Helen Duncan was led into the laboratory with her husband by her side. She had been paid fifty pounds to take part in a series of test séances, all arranged by the psychic researcher Harry Price, who was determined to expose her as a fraud. At the end of the fourth sitting, Price called for the X-ray apparatus. The moment the medium saw it, she went into a trance, and when she recovered, she refused to be examined.
Her husband tried to persuade her that the procedure was painless. She responded by striking him across the face, sending him reeling. Then she lunged at Dr. William Brown, who was present, though he managed to dodge the blow.
Without warning, Duncan dashed out into the street, tore at her garments, and clutched the railings, screaming at the top of her voice. A crowd gathered, and the police arrived. It took the medical men on the scene to explain the situation and prevent an ambulance from being called. Once back inside, Duncan suddenly demanded to be X-rayed.
Dr. Brown turned to her husband and asked him to empty his pockets. He refused, and no search was permitted. Price had no doubt that the woman had passed a piece of cheesecloth to her husband out in the street.
The séances continued. In one sitting, the control spirit announced that the men could cut off a piece of teleplasm when it appeared. When the material manifested, several men lunged forward with scissors. One of the doctors secured a piece, but the medium screamed and the rest of the substance retreated down her throat.
It was not cheesecloth this time. It proved to be paper soaked in white of egg, folded into a flattened tube. Price later published photographs showing fake ectoplasm made from cheesecloth, rubber gloves, and faces cut from magazine covers. Duncan’s former maid confessed to helping her with her tricks, and her own husband admitted that the materializations were the result of regurgitation.
Helen Duncan was born on the 25th of November 1897 in Callander, Scotland, the daughter of Archibald McFarland, a cabinet maker, and his wife Isabella Rattray. Even as a schoolgirl she showed signs of a strong spiritual side, reportedly behaving hysterically and frightening other students with her prophecies, much to the displeasure of her devoutly Presbyterian mother. She left school around the age of twelve and found work at the Dundee Royal Infirmary. In 1916, at the age of twenty, she married Henry Duncan, a cabinet maker who had served and been wounded in the First World War.
Henry proved supportive of her paranormal gifts. Helen became pregnant twelve times, but due to miscarriages and infant deaths, only six of her children survived. To support the large family, she took part-time work in a local bleach factory while managing domestic duties at home. She also began offering séances for extra money.
By the 1930s and 1940s she was traveling around Britain as a physical medium, with hundreds attending her sittings. She would enter a trance, and ectoplasm would emerge from her mouth, taking the form of the recently deceased. The dead were said to touch and communicate with their grieving relatives, offering great comfort in the aftermath of two world wars. One famous account came from a man named Vincent Woodcock, whose wife had died a few weeks earlier.
During a séance, a spirit emerged from Duncan’s mouth and took the form of his deceased wife. The spirit asked both Woodcock and his sister-in-law to stand. Then she removed her wedding ring, took her sister’s hand, placed the ring on her finger, and said it was her wish that they marry for the sake of her little girl. Woodcock later married his sister-in-law, and a year afterward they returned for another sitting.
The dead wife appeared again, blessing their marriage. Not everyone was convinced. In 1928, a photographer named Harvey Metcalfe attended Duncan’s séances and took photographs with a flash. The images revealed that the spirits were fakes; one was a doll made from a painted paper-mâché mask with an old sheet.
Three years later the London Spiritualist Alliance examined her methods. Critics believed she regurgitated a cotton cloth to create the effect of ectoplasm, though investigations produced differing results. Some even suggested she hid cloth in her nose, as she was known to have nosebleeds during her sittings. On one occasion she was persuaded to swallow a tablet of methylene blue before a séance, so any regurgitated object would be stained blue.
Accounts varied: one maintained that no ectoplasm appeared, another that she still produced clean white ectoplasm. Despite the allegations, Duncan’s career continued. In 1933, during a séance, the lights were turned on and revealed that the “spirit” was made from a stockinette under-vest. Her audience, believing themselves deceived, called the police.
Duncan was prosecuted and convicted of fraudulent mediumship at the Edinburgh Sheriff Court, with a fine of ten pounds. Still, she carried on. When the Second World War broke out, demand for her services grew sharply, with anxious relatives desperate to learn the fate of their loved ones. In late November 1941, a few days after the sinking of HMS Barham, Duncan claimed that the spirit of a dead sailor had materialized and told her what had occurred.
The sinking had been censored by the navy to keep British morale high, and only close relatives of the dead were informed, on the strict understanding that they tell no one. The navy could not see how Duncan could have known, and so took a serious interest in her activities. In January 1944 Duncan held a séance in a private house in Portsmouth. Two naval lieutenants attended and were offended by what they saw.
One of them, Lieutenant Worth, recalled a white cloth figure appearing behind the curtains claiming to be his deceased aunt, though his aunt was alive and well. A later figure claimed to be his sister, who was also alive. Disgusted, Worth reported Duncan and her accomplices to the police. On the 19th of January, undercover policemen raided her place of work.
Worth was present and tried to grab the ectoplasm, which he believed was a white sheet, but it dematerialized too quickly. No white sheets were found. Duncan was arrested and taken before Portsmouth magistrates, charged with vagrancy, a minor crime carrying a maximum fine of five shillings. Authorities, however, seemed intent on a more serious penalty and refused her bail.
She was moved to Holloway prison in London, a notorious institution known for holding murderers and traitors. The time in jail allowed authorities to settle on a charge. They first considered conspiracy, which could carry the death sentence. The case was eventually referred to the Old Bailey, and the charge was amended to witchcraft under an ancient act from 1735.
She was accused of pretending to exercise conjuration through which spirits of the dead should appear to be present. Some believed the establishment was paranoid that Duncan might reveal classified information, possibly concerning D-Day. The trial of Helen Duncan for fraudulent witchcraft drew widespread attention. The prosecution had little physical evidence, so witnesses were called one by one.
Some claimed she was a fraud; others insisted she was genuine. Duncan attempted to demonstrate her abilities before the jury, but the judge refused to allow it. After thirty minutes of deliberation, the jury found her guilty of contravening the 1735 Witchcraft Act, and she was acquitted on all other charges. She was sentenced to nine months imprisonment.
Upon hearing the sentence, she cried out that she had done nothing and asked whether there was a God. Helen Duncan was one of the last people convicted under the Witchcraft Act, and the case earned her the label of Britain’s last witch. Prime Minister Winston Churchill criticized the proceedings, calling the charge obsolete tomfoolery in a memo to Home Secretary Herbert Morrison. Duncan’s appeal to the House of Lords was denied, and she was returned to Holloway, where her wardens reportedly left her cell door open.
In 1951 the Witchcraft Act was repealed and replaced by the Fraudulent Mediums Act, a change to which Duncan’s trial contributed. After completing her sentence, Duncan promised to stop conducting séances. Eleven years later, in 1956, another raid took place while she was in the middle of a sitting, and she was again arrested. Helen Duncan died on the 6th of December 1956, aged 59, in her home in Edinburgh, from ill health linked to obesity and heart problems.
Certain spiritualists, however, claimed her death was a direct result of the police raid in November 1956. Duncan was said to be in a trance at the moment of the raid, a state in which touching the medium could cause the ectoplasm to return to the body too quickly and cause serious injury. She was reportedly left with two second-degree burns on her stomach and died just five weeks later.