When do you think the last witchcraft prosecution took place in Great Britain? Amazingly, the answer to this question is less than 70 years a go. Even more astonishing is the fact that the prosecution and conviction had the full weight of the British Government behind it. The story of Helen Duncan, the Blitz Witch remains shrouded in mystery and secrecy. The full story only came to light in the mid-1990s, when the official war time intelligence relating to Miss Duncan was finally declassified and made public.

Helen Duncan was a provincial medium of little repute. She was known for conducting small scale seances, but was not a prominent figure nationally or even regionally. When war with Germany arrived in 1939, Duncan continued to conduct her seances, meeting small groups in pubs and social clubs across the country. It was during one of these meetings in Scotland that something truly extraordinary happened, which rattled the British Secret Services and transformed Miss Duncan from a provincial medium to a national security threat.

It was 1941 and the country was facing some of the darkest days of the Second World War. Helen Duncan had travelled to Scotland to conduct a seance in Edinburgh. Unbeknownst to Duncan, her audience on the night included the Head of Military Intelligence in Scotland, Brigadier Firebrace.

During the seance Duncan announced that the Royal Naval Destroyer, HMS Hood, had been sunk with all souls aboard lost. The Brigadier was astonished by this revelation, given that he had heard nothing of such a sinking. When he contacted the Admiralty Office in London, top British military personal refuted the claim, stating that HMS Hood had not been sunk. Two days later, it emerged that the ship had indeed been lost, hours before the seance took place.

As a result of her encounter with the Brigadier, Duncan became the focus of much attention from British Military Intelligence. She was covertly monitored and investigated. Military personal would attend her seances undercover, monitoring who she claimed to be conversing with. There was justifiable fear that Duncan may have been a spy.

Duncan continued to conduct seances despite the surveillance she was under. On one occasion in Portsmouth, she allegedly made contact with a deceased sailor, who was said to be wearing the uniform of the HMS Barham. The spirit advised that the Barham had been torpedoed and gone down with all hands. The sailor’s spirit, who identified himself as Sid, claimed he had been burned to death in the explosions.

There were two truly astonishing features of this account of the night’s events. The first is that the Barham had indeed been torpedoed and sunk. The second is that only a handful of British military intelligence personnel were aware of this at the time of the seance. The news hadn’t even been passed on to the families of the lost sailors. When the full news of the sinking finally appeared in the Times, three months after the seance, it emerged that the Barham’s crew had indeed included a sailor named Sid – Sidney Fryer – who had lived in the same street that hosted Duncan’s seance.

By 1944, the U.K. was preparing for D-Day. The authorities decided to lock up any potential trouble makers and this included Duncan. The medium was arrested and charged with treason and spying. However, these charges were later dropped and replaced with a prosecution under the 1735 Witchcraft Act. The charge made out against her was that she had falsely claimed to make contact with spirits, which was a criminal offence under the 1735 act.

During the secret investigations that preceded the arrest, Duncan was put under vigorous surveillance. It was recorded during her criminal trail, that she had conducted a seance in the presence of senior British military officers, who attended the paranormal meeting covertly. One of these officers went on to testify that the spirit of his mother had materialised in front of him during the seance, thus transforming a high-ranking sceptic into a believer.

Despite offering to demonstrate her powers in court, Duncan was found guilty of falsely claiming to commune with spirits. She was imprisoned and released after the war had been won. However, the persecution at the hands of the authorities continued until her death in 1956.

*** Read about witchcraft at Princess Diana’s family home ***