Helen Duncan a spiritualist and medium was tried for witchcraft!

The age old practice of witchcraft has seen an explosive resurgence over the last few decades. In the past it provoked wild and insane persecutions that led to ridiculous witch hunts in which thousands died. The criteria for conviction were often based on hearsay and poor evidence, and the penalties were cruel and unwarranted. Most of the madness subsided by the 19th century, having been nearly eradicated in the west by that centuries' end. However, the hysteria surfaced again briefly during the second world war. In the midst of war, madness rules the day and invariably comes home, infecting legal matters. Few wartime cases in the courts of Britain are as bizarre as the 1944 witchcraft trial of Helen Duncan. It happened just before D-Day.

Helen Duncan - a medium that unfortunately got it right.

Helen Duncan was a spiritualist and medium from Scotland who traveled the UK during the war performing seances. Her customers are reputed to have included George VI and Winston Churchill, and she was one of the most widely known mediums of the day. Channeling for the parents of a missing sailor in 1941, she revealed that he had died when his ship HMS Barham had been sunk by the Germans. The ship had indeed sunk with a loss of 861 men, but the admiralty had kept the affair secret to mislead the Germans who weren't aware that the ship had gone down. The cover-up made sense, since the germans would invariably spend resources on trying to track a ship that no longer existed. Plus it prevented an unnecessary blow to British public morale during the infamous blitz.The Germans found out in 1942 and the whole thing became public, but the fact remained that Helen Duncan had known about the sinking, allegedly through channeling the dead sailor, and had revealed information that could have been potentially damaging for the Admiralty's coverup. Nothing came of it at the time, and Helen Duncan continued her seances.

Fast forward to 1944. The D-Day invasion was being prepared amid unprecedented secrecy. The British government was prepared to do anything to keep the invasion plans under wraps as the defeat of the Nazis depended on the success of the operation. In January, Helen Duncan was in Portsmouth performing a seance in the presence of two superstitious naval officers. The officers were alarmed that she might reveal secrets of the impending invasion that could get back to the Germans, so they arrested her. The authorites charged her under the British Witchcraft Act of 1735, along with charges of conspiracy and fraud. Strangely, only the charges of witchcraft stuck and she was convicted and sentenced to nine months in prison.

In fairness, at the time, most people thought the trial was ridiculous. She probably never had any malicious intent with her seances, as her own sons were in the military, and it isn't very likely that the Germans would have paid attention to her claims. Winston Churchill called the whole thing "tomfoolery" and repealed the Witchcraft Act in 1951, a bit too late for Helen Duncan.The case of Helen Duncan is often referred to as the last witchcraft trial in Britain, and indeed the last in the western world. But that's not entirely accurate.

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