The Strange Case of Hellish Nell: The True Story of Helen Duncan and the Witch Trial of World War II - Hardcover

"Shandler has done well to remind us of this bizarre, forgotten case." The Times --The Times

"(t)his is true-life crime at its most gripping - espionage, séances, intrigue and witchcraft, this book has the lot... Nina Shandler uses diaries, interviews and declassified documents to tell Nell s story with aplomb." --Sunday Express

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.