Rohmer, who belonged to an occult society known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (and possibly the Rosicrucians as well), also maintained a life-long interest in the occult, which was prompted by personal experiences that he perceived as evidence of psychic phenomena.
In 1903, just twenty years old, Rohmer's attempts to market his fiction resulted in the acceptances of "The Mysterious Mummy" by Pearson's Magazine (which appears not to have published the story) and "The Leopard-Couch" by Chambers's Journal (which included it in the 30 January 1904 issue). Both stories were steeped in mysticism and showed evidence of Rohmer's interest in Egyptology. Over the next several years Rohmer wrote a variety of stories for British magazines under his original byline, A. Sarsfield Ward, while writing newspaper articles anonymously and involving himself in the theater as an agent and a sketch and song-lyric writer. Around 1905, when one of his short stories, "The McVillin," prompted the editor of Pearson's Magazine to offer Rohmer a contract for a series of stories, Rohmer was stricken by a severe case of writer's block and took a voyage to Holland.
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