Don’t be scared, it’s just AWC! Arthur Conan Doyle treated audiences to the first collection of stories featuring Baker Street’s famous detective 122 years ago when “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” was published on October 31, 1892. This wasn’t the first appearance of Holmes, who had been solving criminal’s tricks in novels and periodical short stories since 1887. But it was the first time Holmes had been featured in a collection of short stories, which was arguably the best setting for his brand of brilliant deduction.

Doyle started writing Holmes stories during his ample free time as a doctor with a practically non-existent medical practice in London, before publishing the first Holmes story, “A Study in Scarlet,” in 1887. The character took off, allowing Doyle to leave medicine altogether and focus on writing. He supposedly based Holmes on a university teacher he had encountered in Scotland with extraordinary talents of insight and deduction.

A celebration of Sherlock Holmes isn’t altogether out of place on Halloween. Arguably his most famous story, “The Hound of the Baskervilles” is a suitably creepy affair, as a horrific hellhound haunts the dark moor outside a country estate. But Holmes also reminds us that most of what goes bump in the night is not what it appears, as he sheds light on dark mysteries (including the allegedly diabolical hound). A touch of the terrifying, leavened with the sharp knife of logic: It’s a combination whose appeal seems quite elementary.

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