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The Great Hiatus is the period from May 1891 to April 1894 (according to William Stuart Baring-Gould chronology) when everyone, even Watson, thought Holmes dead.

In The Adventure of the Final Problem, Sherlock Holmes fought to death with Professor Moriarty at the top of the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. They both fell in the falls. Holmes and Moriarty was dead. But Holmes will come back several years later in The Adventure of the Empty House, where he givens some minor information of what he's been doing during the period between The Final Problem and The Empty House.

This blank slate within the canon has been referred to by Sherlockians as The Great Hiatus. This has led to several studies and stories regarding the missing years telling of how Holmes globetrotted around the world – Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the United States. During this period known as The Great Hiatus, in some of those stories Holmes may have been in disguise.

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