Nightmare At 40,000 Feet.

Nightmare At 40,000 Feet.

It was one of the first stories by Arthur Conan Doyle that I read. That was nearly 50 years ago. Yet I still remember how it impressed me. The vivid imagery conjured up in the Horror of the Heights has all the elements of a nightmare.

First published in 1913 in The Strand Magazine, the Horror of the Heights has since appeared in many anthologies. These began with Danger! and Other Stories (1918), and Tales of Terror and Mystery (1922).

The first part of the story is recounted by an unnamed narrator. He tells of the discovery of a blood-stained notebook which was found near, “…the village of Withyham, upon the Kent and Sussex border.“

Known as the Joyce-Armstrong Fragment, it is part of a journal written by a Mr Joyce-Armstrong. A wealthy man, he has four private aeroplanes in a hanger near Devizes in Wiltshire.

We learn from the Joyce-Armstrong Fragment that several airmen have met with mysterious deaths. Among these is a Lieutenant Myrtle: “Myrtle, who was attempting the height record, fell from an altitude of something over thirty thousand feet. Horrible to narrate, his head was entirely obliterated though his body and limbs preserved their configuration.“

Joyce-Armstrong believes that, “There are jungles of the upper air, and there are worse things than tigers which inhabit them.“ Joyce-Armstrong then gives details of where they are to be found, including one above his house in Wiltshire.

Setting off in his monoplane, Joyce-Armstrong is determined to make a high altitude flight. Among his equipment is an oxygen bag and a shot-gun. 

After flying over Salisbury Plain, Joyce-Armstrong then encounters a massive creature: “It pulsated with a delicate and regular rhythm. From it there depended two long, drooping, green tentacles, which swayed slowly backwards and forwards.“

Joyce-Armstrong then comes across ‘the serpents of the air.‘ These are described as, “…long, thin, fantastic coils of vapour-like material which turned and twisted with great speed.“ 

The intrepid pilot then faces the ultimate horror, as a huge creature attacks his plane. It throws out, “…a long, glutinous streamer in front of it, which in turn seemed to draw forward the rest of the writhing body.“

Towards the end of the Joyce-Armstrong Fragment we are left in no doubt as to his fate: “Forty-three thousand feet. I shall never see earth again. They are beneath me, three of them. God help me; it is a dreadful death to die !“

Arthur Conan Doyle anticipated the progression of air flight when he wrote the Horror of the Heights. The first powered aeroplane flight had taken place only ten years before the story was written. However, Conan Doyle sets his tale a few years in the future. Thus he has Joyce-Armstrong reaching a height of more than 40,000 feet in his monoplane.

That particular achievement did not come about until 1930. It was then that US Navy Lieutenant Apollo Soucek set a new high altitude record of 43,166 feet.

The Horror of the Heights is, I believe, one of the best stories of that genre. It remains as a lasting tribute to the imaginative powers of Arthur Conan Doyle.

                                                                                      END.