WHO WAS HELEN DUNCAN?

Who was Helen Duncan?
Helen Duncan article by our Helper Vi Kipling

Who was the medium Helen Duncan?

HELEN DUNCAN 1897-1956

Helen Duncan who was born in Callander in Scotland in 1897 and was to become one of the most maligned physical mediums of the 20th Century and also one of the most magnificent. All Spiritualists everywhere owe a debt of gratitude to Helen Duncan that can never be repaid.

Helen Duncan was both a mental and physical mediumship which means that not only was she able to communicate and bring through messages using a clairvoyant link with the spirit world, but she was also capable of being entranced and producing materialised forms of the deceased.

The most notable control of Helen Duncan was Albert who was tall and slim while Helen Duncan was small and rounded and when Albert materialised, as with all the consequent materialised forms, it was obvious to see that it was impossible for it ever to have been Helen Duncan dressing up with intent to defraud people, as so many of the physical mediums were so accused.

HELEN DUNCAN ACCUSATIONS

Unfortunately the accusations against Helen Duncan went further resulting in a Court Case held in the Criminal Courts at the Old Bailey in 1944 when she was tried under the ancient Witchcraft Act of 1735. Helen Duncan's crime was that she pretended to be a medium and that mediumship did not exist; the Witchcraft Act attested to this so-called fact. One of the major problems encountered by the Law was the fact that Mrs Duncan was bringing back men killed in World War II before the release of this information had been made, thus seen as infringing security

HELEN DUNCAN TRIAL

The trial was a farce with the strangest allegations being made against Helen Duncan, especially her ability to swallow and then regurgitate butter-muslin which was purported to be the animated spirit forms that moved around the room and who spoke and touched their loved ones. During the trial Helen Duncan submitted to much testing, having her stomach x-rayed to prove it was normal. In spite of the fact that some of the most knowledgeable people within Spiritualism spoke on her behalf, Helen Duncan was found guilty and imprisoned for nine months.

HELEN DUNCAN CAMPAIGN

It was because of this tragedy that Spiritualists everywhere lobbied Parliament and started a Parliamentary Campaign to have the ancient law repealed. This was done in 1951 when The Fraudulent Mediums Act was put on the statute books; this Act repealed The Witchcraft Act 1735 and s.4 of The Vagrancy Act 1824. Unfortunately this was a little too late to help Helen who passed to spirit in 1956 five weeks after the Police raided one of her séances and grabbed her, searching for a shroud.

If the people involved in sitting in judgment on Helen Duncan had been well versed in psychic phenomena, the case against her would have been dismissed and the Police held responsible for her death.