Helen Duncan, the Last Medium Jailed for Witchcraft
In wartime Portsmouth, a medium was said to have revealed the sinking of a secret battleship. Soon after, she was put on trial under a 200-year-old witchcraft law.
What was reported
Helen Duncan was a Scottish medium famous for séances in which 'ectoplasm', a white substance, seemed to flow from her mouth and form the figures of the dead. In 1941, at a séance in Portsmouth, a sailor's spirit was said to have announced that his ship had sunk, before the loss of the battleship HMS Barham had been made public.
In January 1944, months before the D-Day landings, police raided one of her séances in Portsmouth. She was tried under the Witchcraft Act of 1735 and sent to prison for nine months.
Explanations offered
Photographs of her 'ectoplasm' suggested it was cloth, and she had been caught out before. Some historians think the authorities feared she could leak military secrets before D-Day. The trial was widely mocked, even by Winston Churchill, and the Witchcraft Act was replaced in 1951.
- When
- 1944
- Where
- Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, UK
- Witnesses
- Séance sitters, police and a court in London
- Status
- Probably fraud
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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