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Criminal

Secrets and Séances

Criminal

Vox Media Podcast Network

True Crime, Society & Culture

4.739.4K Ratings

🗓️ 17 November 2017

⏱️ 34 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Helen Duncan was a famous medium who travelled around Britain in the 1940s performing séances. She claimed to speak to the dead, and even produce physical manifestations of their spirits. But when Helen Duncan seemed to know wartime secrets about the whereabouts of military ships, like the sunken HMS Barham, she caught the attention of MI5 and notable psychic investigator Harry Price. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Support for this show comes from Krakan.

0:03.0

Krypto is like the financial system, but different.

0:07.0

It doesn't care where you come from, what you look like, your credit score,

0:11.0

or your outrageous food delivery habits.

0:13.7

crypto is finance for everyone everywhere all the time.

0:18.4

Krakhan, see what crypto can be.

0:21.3

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest.

0:25.0

This is a high risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong. At Barclays, we're here for the land of football.

0:35.0

We're here for the Premier League.

0:38.0

And the Barclays Women's Super League.

0:41.0

We're here for the football chance for giving more girls a chance. We're

0:48.1

here for the grassroots and all the muddy booths. From schools to stadiums, we're here for it all.

0:55.0

Barclays, here for the land of football.

1:00.0

Everybody would be seated, the lights would go down, usually just a one red bulb would be glowing,

1:08.0

and then they put on a gramophone record.

1:11.0

Helen Dunka would then would come in in a black gown and then people would just wait.

1:15.0

And that's how the seance began.

1:21.0

This is Malcolm Gaskill. He's talking about a woman

1:26.2

named Helen Duncan and her seances. He's a professor of early modern history at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.

1:35.0

Helen Duncan travelled around England in the 1930s and 40s, going from big cities to seaside towns and people flocked to see her.

1:46.1

She would begin each seance by going into a trance and then she would summon the dead.

1:51.9

People said they could actually see their dead relatives in the room.

...

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