There may be something to this psychic stuff, or that's what British officials thought when Helen Duncan revealed the sinking of HMS Barham, a 29,000 ton battleship early in WWII with a loss of 861 lives.
Already reeling from the Blitz, the British government decided to keep the news quiet, even forging Christmas cards from the dead to their families.
So, when D-Day approached, officials ordered her arrest because they were afraid she might reveal top-secret plans.
They charged her under the 1735 Witchcraft Act!
It was alleged she had pretended "to exercise or use human conjuration that through the agency of Helen Duncan spirits of deceased dead persons should appear to be present".
She was convicted and sentenced to nine months in London's Holloway Prison. As she was led away,
the housewife cried out in her broad Scottish accent: "I never heard so many lies in all my life!
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News of the case infuriated PM Winston Churchill. In a note to his Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, he wrote: "Give me a report. What was the cost of a trial in which the Recorder was kept busy with all this obsolete tomfoolery, to the detriment of the necessary work in the courts?"
Today, there are efforts underway to clear her name.
Posted by Jill Fallon at December 7, 2006 9:53 PM | TrackBack | Permalink