Author
It is my great pleasure to continue my parallel universe, alternate reality history of the Baker Street Universe.
Today I am going to speak a bit about Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, two characters in that universe, one of whom plays the part of a huge villain, of immense power and cunning.
I speak of HYDE!
As
a child my father would often times let me stay up on the weekends to watch a
horror movie with him. Whether he was being nice, or just having someone else
in the room so he wasn't so scared I don't really know. For me, it was special.
One of the few times I got to really share something I loved with the man who
helped give birth to me.
But
one thing I remember for sure was being terrified sometimes, so much so, that I
would wake up in the middle of the night and every little sound I heard would
make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and shivers of terror shoot up
and down my spine.
One
morning I even got up and found demon footprints on the rug at the base of my
bunkbed. I was the only one who ever heard it, or saw the prints. No one would
believe me.
Well,
Hyde, of Doctor Jekyll and, is one of those creepy characters that left an
indelible mark on my young and impressionable mind. When I saw the movie
version starring Frederick March, I just couldn't understand how such a kind and smart man
could turn into such a monster. Why would he even want to experience that? But
then, I was no adult, and since that time I've seen many an innocent child turn
into monsters over time because of bad choices.
That
movie and the story, The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde by Robert Louis
Stevenson, taught me that people were multi-facted, some driven by their inner
passions so much so that they became out of control and monsters...like Hyde.
Wikipedia
Strange Case of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is
the original title of a novella written by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson that was first published in 1886. The
work is commonly known today as The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
or simply Jekyll & Hyde.[1] It is about a London lawyer named
Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old
friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll,[2][3] and the evil Edward Hyde.
The
work is commonly associated with the rare mental condition often called
"split personality", referred to in psychiatry as dissociative identity disorder, where
within the same body there exists more than one distinct personality.[4] In this case, there are two
personalities within Dr. Jekyll, one apparently good and the other evil. The
novella's impact is such that it has become a part of the language, with the
very phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" coming to mean a person who is vastly
different in moral character from one situation to the next.[4][5]
Wiki
Universe
In
the Baker Street Universe Hyde is not one and the same person, but just
splitting off at times to become the other, rather Hyde is an actual living
being who the memorable Doctor Jekyll famously splits off from himself, thus
letting loose in Victorian London a spirit of evil so powerful and frightening
that it makes Jack the Ripper seem like a child with toys.
Doctor
Jekyll is a very kind man, and actually very inquisitive about the true nature
of a man's spirit. His research has always been for the benefit of humanity, so
when he learned from a powerful India
yogi on his travels in the far east that man and soul were separate from
each other, he was driven to prove that such a chasm did in actuality exist.
What
started out as a powerful and exciting drive to prove the existence of man's
immortal soul turned into a nightmare when his experiments with magic and
chemicals released his alter ego, the angry part of himself, the darker urges
of himself, that part which all of us have to some extent, but which our kinder
natures keep in check. The famed doctor, renown for his charity and acts of
kindness, created a monster which he could not control.
Wikipedia
Stevenson had long
been intrigued by the idea of how personalities can affect a human and how to
incorporate the interplay of good and evil into a story. While still a teenager, he developed a script
for a play about Deacon Brodie, which he later
reworked with the help of W. E. Henley and saw produced for the first time in 1882.[6] In early 1884 he wrote the short
story "Markheim",
which he revised in 1884 for publication in a Christmas annual.
One night in late September or early October 1885, possibly while he was still
revising "Markheim," Stevenson had a dream, and upon wakening had the intuition for two or three scenes that would appear in the story.
Biographer Graham Balfour quoted Stevenson's wife Fanny Stevenson:
In the small hours
of one morning,[...]I was awakened by cries of horror from Louis. Thinking he
had a nightmare, I awakened him. He said angrily: "Why did you wake me? I
was dreaming a fine bogey tale." I had awakened him at the first
transformation scene.
Author
Author
It's interesting to
note that Mister Stevenson used a method common to many writers, which is to
incorporate dream material into a story. When I studied meditation and later
learned to teach it, I learned that we are all capable of accessing a richer
part of ourselves through the technique of meditation that most people only
reach through sleep, or possibly hypnosis.
So the good author
was using his nightmare as a rich source material to complete his written work.
Not all of us have to have nightmares to come up with a great idea, or to
embellish it, but it is a method some use.
Some call this the
Janus syndrome, a kind person at one moment and evil the next. Others ascribe
to this phenomena the traits of a Gemini of astrology, a split personality
 |
| Janus, the two faced. |
Wiki Universe
Doctor Jekyll, upon
releasing the dark side of himself, found he was incapable of controlling the
evil spirit he had launched into existence. The creature was incapable of any
act of kindness and lived to destroy and torture. It immediately attacked the
good doctor and he was only able to escape a fate worse than death by throwing
himself through a plate glass window into the freezing Thames on the other
side.
It is truly a
miracle that he has survived to this day, despite his poor choices of the past,
as Hyde has never lost its urge to reunite with its creator, though such an act
would kill the doctor in a moment.
Doctor Jekyll sought
the help of his good friend Sherlock to deal with the monster and together they
managed to set it back, despite its superior strength, through cunning and
deception.
But Hyde is not an
ordinary creature, it is made of pure energy, and can take on any form, hence
its driving desire to unite with anyone, if not the good doctor. But when it
does so, it takes all the life force from that body to survive, even if the
body remains alive, but no longer human as it was before. The soul inhabiting
the body is stricken unto death.
The Hyde creature
has become so desperate in its search to become whole again that it strikes
down numerous innocent Victorian London citizens, which leads Sherlock and his
Baker Street friends on an adventure, which I have named Hyde.
Purchase
Hyde at Amazon for 99cents now and discover the thrill of pursuing a
creature so horrible that only the great Sherlock Holmes and his companions can
begin to cope with its devious nature and its supernatural powers.
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