Dublin, Penguin Random House, 2023. ISBN 978-1-802-06199-4. 464 pp

Curiosities abound in Malcolm Gaskill’s fine book, which makes its subtitle somewhat apt. Its subject, Helen Duncan (or ‘Hellish Nell’ as she was known in some quarters) was tried and convicted of witchcraft as recently as 1944, almost mid-way through the twentieth century and just weeks before the beginning of the D-Day landings: a curiously modern conviction given the nature of the purported crime. Further, Duncan, as the book shows throughout, was a curiously ambiguous figure: a materialisation medium (meaning she produced ectoplasm and manifested the deceased in ways they could be seen and touched) who was as convincing to some as she was a fraud and a deceiver to others. And, perhaps more curiously still, fascination with her has continued well into the twenty-first century. Gaskill produced this latest revised and expanded version of his book twenty-two years after its first appearance and it stands as a precursor, at the time of the writing of this review, to a four-part BBC TV documentary series which has sought to examine Duncan through the investigative endeavours of the roving and ever-popular presenter Sian Eleri. Whatever might be said about Hellish Nell, her curious allure clearly intrigues many still.

As Gaskill deftly shows, there is more than one story to be told about Helen Duncan. For example: there is the story of Helen Duncan herself, from her childhood in Callander – ‘a place where Lowlands met Highlands’ – to her early experiences as a medium and onwards through years of increasing fame to her subsequent arrest, trial, conviction, failed appeal, imprisonment and resurrected career. It’s all done in detail and is clearly the result of meticulous research, as is the telling of the wider story which forms the narrative context to Duncan’s life: that of spiritualism itself with its origins, development, leading lights and support from the great and the good; certainly here in the UK, where much of the action takes place.

The book’s centrepiece is the trial, which began on March 23^rd, 1944, and which Gaskill details entertainingly and, in places, with a lightness of touch and not a little humour: a refreshing counterbalance to the dryness of description of some of the historical material he presents elsewhere. Key to Duncan’s conviction was the sinking of HMS Barham on November 25^th, 1941, and her alleged breaking of this news during a séance before it was widely known. Did this really come from a materialised spirit, called back by Duncan from the dead? Or might the knowledge have come from elsewhere; from one of a small number of bereaved persons who by being directly affected did know before anybody else? As Gaskill shows, Duncan spent a lot of time in Portsmouth around this time where it was ‘almost inevitable’ that a friend or relative of one of the Barham deceased would have attended one of her seances. Could this be where she actually got the information from? Or was she in possession of genuinely supernaturally-derived knowledge? Of relevance, perhaps, is the fact that Duncan had already been convicted of fraud and fined £10 on 11^th May 1933 at the Summary Court of the Lothians and Peebles.

And this is arguably the greatest curiosity of all with relation to Helen Duncan: the back and forth of debate surrounding her. Was she a fraud or a genuine seer? A charlatan or a summoner of the dead? An artful trickster or a prover of the reality of other worlds? Throughout, Gaskill strives to walk a tightrope between extremes but it is hard to escape the suspicion that there is enough in this book to offend both sides: sceptics and true believers alike. This being said, it is nonetheless undeniable – as many noted and he makes clear – that Duncan was not above producing the phenomena of ectoplasm and other allegedly supernatural manifestations by very human means on several well-documented occasions. And if on those, then why not on all? Yet not everybody was content to draw even this conclusion, as the author also shows. Some suggested, for example, that she resorted to trickery only when tired and maybe there is indeed some mileage to be had in such an all-embracing position which combines both the genuine and the counterfeit. After all, who hasn’t had an ‘off day’?

Signal and noise, then? The genuine as well as the phony? In a sense, this is what makes ‘Hellish Nell’ such a fascinating read. You pay your money and you take your pick: as many did, when they attended Duncan’s seances and some came away convinced whilst others came away equally sceptical. As Gaskill himself avers in the final chapter, this is, after all, ‘a book about interpretation’: yet another story to add to the others he presents.

By the end of this absorbing study it has become clear that Duncan’s life-story was, in fact, a twisted tangle of tales and Gaskill has done an admirable job of separating them out whilst showing how and where they intertwined. As he late on writes: ‘Her story opens a window on the twentieth century, not merely as a sequence of events but as a cultural drama’; one which ‘provides a commentary on the human condition, on love, truth, power and death.’ This is powerful stuff, reminding us, as it does, of the complexities surrounding questions of truth, meaning, and reality: not least those which we may expect to encounter at the interface of parapsychology, spirituality, and belief.