In which story does Sherlock Holmes appear to die?

Sherlock Holmes appears to die in “The Final Problem,” Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1893 short story. At the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, Holmes confronts his great enemy, Professor Moriarty, and Dr. Watson finds evidence suggesting that both men have plunged to their deaths.

Doyle originally intended the story to end Holmes’s career. Holmes explains that Moriarty’s criminal organisation is so dangerous that stopping it should be his final achievement. Watson returns to the falls and discovers Holmes’s farewell note, while no body can be recovered. The story therefore presents Holmes’s death through circumstantial evidence rather than a witnessed corpse.

The ending caused intense public reaction, and Doyle eventually brought Holmes back in “The Adventure of the Empty House,” published in 1903. Holmes reveals that he survived the struggle and that Moriarty was the one who fell. “The Dying Detective” is a separate story in which Holmes only pretends to be gravely ill, while The Empty House concerns his return.