Overview

This is the fascinating story of the World War II witchcraft trial, and Helen Duncan, the unassuming grandmother who conducted seances and had a knack for revealing military secrets. On March 23rd 1944, as the Allied Forces prepared for D-Day, Britain's most famous psychic, Helen Duncan - ""Nell"" to her six children and three grandchildren - stood in the dock of Britain's highest criminal court. The clerk called out the charge: ""You conspired to exercise a kind of conjuration: contrary to the Witchcraft Act of 1735."" So began the second longest criminal trial held in England during World War II, a trial so bizarre that Winston Churchill grumbled ""Why all this tomfoolery?"" Apparently the Prime Minister wasn't privy to the Military Intelligence Agenda fuelling the prosecution: Duncan's seances were accurately revealing top secret British ship movements. If Hitler found out, Britain could fall. Intelligence authorities wanted her silenced. Using previously undisclosed documents from Britain's last witch trial, author Nina Shandler takes us inside a world where spirit visitors delivered wartime secrets and the success of the Allied invasion of Normandy depended on keeping one psychic - a plump grandmother from Scotland - quiet. Sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, ""The Strange Case of Hellish Nell"" is a true crime tale laced with psychic phenomena and wartime intrigue.

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9780306815751

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Reviews

A Scottish psychic is charged under Britain's Witchcraft Act of 1735 as the Allies prepare to launch the D-day invasion.Psychologist and family therapist Shandler (Ophelia's Mom, not reviewed) recounts this unlikeliest of tales in brittle, colorless prose that diffuses much of its drama. Nell Duncan, an overweight mother of six whose two sons were off fighting Hitler while she was on trial, never really comes into focus as anything more than a pathetic oddity. Nor is the book's readability helped by the author's habit of skipping abruptly back and forth from Duncan's days as a young tomboy romping through Edinburgh to her adult years as a controversial medium continually hounded by skeptical psychiatrists and authorities. Duncan's psychic powers surfaced early but didn't provide escape from a generally sad life. She was thrown out by her mother after bearing a child out of wedlock and lost an infant daughter. Saddled with a feckless husband and growing family, she resorted to performing in public. Seances and spiritualism were wildly popular in war-torn Britain as grieving relatives tried to contact the soldiers dying daily on the battlefield. Duncan had a history of revealing secret ship movements while in a trance, so when she began giving seances in the harbor town of Portsmouth on Jan. 14, 1944, local authorities feared she would divulge the pending D-day invasion, slated to be launched from a nearby port. Much of the story revolves around her nine-day trial. Duncan's attorney called no fewer than 39 defense witnesses, each of whom testified that she produced the talking ghosts of their departed loved ones through a spirit guide named Albert. Shandler never addresses the credibility of these accounts (didn't anyone ever think to bring a camera?), and we can't help but feel that the whole truth eludes us.The author never delivers the promised entertainment wallop. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Nina Shandler is a licensed psychologist and family therapist specializing in the concerns of women, and is the author of Estrogen: The Natural Way and Ophelia's Moml.

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