Ep. 49: Helen Duncan
Kathryn (00:10)
Hello everyone, welcome to I Scream You Scream. We are your weekly scoop of the most chilling histories and mysteries and paranormal perplexities. My name is Kathryn.
Gina (00:21)
I'm Gina.
Kathryn (00:22)
Our topic for the month of October is witches, in honor of spooky season, and we will be enjoying ice cream cake in celebration of our first birthday. We've officially been podcasting for a full ass year, which is very exciting. Love it. As a reminder, if you love bonus content, exclusive merch, and if you want a chance to vote on which topics we cover, join the cool kids. We'll be on Patreon. We just recently launched it and we would love
Gina (00:37)
wild.
Kathryn (00:52)
to have you there. The link is in our show notes wherever you are listening or watching. Until you join us on Patreon, grab a spoon and let's dig in!
Gina (01:01)
Yay!
I do have to point out, I checked the calendar. This is coming out just a few days after your birthday.
Kathryn (01:06)
Yes.
I'm sure it was lovely. I bet I had a great birthday.
Gina (01:10)
Do you have any plans for your birthday this year?
I can't remember.
Kathryn (01:15)
Yes, we will be in Chicago. ⁓ There is a, we have a concert the day after my birthday. So we're going up a day before to just hang out. Because we never do that. And every time we go to a concert in Chicago, we just pop down and we'll literally come back that night. So it's been a long time since
Gina (01:17)
Mmm.
Kathryn (01:39)
I got to spend time in Chicago and like, you know, we'll grab a quick dinner or whatever, but we don't ever really go to the bars or hang out or shop around or anything like we used to. We as in me, you know, like when I lived there, because we usually do it pretty quick and then we'll just come back. So, yeah, I'm excited to like actually have time to hang out down there.
Gina (01:45)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (02:04)
I can't wait to tell you all how it was when we record whenever after it happens. I don't know. I don't know what episode that will be.
Gina (02:06)
It is weird to work, yeah, it's weird to work in a medium where it's so like we do this so far in advance that it's like we're talking to our future selves.
Kathryn (02:18)
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm sure she had a lovely time.
Gina (02:22)
Well, happy birthday, Kathryn, wherever you are listening back to this. ⁓
Kathryn (02:24)
Thank you. Thank you. I bet future me is just really thriving. Future couple weeks ahead me.
Gina (02:33)
My god, and she has so much money. Have you talked to her recently?
Kathryn (02:36)
I will. I will.
Gina (02:37)
She won like five lotteries, it was insane.
Kathryn (02:43)
That'd be so awesome. Phil and I keep planning what we're gonna do when we win the lottery, but we have not yet started playing the lottery. So one of these days, when we start playing, it's all over for all of you.
Gina (02:59)
Mm-hmm.
I'm waiting for the day. That'll be a great day.
I think I've only played the lottery once and it was like on my 18th birthday I did the whole go to a gas station and buy one of those scratch-off things or whatever.
Kathryn (03:10)
Yeah, we do scratch-offs like for Christmas. We'll get at my parents' house. We'll get scratch-offs and our stockings. But they always... Dad, I love you so much, but he always buys the most complicated ones. So we'll be sitting there for like 20 minutes playing this game.
Gina (03:15)
Hmm.
Kathryn (03:30)
on the scratch off and I'm like, man, just get me one, get me like a poll tab. Like I can't, I lose interest halfway through because I'm like, this is too complicated. I don't want to have to use my brain. That's kind of the opposite of the point of playing the lottery. Like I don't want to have to work for this money, you know? On Christmas? Right. On the Lord's Day? Come on. Yeah.
Gina (03:48)
Let alone on Christmas. don't want to have a single thought on Christmas. On Christmas? Come on.
Kathryn (04:01)
But it was requested of me to get into the spirit. I bought some Halloween-shaped cookies. So I have a little ghost here. ⁓ It was requested that I add it to my cake to make it extra spooky. So that's Phil's contribution to the podcast. He wanted you specifically to know that that's how he's contributing to our success.
Gina (04:15)
Aww.
Thank you so much, Phil. You're an invaluable contributor. We really couldn't do this without thank you from the whole I Scream You Scream team.
Kathryn (04:30
So as I am enjoying Phil's contribution to the podcast, my adorable little ghost, do you perhaps have a story you'd like to share?
Gina (04:48)
Oh, I do have a story. I have a fucking saga for you today, my friend.
Kathryn (04:52)
Ooh, I'm excited for this because I don't know about it.
Ooh.
Gina (05:13)
I went on, oh, I'm gonna be really interested to get your thoughts as we go through this because it's definitely layered. Basically, I went on another research journey that took me somewhere I really didn't expect to fucking go.
What I thought I was gonna be talking about today is the story of the last person to be found guilty under the Witchcraft Act of 1735, who is a woman named Helen Duncan. I thought this was going to be an episode about the UK's last true witch trial, a woman wrongfully accused who finds justice and winds up avoiding some ridiculous archaic punishment. as so often happens with me, seemingly,
In the process of researching this, I found out I was completely fucking wrong about everything I I knew about this Those things are not what the story of Helen Duncan is about. And in fact, Helen Duncan was not even the last person to be found guilty under the Witchcraft Act of 1735. A lot of people think she was, but that's actually a misconception, and we'll get more into that later. So when I found that out, I was kinda like, okay...
Kathryn (05:52)
⁓ okay.
Gina (06:07)
Maybe I shouldn't do an episode on Helen Duncan. Is there enough to work with here? And then I kept reading about her and I was like, ⁓ this is fucking banana sandwich. And even though Helen Duncan didn't consider herself a witch, and even though this story comes with a fuck ton of misconceptions and historical inaccuracies, I personally cannot think of a way I would rather kick off witch month than to tell you a story about a woman who had the nerve to use the skills that she had to force her way through a world that just did not want to accept her, and even managed to commit some crimes along the way. Real quick content warning, I will be talking about fatphobia and regurgitation at points during this episode.
Kathryn (06:52)
Sweet. Excellent.
Gina (07:01)
I'm also going to be talking, or I'll mention police officers engaging in some very invasive searches. I don't go into a whole lot of detail with that last one, but it will not lessen how pissed off we'll get talking about it. So, just a warning, Helen fucking Duncan, let's go.
Helen Duncan’s youth
Kathryn (07:21)
Helen fucking Duncan.
Gina (07:22)
Helen fucking Duncan.
Helen dunks, yeah. God, yes. Yes, this is the energy I wanted for this episode. Keep it up, let's keep it going.
So Helen Duncan was born in Callander Scotland on the 25th of November, 1897. So almost a century before I graced this earth with my beautiful self. I did look up the number of days. I can't remember how many.
Kathryn (07:25)
Is Donk? Hell yeah.
Yeah, I'm very close.
Gina (07:51)
in the thousands as I'm sure we can all imagine. It's too complicated. Not for me, not today. And Helen was born as the third child in a family of eight and everyone just called her Nell, which is adorable.
Kathryn (07:54)
This is why I don't do math.
So many, so many numbers.
It's so cute, I like that.
Gina (08:11)
It's a really cute nickname.
She grew up in a very Christian, blue-collar family. Her mother was where kind of the Christian side of things came into play. Like the whole family was Christian, but her mom in particular was a very devout Presbyterian. And her dad was a builder and a slater, which didn't bring in a whole ton of money, but it was enough for the family to get by. So not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but they weren't destitute or impoverished or anything like that. And as Helen started to grow up, it became very clear very quickly that she was born to stand out. She was a little bit of a wild child, a bit of a tomboy, wasn't really one for following rules that she didn't like. And one of her defining characteristics was having hair so black that it was almost blue.
Kathryn (09:04)
⁓ pretty. Wow.
Gina (09:05)
Right? Seems like, like our kind of girl. Kind of a badass. But those weren't the only things that set Helen apart. When she was around seven years old, she started showing signs of having psychic powers. One of the earliest stories of this goes that Helen's mom was like baking in the kitchen. Little Helen was in there just hanging out as kids do.
Kathryn (09:10)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Gina (09:31)
when all of the sudden out of nowhere Helen looks at her mom and says, who's Johnny? And her mom is kind of taken aback and is like, ⁓ why do you ask? Helen said, because he's here. I am to tell you to tell his mother that he's happy. And she's like a little, kid. Turns out Johnny was the son of one of her mother's friends who had passed away before Helen was born.
Yeah, her mom didn't really react well to this. She basically said, like, you better stop saying shit like that or people are going to think you're a witch, which, ha ha, we are now talking about her during witch month, but not in a bad way. But that reaction was pretty characteristic of her relationship with her mom. Like, it was a very stereotypical.
Kathryn (10:13)
Yeah. Yeah.
Gina (10:21)
You have a strict religious parent, so a kid who acts out because of that, so the parent gets more strict, so the kid acts out because of that, like just one of those cyclical kind of relationships. But our girl Helen, thankfully, didn't listen to her mom, and she did not stop saying shit like that.
At school, she started to voice prophecies that really freaked out her classmates, because she was very like, she would prophesize doom and gloom and destruction and all of these terrifying things that like a little kid shouldn't really be talking about. And she also had this uncanny ability to kind of know things that she really shouldn't know. There's one how when she was a kid in school, she was given an exam. I think it was like some kind of pop quiz or like an exam she didn't know was coming because she didn't study for it.
And so when the teacher started to hand out the little chalkboards, like the individual ones that they would use to write the answers, Helen starts freaking out. She's like, my God, I don't know what any of the answers are gonna be. What am I gonna do? So she takes her little chalkboard and she just holds it to her chest. And she just focuses on how she doesn't know the answers. What is she gonna write down? Someone like, I need help passing this test. And then when she looked down at her chalkboard, she saw that all of the answers,
had just appeared there, as if she had written them without even realizing it. So her teacher noticed that Helen had completed the exam before anyone else. And he kind of like flew off the handle a little bit. He was like, you cheated. Like, you know, you're in trouble. There's no way you could have done this by yourself. And so Helen responded by taking her full ink pot, throwing it at the teacher, and then sprinting out of school.
Kathryn (12:00)
Yeah.
Gina (12:13)
Yes, we love Helen. ⁓ I love it. Helen's great. The teacher, to his credit, I do want to say he did apologize to Helen and her family later, but her life at school was like filled with stories like this. So much so that she became known as Hellish Nell.
Kathryn (12:10)
Okay. Alright.
I was gonna say this is big Gina vibes. Like I can see little Gina doing all this, yeah.
Cool.
Mm-hmm.
Gina (12:39)
We love it.
Kathryn (12:40)
I like that so much. Hell Nell.
Helen & Jean
Gina (12:41)
Yeah, it's so awesome.
Hell Nell. Yeah. So Helen wound up leaving school at the age of 16 and she went to go work at a jute mill, which I had never heard about, but it's basically like a place where, It's like the, a place where they make the fiber that they use in like ropes and sacks. Like, you know, that kind, it's almost like hempen material.
Kathryn (12:45)
Yeah.
I don't know what that
Gina (13:03)
Like if you picture like a burlap sack, yeah, that's like a thing. I don't know, it's a fiber.
Kathryn (13:04)
What? What is jute?
What the fuck? I have never heard of this ever. Hmm, interesting. Okay.
Gina (13:10)
I don't know. No idea. But yes, she worked at a jute factory. And while she was working there, she stayed at a hostel with a bunch of other girls. And it sounds like it was so much fun. There is a book called The Two Worlds of Helen Duncan that was partially written by her daughter, whose name is Gena by the way. It's spelled differently than how I spell it, but her name is still Gina. And it...
Kathryn (13:36)
my God, wow.
Gina (13:36)
It talks about this time in Helen's life and it had this one quote that I just, it just made me really happy. So I'm going to read it to you. Quote, the hostel was completely different from home with girls giggling and laughing and trying hard to appear more grown up and adult than they really were. Which that just, you can kind of feel like we all have that romanticized version of what it was like to be that age. And that's what it is.
Kathryn (13:56)
Yeah. That f-
How old were they when she was there? See, yeah, I'm imagining how it felt to move into my college dorm for the first time. It was kind of that vibe where you think you're so grown up because you're away. You live on your own, quote unquote. And just a big, bad college student now. I'm imagining it's similar to that.
Gina (14:02)
Like 16.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. You could just taste the freedom.
This was Helen's first real slice of life away from the huge family and the constant pressure from her mom and things like that. And while she was working at the jute mill, she met a girl named Jean, and they very quickly became best friends.
Kathryn (14:29)
That's fun.
Mm-hmm.
Gina (14:46)
They would talk about their love of dancing, how they liked taking walks in the countryside, and they were often seen ice skating on a nearby pond in the wintertime.
Kathryn (14:56)
Wait, that's so cute. I love this.
Gina (14:57)
Just like the sweetest, I love this part of the story. It's so nice. So despite not having much money, it was a pretty idyllic time for Helen. But shortly after she met Jean, World War I began. it threw the British working system into a bit of a flux, to put it lightly. Basically, as the men were sent to war, the women had to step up and keep the country going. And Helen and Jean both wanted to play a part in that.
So they volunteered together to serve at a munitions factory, but in order to get in, they had to pass a medical exam. And Jean passed with flying colors, like no notes, perfect health, of course you can work here. didn't. She was pretty overweight, which was flagged in the report. And during the exam, they discovered that she had tuberculosis in her lung. And the only reason I bring up the weight thing is because it comes back.
Like it's something, unfortunately, people used as a way to judge Helen quite a bit. And this is the first time we see it brought up in a, you're not allowed to do this because of the way your body looks thing. So Jean went off to work and Helen was hospitalized because of the tuberculosis. She did manage to recover from the TB, but she still couldn't go back to work at the munitions factory. So instead, she became a nursing aide and she went to go work at the Dundee Royal Infirmary. But despite working completely different jobs in different places as best friends are wont to do, Jean and Helen still made time to see each other.
Helen & Henry Duncan
And it was during one of these visits that Helen told Jean about some very strange dreams she had been having. She said she had had multiple dreams about a young soldier fighting in France and that she had a
deep gut feeling that these dreams were actually visions of the man that she was going to marry someday. She also said that in the most recent of these dreams, of which I think there were three, the soldier wasn't in France anymore and in fact he was hospitalized and being treated like he had been hurt or was sick in some way. So she asked Jean, like, hey, what do you think all of this means? And Jean was kind of like, mm.
You're probably just thinking about the war a lot because that's a big deal and it might be blending subconsciously with the time that you spent in the hospital. Like, just don't worry about it too much. Helen just knew in her gut that wasn't quite right, but you know, they dropped the conversation. They forgot about it after a while until a while later when Helen went to Jean's house for some tea. And while she was there, she was finally introduced to Jean's family, including her brother.
Henry, who had recently returned from the war in France to being hospitalized with health issues. This was the man that she had seen in her dreams. And it turned out he had been having visions of her too. There's a very famous moment, yes, there's a very famous moment when Henry first sets eyes on Helen and he says, ⁓ “so we meet at last.”
Kathryn (17:58)
What? My god, I'm just I'm like covered in chills what the effing H. My god I feel like I'm watching a movie right now. Is there a movie on her?
Gina (18:08)
I know! Yes! I am so woo-woo about this part of the story. I think it's so cute.
I don't know actually, there should be if there isn't.
Kathryn (18:25)
We called dibs on making the movie on Helen Duncan. Wow.
Gina (18:27)
And yeah. From this moment on, they only had eyes for each other. Henry was in awe of Helen's psychic abilities. He was completely supportive of her. He was fascinated by her talents, which made Helen feel accepted and even loved after years of feeling like she might never be.
So they fell madly deeply in love with each other and they were married just a short while later in 1916. Side note, they were married on May 27th, which is my sister's birthday. Just a little fun tidbit, yeah. I know. I love Helen Duncan, but let me get to the end of the story and then we can dissect that.
Kathryn (19:03)
wow. There's a lot of overlap between you and Helen Duncan. Yeah. okay. Okay. Okay.
Gina (19:14)
So Henry and Helen are very happy together, but that didn't mean that their married life was easy, particularly in the early years. Henry still suffered from poor health, which prevented him from returning to military service. And he didn't really have like a trade to fall back on. So when he was offered an apprenticeship in cabinet making, he just accepted like no questions asked. I need to make money for my growing family. Yes, I will do this.
It didn't bring in whole lot of money, but it was enough and Helen had started working part time in a bleach factory, which sounds fucking awful. So between the two of them, they just managed to scrape by for the two of them and their eventual six children. Including the best one, Gena. Of course. Yes, I think in total they had eight babies, but only six survived. So there were more kids. I don't want to gloss over that.
Kathryn (19:52)
Yeah, jeez louise.
Of course, yes.
Okay, yeah.
Gina (20:12)
And one thing that's really sweet, just a little, cute little story about Henry and Helen is that with what little excess money Henry had, he would often spend it buying like little antique trinkets for Helen so that she could hold them and practice like making predictions about people who had owned it or, you know, what the like vibes of the object were.
Kathryn (20:33)
my gosh, wow. I would, yeah. I hate that I wasn't expecting that. You know, that's usually not how it went. Wow, I
Gina (20:34)
He was really supportive of her, like for his entire life.
I know.
Helen’s seances begin
And that's, again, like a pattern with Henry. Like he was constantly encouraging her to hone her craft. And eventually, she started channeling. The first time it happened was an accident. She and Henry had one of their friends over. It was another guy. I can't remember his name. And they were just kind of sitting around chatting about stuff.
When suddenly Helen leaned forward and blew out a nearby candle. The smoke as the candle went out allegedly started like curling in the air and it spelled out a word Williams. So the men froze and then a voice said, good evening gentlemen, my name is Dr. Williams.
The voice was coming from Helen, but also not at the same time. Like it was kind of like she was throwing her voice across the room kind of thing. So Dr. Williams asked Henry to start setting aside at least one night per week to keep working on Helen's gift and to start inviting a few friends over each time to enhance her power. Henry agreed and Helen kind of came out of the trance and returned to them.
And this is when she started leading seances.
At first it was just like she was practicing, like just getting used to running seances. It was a more informal thing. But one day while she was kind of, you know, in this phase of her life, she had this horrible premonition that something bad had happened to Henry while he was at work.
So she rushed to the cabinet making shop where she found that Henry had in fact collapsed after suffering a heart attack. He did survive, this left him completely unable to keep working as he had been. So Henry and Helen are like, shit, we have a ton of kids. Our income just dropped dramatically. Helen's only working part time. What are we gonna do? And then they went, hmm, well. People will probably pay to join these seances. And with that, a little seance business blossomed. They became entrepreneurs. Henry, again, was completely supportive and he even built her what some people called a cabinet to sit in while she did the seances, which when I read it, I thought it sounded a little bit weird. I hadn't heard of anything like that before.
Kathryn (22:52)
classic.
Gina (23:07)
But apparently it's something that Dr. Williams had asked for during a channeling session to help focus Helen's powers. But also it wasn't actually a cabinet. It was just like a curtained off corner of the room with a chair in it. But it's always referred to as a cabinet. So cabinet it is. Anyway, Helen started officially offering seances in 1926. the timing of this is kind of important because people were just coming out of World War I and there was a lot of pain and lot of loss that the country was experiencing, which historically tends to increase the demand for spiritualist activities, like a way to contact or feel closer to people that you'd lost. So they kind of had like a bit of a built-in market for this thing. Demand was already really high. The only problem was they weren't the only ones trying to capitalize off of this. There was a lot of competition.
So Henry and Helen did everything they could to stand out from the crowd.
What were Helen Duncan’s seances like?
Which I think they did pretty successfully because seances with Helen do sound like they were a fucking vibe. I will describe them to you now. So the windows were always blacked out and the room was always lit with a single red light bulb.
Kathryn (24:13)
You
Gina (24:20)
Helen would usually start the seances by asking the women in the crowd if they wanted to watch her dress for the seance. And if they said yes, they would step into this little private area and literally just watch Helen get dressed. She would take off all of her clothes, strip down naked, and then put on her seance garb, which was this big black robe cloak thing, basically to prove that she wasn't literally hiding a trick up her sleeve. It was kind of like, you know what I mean?
Kathryn (24:48)
I, yeah, I love that you added that because like we're getting into the time period where there are like so many charlatans and stuff. And I feel like that's something I've never heard of that. And I don't know how the story ends, but I've never heard of that being part of anyone's process. So that's interesting that she like thought of that.
Gina (25:13)
There may have been a reason for it. Which is all safe for now.
Kathryn (25:17)
I bet there was. Yes. Yeah, no, I bet there was. just this is the first time I've ever heard someone like taking that extra step. sure it has happened in other stories. This is just the first time I've heard it, like as part of the official process.
Gina (25:31)
They did everything they could to make their seances memorable. And they were, I mean, very successful. She wound up becoming massively famous because of her seances. But it wasn't just the vibes that people were coming for. Helen had another big differentiator because it was said that she could actually make spirits appear or manifest in the room as they were going through the
Kathryn (25:34)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Gina (25:57)
when this happened, when they materialized, Helen would allegedly spit ectoplasm out of her mouth.
Kathryn (26:04)
Excellent.
The business grows
Gina (26:07)
So this was a much more tangible kind of seance than the other ones being offered at the time. So word spread really, really quickly and they started to rake in some serious cash. But with all of their new patrons came a healthy dose of naysayers. In 1928, about two years after she started offering seances, a photographer named Harvey Metcalfe attended one of them.
And when the spirits materialized, he whipped out his camera and took a flash picture. And the photo revealed that these manifestations were actually just paper mache dolls covered in a white sheet. I'm gonna send a picture of one to you.
Kathryn (26:47)
⁓
okay, yeah, please do.
Gina (26:50)
It's kind of creepy, I will warn you.
Alright, I just sent it.
Kathryn (26:57)
My goodness. So they were in a dark room.
Gina (26:58)
And that white stuff coming out of her mouth is, yes, very dark, which is why nobody noticed it is because they would see like a silhouette and maybe the glint of the mask and that was it. and the stuff that's coming out of her mouth is the ectoplasm.
Kathryn (27:04)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Of course.
Helen Duncan’s ectoplasm
LSA investigation
Gina (27:13)
Yes, of course.
So that was the first big scandal with Helen Duncan, but it would not be the last. In 1931, the London Spiritualist Alliance, the LSA, also performed a little investigation into Helen and they managed to get a sample of that ectoplasm that we've been talking about. They ran some tests on it and they found that it was actually a combination of cheesecloth, egg whites, and toilet paper.
Kathryn (27:47)
Ew!
Gina (27:48)
appeared as if Helen would swallow this before the seance and then force herself to bring it back up at the correct time. Yeah, nasty.
Kathryn (28:00)
I mean,
that's talent in and of itself.
Gina (28:02)
kind of is.
I know, yeah. So the London Spiritualist Alliance was like, okay, this is like a very famous medium. We'd better make sure that we're right before we start slandering her in public. So they go back to attend another one of her seances. And before it began, they asked her to take something called methylene blue, which I don't know if you've heard of it before, but it's basically like a little thing you can swallow that will turn the contents of your stomach blue.
Kathryn (28:05)
I hate that.
Mm-hmm.
Gina (28:34)
So the thought was she'll take this and then if the, quote, ectoplasm is blue, we'll know that she just swallows it ahead of time. Helen was like, yeah, no problem. She took it. And then she very conveniently did not expel any ectoplasm for that session. So suspicious, a little suspicious. Meanwhile, supes dupes ironic.
Kathryn (28:35)
Mm.
Yes, supes ironic.
Harry Price’s investigation
Gina (28:59)
While all this was going on, there was a guy named Harry Price who worked for the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, and he wound up conducting what is now the most famous investigation into Helen Duncan. And it's interesting how it starts because he thought Helen was the real deal. He was like, my gosh, finally, after all of these years of research, we might finally have the perfect case of a true medium to study and learn from. So he goes to Helen.
Kathryn (29:24)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (29:25)
and he pays her 50 pounds to perform a series of seances for him, which is no small amount of money. Like today, that would be around 4,000 pounds or $6,000. a lot of money, yeah. So the first seance comes and goes, goes off without a hitch. Price seems like he was really impressed, but he wanted to do a little bit more testing. So he managed to take a sample of the ectoplasm.
Kathryn (29:36)
My goodness, wow. That is...
Gina (29:51)
And same thing as the LSA, he found that it was a combination of cheesecloth and other shit. So for the next seance, he asked Helen if he could x-ray her before they began to see if the ectoplasm was on her person,
Kathryn (30:06)
interesting.
Gina (30:07)
And Helen's reaction to that depends on who you ask. According to Helen's daughter, Helen was offended by this because as part of it, they asked her to disrobe. And so Helen tried to slap Price across the face, but Henry accidentally got in the way and she wound up slapping him instead before storming out of the room.
Kathryn (30:24)
Mm.
Gina (30:35)
That is not how everyone remembers this. Apparently, Helen was okay with being x-rayed at first until she saw the machine and it became real. And when that happened, she seemed to kind of fall into a trance. And when she came to, Henry was like, ⁓ you know, come on, babe, like, let's get you x-rayed. It'll be fine. And in response, she hit him across the face and then attacked one of the doctors that were in attendance.
She then sprinted out onto the street and just started like screaming her head off. Really, really loud, calling a lot of attention to what was going on. So a crowd obviously formed because of all the commotion. The police came. Henry himself was like on the street with her, like holding her up, trying to comfort her. When all of a sudden, seemingly apropos of nothing, Helen walks back into the house and demands to be X-rayed.
Before they did so, one of the doctors thought to turn to Henry and ask him to turn out your pockets. And Henry refused, which to Price meant that Helen had found a way to pass the little ectoplasm parcel to Henry while everyone was distracted with the screaming and the cops and the crowd and all of that. So after this, Price wound up releasing a report
Kathryn (31:57)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (32:03)
just blasting Helen for being a fraud. And it was not like a neutral matter of fact, these are the exact things I saw with no opinion in them type of report. It was fucking savage. I have a quote here that I'm going to read to you. It's from the report. It says, quote, could anything be more infantile than a group of grown up men wasting time, money and energy on the antics of a fat female crook.
Kathryn (32:32)
My goodness.
Gina (32:33)
Yeah.
Kathryn (32:34)
What the fuck?
Gina (32:35)
Yeah, so again, like her weight is brought up as like a reason not to believe her. And to be fair, she was doing some fraudulent shit. She was not being the most aboveboard person in this. But what does her weight have to do with it, man? And also her gender, like a dude could do this too.
Kathryn (32:40)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure. And many of them did.
Gina (32:54)
Many, many, many of them did. So eyeroll.
HMS Barham prediction
Despite Price's best efforts, though, business kept on booming. And when World War II came around a few years later, it really only added to the spiritualist frenzy. And on one infamous night in November 1941, Helen performed a seance in a town called Portsmouth,
And because it was once again wartime, the seance was filled with a lot of people wondering about the fate of loved ones who were fighting overseas. And during the seance, the spirit of a young sailor came to visit. And he told the group that his ship, the HMS Barham, had sunk, leading to mass casualties. Everyone in the room was shocked.
because as far as the public knew, the HMS Barham was still afloat. So it was like a what the fuck? Like, are you lying or are we like, is this new information? We don't know what's going on. But in the days and weeks that followed, it quickly came out that Helen's prediction was 100 % accurate. The ship had been torpedoed off of the coast of Egypt earlier that month, which left it sinking 862 people dead within minutes.
Kathryn (33:53)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (34:11)
the Royal Navy just hadn't released that information to the public yet. this caused the Navy to take a very serious interest in Helen Duncan because this was seen as a national security breach. She had shared very privileged, very protected information and they were like, how are you getting this? Like if you actually have psychic powers and you can tell what the government and military are doing ahead of time and you're telling people, that's fucking bad news.
So now the military's all pissed off. So they send two lieutenants to attend one of Helen's seances to see what's going on. Does she release any more classified information? During the seance, a couple of spirits manifested as normal. And Helen said that one of them was the spirit of one of the lieutenant's dead aunts. And the lieutenant was like, I don't have an aunt.
So Helen was like, you know what? No, I'm sorry I was wrong. It's not your aunt, it's your sister. Lieutenants like my sister's alive. She's fine. Like, I don't know where you're getting this information from. So at the end of the seance, both lieutenants were left just kind of horrified by the experience. ⁓ From their perspective, Helen was taking advantage of those who were grieving, especially during wartime. So they reported her to the police for fraud.
And after a plain clothed police officer had a similar experience at one of her seances, she was arrested.
Side note, she was also arrested because she was found to be in possession of a sailor's hat with HMS Barham written on it. Apparently she had been using it as the costume for like the fake little manifestation doll thing when they were meant to be sailors. But what she didn't know is that by the time she started doing this, sailors caps didn't say the name of their ship on it anymore. It just said HMS, like Her Majesty's Ship, and that was it. So it was kind of obviously a fake, which again like strengthened the case for fraud.
Kathryn (36:08)
Yeah.
Helen’s arrest and incarceration
Gina (36:27)
So Helen is sitting in jail. Authorities are pissed off about this, but they had a problem. Everything that they picked her up for was a minor offense at best. Like she would get out of custody really easy, which they were worried about because again, they don't want her to keep sharing classified information. So they refused her bail and they started looking for other ways to prosecute her. They started scouring legal texts. They were looking for like any charge they could slap on her. And that's when they found an interesting clause in the Witchcraft Act of 1735.
The British Witchcraft Act of 1735
Now one thing that's interesting about the Witchcraft Act of 1735 is that it didn't make it illegal to be a witch. Common misconception. It actually marked the end of the witch trials in Britain by making it illegal to claim that somebody was guilty of being a witch. And yeah, uh-huh. A lot of people think that it's like the law that like makes people burn at a stake, but it's not. It was like the thing that put an end to it.
Kathryn (37:07)
⁓
I didn't know that.
Gina (37:16)
And it also made it illegal for people to claim to basically have magical powers, which in their minds, Helen was guilty of. So they charged her for it.
What else was Helen charged with?
Just to be safe, they also slapped on a few other charges as well, just in case the first one didn't stick. Ultimately, she was charged with two counts of conspiracy, ⁓ two counts of obtaining money by false pretenses, and three counts of public mischief.
I love it. Like in a legal sense, what the fuck is public mischief? I love that so much.
Kathryn (37:46)
I told you, Gina vibes.
Yeah, that's one of those umbrella, there's so much that could fall from, like, yeah. my god, you are just like the most mischievous person I've ever met my life. Big air quotes around peace. None of us have any peace.
Gina (37:58)
like disturbing the peace. Who's peace?
I love mischief.
No, it's 2025. We're all fucked up.
The trial of Helen Duncan
So, they've got their charges, they take her to trial, but it didn't exactly go according to plan. Spiritualists and supporters of Helen Duncan, of which there were tons, were really fucking pissed about this whole thing, so they had started up a collection to basically pay for the travel of witnesses to come in and testify that Helen was the real deal.
A lot of these too, they were like really respected people. You had like scholars, you had historians, you had a Freemason on the stand, all sorts of people with all sorts of connections calling for her release. Helen herself even offered to do a demonstration of her powers for the courtroom. She was denied, but I wish that she hadn't have been because that would have been the most fucking wild story ever, yeah. And on the prosecution side, honestly, they were looking...
Kathryn (39:07)
Yeah.
Gina (39:13)
pretty goddamn weak. ⁓ The police had raided the seance room in Portsmouth where they picked her up, but they didn't actually find any physical evidence that supported the charges. Like they found that hat, but that hat wasn't proof of anything in and of itself. So they were real thin in terms of evidence. Despite this, Helen was found guilty on one count. And the judge was like, one count is enough, don't even.
Kathryn (39:29)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (39:40)
bother with a verdict on the rest, like one is fine. Which I think is weird, but anyway. This led to Helen being put in Holloway prison for nine months. And while she was behind bars, apparently a lot of inmates and even prison staff would come to her for readings. Because even if she did partake in elements that were fraudulent, her base power, like the core that she had been working on since she was a kid, I think was still kind of there. She just had used these, and I'm getting ahead of myself, but these sensationalized tactics because of the competition and to help her make money. Personally, that's what I think.
Winston Churchill’s involvement
Another thing that I find particularly interesting about this case is that even Winston Churchill got involved.
Kathryn (40:12)
Mm-hmm.
⁓ I feel like I have heard this story. I just didn't know about her. I think I've heard of this. That this like rings a bell unless he involved in itself, which I'm sure he did in other cases as well. But I'll talk more about these feelings later. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead.
Gina (40:22)
⁓ huh.
Mm, okay, okay.
He probably did, but I'll tell you what he did and then tell me. Okay. Okay, so
justice at the scene, he's the prime minister at this point. So he's like a big fucking deal, big dog, Winnie Churchie. And when he heard about her trial and imprisonment, he thought the whole thing was fucking bullshit. He literally released a memo demanding to know how much Helen's prosecution had cost. And he called the whole thing, quote, obsolete tomfoolery,
Kathryn (40:45)
Mm.
Gina (41:04)
to detriment of the necessary work in the court. So basically like this, we're at war and this is what we're fucking focused on right now. This is ridiculous. to be fair, like he wasn't alone from a lot of people's perspectives.
Kathryn (41:17)
Yeah.
Gina (41:17)
This had nothing to do with Helen being a fraud and everything to do with the military just wanting to protect its little secrets and Helen was just collateral damage in the process.
Was the verdict fair?
Kathryn (41:29)
That's the part that has me kind of on the fence because have so many thoughts. I struggle with basically all spiritualism related stories because the only ones you hear about are the fraudulent ones because like those are the newsworthy ones.
And I'm like, man, it just always sounds like such a circus to me. at the same time, it does seem like she had some type of whatever you want to call it, gift, ability, whatever term you want to use. I mean, it has me on the fence just because I'm like, yeah, I don't love dressing it up for monetary gain.
But I'm also like, is that different from what fucking Etsy witches are doing now? I don't know. There's a lot of fraudulent people out there to this day. not saying it's OK. It just has me like, think that here's what I think I'm trying to say.
Gina (42:25)
Right.
Kathryn (42:35)
These stories always sound so like old school and like back in the day there were a lot of people faking seances like well there's a lot of fucking people doing that now. It doesn't mean that those gifts or abilities or whatever are not real. It means these people are trying to zhuzh it up. You know? I don't know.
Gina (42:55)
Yeah. Spiritualism doesn't work when it intersects with a capitalist society, I think.
Kathryn (43:00)
Yeah, I mean this is a whole discussion on like any type of spiritual belief or religion or any of that like
Gina (43:07)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (43:09)
I'm gonna stop myself right there, because you know I could keep going and I won't, because that's not what this episode's about. But do know what I mean? I feel like it is such a fine line. Do I think anyone fib or zhuzh things up for monetary gain? No. Does that mean that it's not gonna happen? No. That's ridiculous. It happens in every corner of every belief all across the world.
It's okay, but I'm like, why are we focusing on this one person? Like, you know, whatever, Winnie's point. It's like, all right, is this, are we really mad at her for the thing we say we're mad at her for, or is it because, like, she's an easy target?
Gina (43:48)
Exactly.
Kathryn (43:56)
I guess that's like where it is for me. I'm just like, this is me trying not to go down my rabbit hole. I will say there is a book that I think mentions this story and I think that you would really like it. I read it, it just came out this year. It's called Ghosted. pop a link to it. It's like the history of basically paranormal investigations throughout the centuries. And they talk a lot about spiritualism, but it was written, the author is...
It's from like a British lens, the history of what happened across the pond is very unfamiliar to me. Very familiar with like American spiritualism. But It was interesting to hear. Like everything that went on over there, but I think this is that's where I think I've heard this story. I think they talked about this investigation.
Gina (44:40)
I would love that.
I imagine they would have, because she was huge. She was really famous.
Kathryn (44:51)
Yeah.
I think you would like it. Well, and she went into the whole like, you know, post World War One was really when spiritualism took off and it was because of like the grief and all of that. And I had never heard that explanation before, but that makes sense.
Gina (44:55)
I think so too.
Yeah, because I know I would love that because one of the things that's so interesting about researching Helen Duncan is that it's in all of the research I did, it was impossible to find anything impartial. Like it seems like everyone who has ever spoken or written about Helen Duncan has an opinion, even if they pretend like they're not putting it in writing. The subtext is so blatantly obvious. Some things are more empathetic. Some things are more critical. There's very little that's kind of in the middle. Either way.
Kathryn (45:12)
Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Gina (45:38)
She's so divisive, which is part of the reason why I really love her story.
Kathryn (45:38)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. It's interesting that you say that. That makes me feel better because I feel like I should have a stronger opinion on her. I feel like that's why I'm waffling. stories like this, I feel like you're made to feel like, you empathize with her or not? know, like.
Gina (45:58)
Yeah.
Kathryn (46:00)
It's kind of, I feel like I'm supposed to have a strong opinion on whether it was bad that she was fraudulent or like, you know, empathize with trying to... How do you feel? What are your, what are your opinions?
Gina (46:10)
See, this is one my whole fucking things.
I love when women are allowed to be layered and complex and a little bit shitty, but also not completely shitty. I think especially when we talk about witches, it's so often lumped into the categories of good witch or bad witch and not just human being, likely a woman with a personality. So I love this. Like yeah, trying to make a living for her husband who can't work and her six kids that don't come from a whole lot of money. Like this is reality. And I just fucking, I love it, witch month.
Kathryn (46:20)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Trying to make a living, very important part, yeah.
Right.
Gina (46:43)
Women are complicated.
Kathryn (46:45)
Who'd a thunk? Not me. Very simple. We're very straightforward, demure. Yes.
Gina (46:47)
No, no, you and I are like a hive mind. Yes.
We only think of murder. ⁓
Kathryn (47:03)
Hahah
Helen’s release
Gina (47:07)
Anyway, okay. So ⁓ when she was released from prison, she swore that she would never perform a seance again. She did not adhere to that and she was arrested again a few years later in 1956. This time she was again in the middle of conducting a seance when the police burst in to perform a raid. Worth noting she was
Kathryn (47:08)
It's true. Please continue.
my goodness.
Gina (47:37)
in a trance when they came in ⁓ and they turned on the light, grabbed her and then performed an extremely invasive strip search of her. So obviously she suffered some trauma from that, but there are also claims that she was somehow burned during this raid and had two second degree burns on her stomach.
Kathryn (48:00)
my goodness.
Gina (48:01)
Yep.
Apparently the shock of all of this happening caused her to kind of suck the ectoplasm back in when they pulled her from the trance, which just fucked her up even more. So she did survive, but she never ever fully recovered from this. And many people believe that this is what led to her death just 36 days later. Yes. She died on the 6th of December, 1956.
Kathryn (48:24)
⁓ wow, yeah, probably.
Gina (48:29)
at her home in Edinburgh.
Helen’s legacy
So, let's talk about the legacy of Helen Duncan.
Ultimately, history knows Helen Duncan as a fraud, but there are still, to this day, scores of people calling for her to be pardoned. There were petitions in 2001, 2008, and as recently as 2012, all of which were heard and then rejected by the Scottish Parliament.
As for the Witchcraft Act itself, it was actually repealed a few years before Helen died and it was replaced with the Fraudulent Mediums Act, which is exactly what it sounds like. Helen's most well-known moniker, like I said at the top, is that of the last person to be convicted under the Witchcraft Act of 1735. But that is not true. That title actually goes to a woman named Jane Rebecca Yorke
who was found guilty under that act roughly a year after Helen was. And the two women honestly had pretty similar stories. Jane also worked as a medium, just like Helen, and she was also arrested because she had been claiming to, quote, cause the spirits of dead persons to be present. But really, the real underlying reason she was found guilty was because of the whole exploiting wartime anxiety thing that we've been talking about.
The difference is that Jane was not imprisoned. Instead, she was fined just five pounds, which is 280 pounds today or $380. And she was released provided she didn't conduct any more seances. She was in her 70s by this point, so that was not an issue. She just kind of lived out her life. So Helen was the last person to be imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act, but she wasn't its last.
Kathryn (50:18)
Mmm. Okay.
Gina (50:22)
victim. And that is my story.
Kathryn (50:26)
I'm, yeah, I don't know. I'm on the fence because I do deeply hate when people use their powers for evil. I really do. I really do hate fraudulent ⁓ spirituality of all kinds. I think that's where my empathy actually does come in because this is like my...
Gina (50:33)
Yeah.
Kathryn (50:48)
Translation of that isn't necessarily, fuck Helen Duncan, it is. Let's focus on all of them with as much energy. You know?
Gina (50:57)
Mm-hmm.
I thought long and hard about whether or not this was the right way to kick off Witch Month, and I almost changed. Thank you for saying that, because I almost changed my topic many, many times, and I decided fucking not to.
Kathryn (51:00)
Good.
I think so. I think so, absolutely, yeah.
Yeah, no, I think this like perfectly embodies the whole discussion about witches or witchcraft, witchery, whatever you want to call it, because...
Her actual ability wasn't like the main focus of why she was getting in trouble. It was like
Gina (51:34)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (51:35)
the other stuff, you know, like the way it was translated. Yeah, which...
Gina (51:38)
Yeah. The showmanship.
Kathryn (51:44)
You know, again I say. There's a lot of others who also are just as showy. Anyway, yeah. I love it. What an introduction.
Gina (51:47)
Well, welcome to Witch Month.
Kathryn (52:03)
I’m unsure about how I feel about the story, which I think is why it's such a great intro to Witch Month. Yeah, I don't have a hard opinion. I usually, I feel like we usually come out of these episodes with a very strong vibe. In this one, I'm like, I certainly empathize with her and also don't like it, but also, yeah.
Gina (52:07)
I love that. Yay.
It's a story, yeah.
You gotta sit with it.
Kathryn (52:28)
You know what this is reminding me of is the witch podcast that you recommended to me, which I finished. Let's talk about that for a second. Do you want to talk about that?
Gina (52:33)
Oh my God, so good.
It's been a few months since I listened to it, but I love it.
Kathryn (52:39)
the witch podcast. I know it's been a little while.
Let me share a couple of my thoughts. So the reason I'm thinking of it is one of my favorite episodes was I don't remember the name of the episodes, but there was a whole episode about the ethics of monetizing witchcraft and, you know, your own personal abilities or whatever. And loved that episode because one thing that
Gina (52:55)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (53:06)
I think they could have done more of, and yet they did more than I am used to hearing, is acknowledge that every industry... We talked about this a little bit in a recent episode. Every industry has fraudulent assholes in it. But for some reason, stuff like this kind of fringe things more like creative type...
jobs including but not limited to the spiritual advisor type camp. I feel like they get it a lot more.
than others, but it's similar to like, you know, there's also lot of frauds and therapy and like, you know, that gets crossed over into life coaching and all that kind of stuff. And it's just a lot of it's easier to fall into a trap in things where you're more vulnerable and people who are seeking out services like that are going to be in a more vulnerable vulnerable spot than someone who's looking for like a plumber, you know,
Gina (54:08)
Mm-hmm.
But before too far into our rage, do you happen to have a story for me?
Scary on top
Kathryn (54:16)
So I have a story sent to us from our friends at Chillers and Thrillers podcast. They have a very spooky podcast, very much ⁓ like campfire side stories vibes, very spooky. This story was sent to them and they passed it over to us and we have permission to share it. So we are going to share it with you now.
Back in the early 2000s, I moved in with a now ex-boyfriend. He lived in a bungalow style house in one of the neighborhoods of a large Midwestern city. I wonder which one it is. Was it here? Was it in Milwaukee? Milwaukee's medium size. God, Milwaukee. Waukesha. Boo. I was gonna say no offense, but I don't mean that. Okay. ⁓
Gina (54:55)
too.
Connemowoc. ⁓
Hahahaha
Kathryn (55:13)
This happened when I was taking a personal day from work after moving in to finish getting things arranged and unpacked. was mid afternoon when the doorbell rang. Through the peephole I saw a conservatively dressed woman. Maybe it was Waukesha.
Gina (55:31)
She's wearing five turtlenecks.
Kathryn (55:40)
My guess was Jehovah's Witness, so I planned to say no thanks and get back to unpacking.
I opened the door to get a better look. The woman was about my age, late 20s, and she had frizzy hair like a perm gone wrong. It was a nondescript brownish blonde and looked dry and damaged. All her style choices looked like those of a stereotypical grandmother.
I know, I feel kind of bad. I hope she's an evil villain in this story because of yikes. she wore a lightweight tan jacket, a white turtleneck, as previously suspected. Just one though, it looks like.
Gina (56:09)
Me too.
Kathryn (56:20)
That looked like it had been washed many times, a long khaki skirt that buttoned up the front in loafers styled like moccasins. She was underdressed for a late November day. The only break with her style was the shiny black aviator sunglasses. I couldn't see her eyes. Oh, that's weird. That's interesting.
I opened the door, but I left the screen door closed. Hi, is Scott home? I started to say he wasn't home, but then my instincts started to kick in. I asked her what she needed, and she held out a paper plate wrapped in foil. I made these for Scott, she said. He helped me out the other day, and I wanted to thank him. That almost made sense. Scott was a firefighter, and he'd had a call to a house recently, but why would she bring them to his house? How did she find
All good
I told her she'd have to give it to him at work. She asked if he was at work. And I said, yes, she'd need to talk to him at work. And she asked when he would be at home so she could talk to him. I said, if she needed to speak to him.
she'd need to go to his work and she asked if he was at home. So finally, I think that makes sense.
Gina (57:44)
my god.
Kathryn (57:50)
Finally, I said if she needed to speak to him, she would have to go to his work because he was not home, hoping I would close the endless loop. I noticed she had a jerky manner of talking, like she had to move physically to speak. Finally, I did break the loop and said I couldn't talk to her anymore and she'd have to leave. As I closed the door, she slammed her hand on the screen door and screamed, no. Yeah.
I closed and locked the door quickly. Almost instantly there was knocking at the BACK DOOR. That didn't make sense. The backyard was fenced and we kept the gate locked.
The lot was long and narrow, so along with the locked gate, it took a little time to go from the front to the back. I ran to the back and peeked out. She was there, and now she was yelling that she knew he was home, and I had to let her in. I looked at her out the back door. She clearly had a problem, and I didn't know if 911 was the best way to help or not.
The doorbell rang as I looked at her. Hopefully it was someone else. I went and looked out the peephole. There she was again. She gave me a big grin and the knocking started in the back.
I marched to the phone. As I reached the phone, it rang. I expected it to be her, but it was our neighbors across the street. They were older, but not too much older.
Jim, the neighbor, was a retired cop and she, Jenny, worked in an office in the city. She was off today and was just wondering if Scott and I would like to come for dinner. I cut her off, panicked, and asked if anyone was at my front door. She said no, and I begged her to double-check. She asked me why and I explained. Immediately, she got Jim on the phone. Jim told me he'd be right over and to go to the interior of the house away from the windows. All this time, the
doorbell rang in the front and there was knocking in the back. Eventually it stopped. Jim yelled at the front door and it was him and I could open it up. He asked me a lot of questions and then we had the following conversation I've never forgotten. Quote, if that thing ever comes back again do not open the door.
Jim, if she ever comes back, I'm calling the police. Wait, what do you mean that thing? He said, I don't know what religion you are, but you should get something for protection and hang it by the door. Don't talk about it again either.
Scott was as confused by all of this as I was and didn't recognize her from my description when I was telling him about it later. At first we talked about it, but then I noticed after he was talking to Jim one day, he didn't want to discuss it anymore. He was raised Catholic and a few days later he hung a crucifix near the door. He insisted it was just something from his grandma's house that he'd hung a long time ago and it reminded him of her, but I know that that probably wasn't the case. I lived there
for over a year and nothing else happened. About a year after I moved out, Scott called me at work. He thought I'd want to know that Jim had died. During the call, we talked about old times, and Scott talked about how Jim had been so concerned about me after that incident with the woman at the
The same thing had happened to Jenny late one night when they just had their first child. I tried to talk about Jim's concern, but Scott said Jim had asked him never to talk about it again and he wanted to respect that. Since then, I've lost touch with Jenny and Scott. It wasn't until a few days after the call that I realized it. Jim and Jenny were my parents' age. Their first baby is a few years older than me. That means the same
thing happened to her in the 1970s with the same woman. I still don't understand
Gina (1:01:52)
That's fucking
freaky. What do we think that was, like a mimic situation? Or not quite a mimic maybe, but something weird.
Kathryn (1:01:55)
Isn't that weird?
I don't know, yeah,
cause it's not, yeah, cause they weren't like mimicking anyone that they knew, but like, it could still be, yeah, the jerky motion has me. It feels kind of, it feels kind of like Black Eyed Kids, but she wasn't a kid. Doesn't it have kind of that vibe?
Gina (1:02:07)
It seemed like it wasn't their real body with the jerky motions.
Yeah, it does. She's
the, do you remember in that episode we were talking about where are the Black Eyed Parents? We found them.
Kathryn (1:02:23)
Yes, she's
the black-eyed parent. Yes. Case closed. We solved it. Easy.
Gina (1:02:31)
RIP, Jim. That sucks.
I do wonder if this is a true story. If you're listening to this and you sent this story in, can you tell us whether or not it's real?
Kathryn (1:02:34)
Yeah, that's spooky.
I don't know.
Well, because it's one of those stories, like it sounds like a very good, like creepy pasta, but I also know that people have I should say people claim to have had, I don't know if they've actually had them. Like some of those Reddit stories we read about black eyed children were very similar to this and they claim that it's true. The whole, like she was at the front of the house and back of the house at the same time.
is very like, hope to God, I'm asking because I hope to God this isn't real because that's terrifying. I just genuinely don't know if this is a listener story or like a piece of creative writing. And I hope that it's fake because that's so scary. Yeah. I just genuinely don't know. Yes. Yes. Let us know. Yes.
Gina (1:03:12)
Yeah, same.
Yeah, I hope it's creative writing. So if you're the author, iscreamyouscreampod@gmail.com. We also have a Patreon if you want to be on our Patreon.
Kathryn (1:03:34)
Yeah, please send us your stories if you'd like to hear them on the podcast and even if you don't want to hear stories on the podcast, please still send them to us because we just love when you all send us stories. It's one of our favorite things. ⁓ In the meantime, join our Patreon. We would love to have you. Like I said, link will be in all the descriptions. And yeah, I'm very excited for which month and birthday month. This is going to be fun. Cool. So until next time, little spoons, keep it
Gina (1:03:59)
Me too.
Kathryn (1:04:04)
Cool.
Gina (1:04:04)
Keep it Creepy!
