explanation up in the air.
Why was Byron in two places at once?
When Thomas Edison was on his deathbed, Henry Ford went to Edison’s kids and said, “Here’s a test tube and a cork. When your old man breathes his last breath, could you cork it up in this test tube?” And Edison’s kids – though no doubt baffled – did, and the test tube eventually wound up in a museum in Michigan. I’ve seen it.
Okay, what was that all about?
When Cecil B. DeMille finished filming The Ten Commandments in 1923, he dug a big trench, bulldozed his Egyptian sets into it, and leveled the sand over it all. He said it was to prevent later movie makers from using his elaborate old sets. Well – maybe. But I asked myself, Why did he really bury all those sphinxes and hieroglyph-covered walls?
How did Einstein know to leave Pasadena the day before the big 1933 Long Beach earthquake?
Well, I’ve dealt with those in several of my books. But there are always more oddities that call for explanations!
One night in 1638, Galileo sent an assistant to the top of a hill while Galileo sat on top of another hill a mile away. Both carried dark lanterns, and at some pre-arranged point Galileo slid open the shutter of his lantern, and when the assistant saw the light of it, he opened the shutter of his.
Galileo claimed he was trying to measure the speed of light – he said he noted the time when he opened his lantern, and then noted how long it took for his assistant’s answering flash to arrive. Divide the elapsed time by two, and you’ve got the speed of light!
Sure. When asked about the result, Galileo basically said, “I dunno, but it’s lots faster than sound.”
What were he and his assistant really doing on those hilltops in the middle of the night? If Galileo had actually been trying to measure the speed of light, surely he’d have set up a big mirror on that other hill, instead of relying on his assistant to respond: “Oh, there’s Galileo’s light – slide this thing open – ow, it’s hot –”
Sure.
And then there’s Arthur Conan Doyle’s fairies! In 1917 two English girls claimed to have photographed fairies in their garden. Doyle examined the photographs and was convinced they were genuine.
A series of photographs alleged to be the ones Doyle saw were published, and we can all see those by going to “Cottingley fairies” in Google Images. You can see that they’re not convincing at all – the “fairies” are clearly paper cut-outs.
But Arthur Conan Doyle wasn’t stupid. He simply would not have been fooled by these. Nevertheless he published an article on fairies in The Strand in 1920, and it was accompanied by a couple of these faked photographs – was he somehow coerced into claiming that these were indeed the ones he had found so convincing?
What happened to the original photographs of fairies that he saw?
Using this sort of real anomaly as bases for fantasy stories has several advantages.
One, I’m given – pre-assembled! -- a time and setting and some characters, and a puzzle that’s probably more intriguing and suggestive than what I’d have come up with on my own.
Two, I’ve got to come up with a supernatural explanation for what was “really” going on, based on the historically established clues. I didn’t pick them, and I can’t change them. It’s a challenge, and it makes me stretch my imagination past default, off-the-shelf ideas.
And three, my story is going to be locked into real history, which makes my supernatural backstory seem a few inches more convincing. (“Gee, maybe this is what Galileo was up to!”)
Basically, I make up a customized magical system. I’ll talk about magical systems in fantasy stories before long.
Yes, it does work toward that sort of psychological realism you mentioned! And I think you'll like Eleanor Nicholson's work -- she writes as if she were a sibling of the Bronte sisters!
These seemingly contradictory reports BEG for a first-rate novel to explain them, and there's nobody I trust more than you to create a semi-plausible reconciliation. Can't wait to read what you come up with! Because whatever you create will be fine, fine reading as well as first-rate thinking.