This Paranormal Life - #141 The Last Ever Witch Trial

Episode Date: December 3, 2019

When a Scottish Medium started emitting ectoplasm and predicting events of WW2, she found herself under secret surveillance from the British Military.Support us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to weekly bonus episodes!Buy Official TPL Merch! - thisparanormallife.com/storeFollow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunityResearch by Amy GrisdaleEdited by Louis BlatherwickIntro music by www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do ghosts sleep, or are they already eternally resting? Who is Papa John, and how does he make so much pizza? All of these questions you can find the answer to on This Paranormal Life! Hello everyone, welcome back to This Paranormal Life, the comedy paranormal podcast, where every Tuesday we investigate a brand new paranormal case and come to the conclusion as to whether or not it is real or it is false whether it is spooky or whether it is just regular my name is roy powers i'm joined by my co-investigator kit greer glad to be here glad to be here yeah whether

or not it's spooky it's kind of like when you order a meal at a restaurant there's like spice levels yeah there's like levels of spooky there are for sure you know and much like spice the top level will make you cry or borderline blind you it'll at least give you a runny nose you go it's quite a wide scale yeah and if you don't have a little bit of tolerance and a little bit of taste for it, you better basically leave the restaurant. There's a reason why one of the hottest peppers is called a ghost pepper. All right. Because it's paranormal, guys. Today, we have another amazing email submission from our listeners. Wow.

This one comes from Shane Rafferty. Thank you, Shane. from shane rafferty thank you he emailed in saying he wanted us to investigate helen duncan a psychic who allegedly communicated with the dead possessed psychic abilities and was eventually convicted of witchcraft oh shit this seems like a pretty textbook case uh especially when it sounds like the law has already decided that it's real. Yeah, well, I thought, you know, sure, why not investigate a good old-fashioned witch trial? We haven't gone back to the 1700s in a long time on this podcast. Yeah, witch trials and all that. But imagine my surprise kit when I discovered this case takes place only 70 years ago.

Wow, that is way too recent. And it's in Great Britain too. This is Brexit Britain. Things are going backwards, folks. We're going to start, we're going to put the witches on trial starting from next week, and then we're going to go so far back,

we're going to start electing witches into local government. Helen Duncan was born in Perthshire in 1897 she had a reputation at school of being a little strange and quirky making quote dire prophecies that would upset other children most kids are just making uh crayon drawings she was making dire prophecies it's it's on the extreme end for sure. I mean, a lot of people just want to be taught about the alphabet by Elmo. They don't want to find out how Elmo's going to die. Yeah. These are things people don't need to know.

It's like, oh, I love Elmo. He's so soft and cuddly. Yeah, he won't be so soft in 35 years where he gets killed by who's the one that lives in a garbage truck or a garbage bin. Who's that guy? The Grouch oscar the grouch he's gonna go buck wild and shank a bunch of the sesame street people that would upset me if i heard it by the time she was 30 years old she had mastered her powers and was working as a full-time medium claiming that she could predict events and even summon the spirits of the dead wow okay so we fast forward a little bit there but it sounds like she had kind of she was showing a little bit

of signs in childhood of maybe having some sort of foresight ability yeah but she had completely mastered it by her 30s oh yeah she's working as a full-time medium okay and obviously a lot of mediums claim that they can summon spirits and talk to the dead that's the bare minimum pretty much to qualify as a medium yeah but helen was special she would communicate with the spirits of the dead by emitting ectoplasm from her mouth okay what does that mean i don't know if you're like me when i hear ectoplasm i think uh ghostbusters i think absolutely goo uh sort of like slimy goo leftover from spirits or apparitions as they pass through things okay so like a snail trail but from a ghost sort of it's it's it's described as a goo-like substance that supposedly exudes from a medium during spiritualistic trance.

Now, I had no idea it had anything to do with mediums. Either did I. I think Ghostbusters obviously took this and splatted it about like ectoplasm was this ghost goo. was this ghost goo yeah um when the reality of it i'm not gonna say the reality of it but uh the definition of it is that it uh apparently exudes from mediums as they make contact with spirits weird what a bad side effect like you want to go you're just you just have the gift that means you also have the gift of creating goo yeah 24 7 i'd rather not talk to the dead if that's if that's what i have to do yeah i'm fine helen duncan was becoming a big name in the world of the paranormal so big in fact that in 1931 she caught the eye of the london spiritual alliance

who were interested in her methods especially this ectoplasm substance so they managed to get a sample of the ectoplasm and after a short examination they discovered it was a mix of egg white toilet paper and cheese cloth okay slow down because yeah sorry we've got a lot to get through today so we're gonna we're gonna rattle through a lot of these okay do i have to is there time for a question you can ask a question about one of those things the eggs the toilet paper or the cheese cloth okay i have more than one question but for the sake of brevity i'll keep it to cheese cloth sure because that's because again can't get into the toilet paper due to time constraints uh but cheesecloth is definitely not a goo okay or a liquid do you know what do you know what cheesecloth is i mean i guess it's the cloth that you would strain cheese curds through to create solid cheese sort of yeah it's like it looks like

a very thin tablecloth yeah kind of material how is that in there if it's a solid and this is goo you can eat solids all right that's 90 of my food right so moving on but we're not talking about what do you mean we're not talking about food we're talking about goo how do you eat a solid i don't know bite into the potato kit that's a solid so you're admitting that she just ate the f***ing things and then spat them out again because i didn't say that it whoa well someone's saying it someone's saying it look from from their examination of the substance oh jesus it seemed like she was eating cheesecloth and vomiting it back up again you said it not me that's i'm fine for that to be where we are right now they theorized that helen would eat this ecto cocktail before a seance and somehow regurgitated up during the performance okay good skill not paranormal obviously helen denied this outright because why

would we trust the claims of a scientist over a witch over the london spirit spirit alliance or some shit well weirdly i think the london spiritual spiritual alliance are on the team of the scientists oh shit so she's kind of going against the alliance which is a very medium witchy thing why haven't we heard from surely they should be interested we live in london why haven't we heard from these guys yet i don't know if they're still going on. I mean, this was, what did I say, 1931? So they could have been Helen Duncan. She killed them.

She killed them for badmouthing the Ecto. Well, later in 1931, researcher Harry Price, the director of the National Laboratory in London, decided to offer Helen 50 pounds to perform a number of test seances. And surprisingly, she agreed. I'm going to go ahead and guess that's a lot of money back then. 1931.

There must be some sort of online calculator. Hey Siri, what is 50 pounds in 1930 in today's money? Whoa. I don't know if this is true. 55 Bitcoin. Is that right all right it can't be that much three grand okay i guess yeah that's that's quite a bit of money something like that let's let's assume that that's right i'm just gonna i'm just gonna go out there and say that if you're eating cheesecloth, three grand probably would improve your circumstances.

Hey Siri, how much is three grand worth if you eat cheesecloth for dinner? Oh shit, no, not me. How much is three grams worth if you eat cheesecloth for dinner? No, Siri. Oh shit. I just ordered 200 pounds of cheesecloth from Amazon. God damn it. I just ordered three pounds of cheesecloth from Amazon. God damn it. I just ordered three grand of ectoplasm.

So she shows up. They begin the test seances. And before they know it, Helen is communicating with the dead. Spurting out ectoplasm. Everywhere. It's like a loose fire hose. But Harry Price already knows what's going on and he tells her we know that you're barfing up half digested cheesecloth helen denies it

so he says all right to prove us wrong let us x-ray you so we can see that there's nothing in your stomach seems fair now what happened next i think can only properly be told by a testimony from price on the day she refused to be x-rayed her husband went up to her and told her it was painless she jumped up and gave him a smashing blow on the face which sent him reeling then she went for dr william brown who present. He dodged the blow. Mrs. Duncan, without the slightest warning, dashed out onto the street, had an attack of hysteria,

and began to tear her seance garment to pieces. She clutched the railings and screamed and screamed. I leave the reader to visualize the scene. A 17-stone woman, clad in black satin tights, locked to the railings, screaming at the top of her voice. A crowd collected and the police arrived. We got back to the laboratory and at once she demanded to be x-rayed. In reply we asked her husband to turn out his pockets. He refused and would not allow us to search him. There is no question that his wife had passed him the cheese Oh, shit. He really... He went in.

That was a low blow there. Listen, Mr. Price, you know, let. That was a low blow there. I mean. Mr. Price, you know, let's not bring weight into this. All right. No derogatory terms. He did it twice. He did. Is she a crook?

You betcha. Of course. Is she a scoundrel? A weasel? A con man? Woman? Yeah. All of the above.

But the weight is irrelevant. So, let me get it right so she they said would you be willing to be x-rayed for the purposes of this test and she then went primal and swung at two scientists yeah and i think she punched her own husband in the nose oh yeah and then took a swing at the scientists ah interesting we don't know what this time diversion tactic it's pretty great yeah this could be this the spirits of the underworld um you know coming through her in some form we don't know look this is an unusual case this week and hopefully you'll see why but we're essentially flipping the script

we're we're getting the nonsense out of the way and we're going to conclude with the paranormal i'm creating a reasonable doubt and by the end it's going to be gone the years continued and despite the ridicule doubt and also being fined a number of times for fraud helen duncan continued her work as a pretty successful medium. In the late 1930s, when World War II was kicking off, Helen Duncan was conducting seances in small groups and pubs all over Scotland. But little did she know that one of these seances would not only end her career, but also turn her into a prime target for the British Secret Service. Whoa.

The website British Paranormal wrote, It was 1941, and the country was facing some of the darkest days of the Second World War. Helen Duncan had traveled to Scotland to conduct a seance in Edinburgh. Unbeknownst to Duncan, her audience on the night included the head of military intelligence in Scotland what? I don't know that seems unlikely I guess you know even the head of military

intelligence has to have a night off in the pub you know I like to imagine that he dressed up as like a hippie hey my fellow free thinkers pretty cool to come and see a real a real witch huh uh we don't actually call them witches they're referred to as a they're referred to as mediums sir oh yeah medium oh they call me a large then have you ever been to one of these salons before oh a ton yeah

you don't look like you're from around here. Well, what are you talking about? Yeah, I mean, I'm from the next town over, Glasgow. I can see you're still wearing a lot of your military pins. Oh, f***. These are pins from serving in the Paranormal wars, don't you know? Really? That looks like a purple heart. That's a medal of honor.

It's a purple ghost. I had to kill a lot of ghosts to get one of those. This one just says, best soldier ever. And it looks like you made it yourself. Right, soldier in the under... in the... in the battle for... Oh, f*** it, you're all arrested!

How could he not answer make up the lie for three questions if he thought he was going to be there the whole night I didn't think I'd be getting this degree of interrogation from a bunch of hippie assholes so Helen is deep into the seance calling upon the dead talking to spirits

when all of a sudden she pauses. Oh no! What a terrible tragedy! I can feel the pain of many souls just lost. They're drowning, choking in the water. The audience seems confused.

Helen said, Ladies and gentlemen, the Royal Naval Destroyer HMS Hood has been sunk. Everybody's dead. Helen said, What? Obviously the military officer spat out his cocktail. Where did that come from? Yeah, that seems like an insanely specific, authoritative statement. Well, the military officer knew about the HMS Hood, but he hadn't heard any news of it sinking at all. But this shook him enough that he decided

to contact his office in London, which I wish to God we had a recording of. They pick up the phone. You said you had an unbelievably important message to communicate. It is four in the morning. unbelievably important message to communicate. It is four in the morning. Does he hear bottles clinking on the other end? Listen, I know you guys. I know you guys run a pretty, pretty sharp intel operation over there.

So it's very late. If you could get to the point. But I've just been in a pub with a witch. She told me that the HMS Hood has been sunk. Ka-bloop. By Germans? By rival wizards? We don't know. Sir, have you been drinking by any chance?

Maybe the potions I've been consuming have made me a little intoxicated. You drank the witch's potions. Was it some sort of aquatic spell that pierced the vessel? We'll never know. I can hear whiskey glasses clinking in the background. Potion glasses! Whiskey potions! I mean

potions potions! Or just potions! The website continues. Two days later, it emerged that the ship had indeed been lost hours before the seance took place. As a result of her encounter with the Brigadier Duncan became the focus of much attention from the British military. She was covertly monitored and investigated. Military personnel would attend her

seances undercover monitoring who she claimed to be conversing with. Whoa. It got to the point where they were just convinced that she was a spy or was had some sort of link to the military on either side. Yeah. And they were just getting all this information. And they were just getting all this information. I guess if you believe confidently enough that magic isn't real, then the only logical explanation is that she's getting this information from somewhere. It's all pretty far-fetched.

Yeah. I mean, it's pretty insane that they believed this enough that they sent a number of military personnel to go to her shows, basically, and get blitzed and see if she actually can talk to the dead i mean there's also like such a culture of paranoia at this time like whenever it's war time there's like a big worry that there's spies on every corner from other countries yeah you know they're probably listening to her scottish accent like, is that a little German I hear in there? You son of a bitch.

While she continued to conduct seances despite the surveillance she was under, on one occasion in Portsmouth, she allegedly made contact with a deceased sailor who was said to be wearing the uniform of the HMS Barham. The spirit advised that the Barham had been torpedoed and gone down with all hands. The sailor's spirit, who identified himself as Sid, claimed he'd been burned to death in the explosions. It turned out that not only had the Barham been torpedoed and sunk, only a handful of British military intelligence personnel were aware of this at the time of the seance. The news hadn't even been passed on to the families of the lost sailors.

When the full news of the sinking finally appeared in the Times, three months after the seance, it emerged that the Barham's crew had indeed included a sailor named Sid who had lived in the same street that hosted Helen Duncan's seance. Whoa, it's all going crazy, guys. So what you're saying is? I'm saying wizards are real. Magic is real. Hogwarts, you bet your ass is real dementors hopefully not hopefully not they're pretty scary um what's the blonde boy malfoy you bet he's real ron debatable what you're saying is she is either a legitimate medium yeah or this goes all the way to the top others either she is a psychic or she torpedoed this boat herself and spoke to sid any last words got his last words then twisted his neck i don't know i don't know how this is happening i mean how insane is it it's a pretty big coincidence to get all these facts

right do the seance with a sailor named sid and then there was a sailor named Sid on the boat who lived on the same street that hosted the seance where you talked about him. That's crazy. That is crazy. Helen Duncan was put under intense surveillance. And by this point, I'm assuming half of the audience in the pub for her seances are undercover military officers. The entire front row is 50-year-old man with mustaches and English accents. Oh, so I'm detecting the spirit of a lost woman. Does anyone have...

Talk about the war! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! How will we defeat Germany? they fully believe it or now i also love the idea of sending in all these military officers to find out all this top secret intel discover whether she's a spy and within five minutes lieutenant lance mcarthur is in the front row just be like tell me will i ever marry he's like completely bought into it him and all the boys are just like when will i find love julia does she wait for me across the water julia no she was on board the hms rogers julia i told you to stay put she got torpedoed pretty bad i mean we joke but uh

during one of these seances an undercover officer claimed that the spirit of his mother materialized in front of him in ghost form holy shit she's turning the military against themselves it eventually went on for long enough that they were like all right this is a piss take and they arrested helen for treason and spying that's crazy but without any real evidence as to how she received the information they didn't really have a case against her so they changed the charges to prosecution under the 1735 witchcraft act oh my god you know that uh there was lance mcarthur was in the library at 1 a.m burning the midnight oil just being like they're gonna let her out in six hours if i don't do something

yeah wait a minute maybe just maybe he the music starts playing he goes to the the darkest dustiest part of the library he's got the the candle in his hand. Lifts down an old book called Old Ass Laws. Blows the dust off the cover. It's perfect. And he finds it. He finds the law. I mean, this seems like one of those laws that, yeah, just outdated but were never repealed. I'm just going to freaking, I'm going to Google some old laws.

All right, so we already got some weird ones right off the bat. All beached whales must be offered to the reigning monarch. Yeah, I think I've heard that one. Why would you even want one? It's dead. Are you going to eat it? Probably. That's pretty sick.

MPs are not allowed to wear armor in parliament. I can believe that. I want to see Jeremy Corbyn in some plus 23 uh valiance armor this is crazy with a two-handed broadsword it is illegal to handle a salmon in suspicious circumstances suspicious circumstances like in a trench coat without anything else on underneath the trench coat that's pretty weird that's a pretty suspicious circumstance i mean these obviously come from a time when creating laws was a bit like donald trump's tweets you can just smash them out like 25 and in 30 minutes yeah and just like you don't really think about them too much get them out there

spelling mistakes and all exactly and that's the kind of way that i want the world to be run all right if i was in charge i would i would toss out rules like they're nothing your country's national motto would be fast and loose yeah fast and loose welcome Welcome to Powers Nation. Right? Rule number one. F*** the rules. Rule number two. There's a couple more. So stay tuned. So stay tuned. But also, you know.

Laws three and four coming soon. F*** the rules. But also listen up. Because some of these are really important. Rule two. If it feels good, do it. Even if it's against the rules. Rule number three.

Thou shalt not disobey the laws of the land even if it feels good that's laws not rules though break the rules as i said rule one the rules but the laws obey them that's rule four okay it's getting we're only four deep and it's gone pretty confusing most countries have hundreds of laws law five this world is lawless all right if you want a rule obey the rules okay all right you just said the rules no i said the i said you did say the rule i said rule number one the rules but there's a lot of laws in place that need to be obeyed all right so just listen up all right okay rule number eight we just skipped six through seven is illegal to handle salmon suspiciously in public you just took

an obscure uk law that one i actually agree with that one i feel like i'm glad is still in power i don't want an old man rule nine person rule nine the salmon rule do whatever you want with that shit flap it around in someone's face put it up your ass nobody cares nobody gives a shit all mps must wear armor while the rules so i mean that's basically all the laws of the powers nation aka the paranormal commune do let us know if you have any suggestions we'd really appreciate that i would like people to tweet us their laws they're 100 please okay back into the case helen was arrested they didn't have any evidence for a case against her so they changed the charges to prosecution under the 1735 witchcraft act the official charge against her was that she lied and claimed to make contact with spirits,

which apparently was a criminal offense under the act that was apparently still law. Helen offered to demonstrate her spiritual powers in the courtroom, but was found guilty. Really? I was going to say, because you got to listen. Lots of people doubted her over these years. Yeah. Said that she was a crackpot she was a scam artist you gotta appreciate the gumption of someone who gets sent down for witchcraft

and then uh doesn't come clean and go look it's all a bunch of bullcrap i was eating cheesecloth for breakfast lunch and goddamn dinner yeah that's pretty ballsy to be pretty much on your way to prison yeah and instead of being like i made it all up you say let me cast a spell right now they say any last words you're like witches forever it was also um very smart of them uh to not let her demonstrate her powers uh before they arrested her because that's how a lot of witches get free we've talked about it on the show before yeah it's like giving them just a free pass and they'll just wingardium leviosa or some shit the courtroom away you said it uh so great in the previous episodes you don't ask a witch if they have any last words because they cast spells via

words that's it that's their bullets you know don't let them have a gun yeah well she was locked away in prison until the war had been won when she was released in 1945 she promised to stop conducting seances but was arrested during another one 11 years later i assume she was doing them throughout that entire 11 years they didn't just catch her on her first one she's like all right i know i promised i wasn't gonna do it but it's been 11 years i feel like you know i'm gonna be a little weird tonight let's do a seance she lights one candle freeze fbi oh shit they got me they burst through the windows and like a hundred ghosts are like disappearing into the walls and floorboards duncan was one of the last people convicted

under the witchcraft act of 1735 which was a law that made falsely claiming to sort of talk to spirits a crime that's what it was that doesn't sound like what it was in the beginning though i think that's a pretty convenient rewrite i think obviously a lot of the earlier witchcraft acts were mainly about burning witches yeah and then when i think when they were abolished this one was pretty much in effect that was like okay well if witches aren't real it's also now illegal to lie and say you're a witch. Okay. I keep saying witch.

I shouldn't say witch because it's not witch. It's medium. But it still involves falsely talking to spirits and conjuring up spirits, which falls under, I guess, witchcraft. Okay. Does this make sense? You look confused. Okay. And I don't plan on elaborating.

Why'd you ask i just have to remind myself that whilst we do have mediums today that is presumably because they repealed this act yeah this this this actually was one of the cases that um was a huge part of repealing that act right but they kind of realized this is nonsense we shouldn't really be locking people up for this no if you want to pay someone to talk to spirits that's fine the weird thing is is that they let her go after the war was won what happened if they didn't win the war because listen during the war effort people forget but everything went into the war effort there was like 99 your like tax rate was like 99 like every every dime you made went into the war effort there was like 99 your like tax rate was like 99 like every every dime you made went into it yeah all the food went into all the steel scrap metal everything yeah i like

to imagine they were like we cannot risk a single witch on the streets they will cast a spell and a soldier was like bullet we'll do a loop the loop and shoot his friend in the head or something so just lock him up we'll think about it after the war yeah which i think is frankly stupid all right you need every advantage that you can get in in war there's no rules put helen on the front line that's what i'm saying brother you know oh while they're down low looking for all the troops they hear the thunderous roar of a broomstick ripping through the air at sonic speeds. Oh, you just shot one of the American soldiers.

He drops dead. Helen rises his body back up from the dead. He keeps marching forward like it's goddamn bed knobs and broomsticks. They're shooting ghost armor that is just not stopping. Her little witch's black cat is straight up clawing eyes out. Oh, your troops are cold at night. How about 50 feet of cheese cloth to wrap up in? So the cold doesn't get you.

That's right. She's a fraudster again. Or just the fact that she, right. She called the HMS hood going down. Yeah. How about they go? Listen, how about you give us a couple hours heads up next time and we avoid the torpedoes? You know, something along those lines. It's a simple conversation.

But again, as you said, it's a war. People are on the defense. People are scared. It's easier sometimes to lock these people away than it is to weaponize them. It's true. That's pretty much the whole case. Thank you so much to britishparanormal.co.uk for a lot of the info on this case that I found. They're very helpful in gathering a lot about the story.

That's a pretty crazy history. You don't want that to get lost. Yeah. And you see what I mean here about this being kind of a weird episode of the podcast, where we started with a person who was essentially outed for being a fraud a number of times but then eventually down the line developed into someone who possessed such convincing paranormal powers that they were arrested for either being a witch or being a traitor or a spy to their own country. That means you're really good at what you do. It's an unbelievably surreal case.

Just the picture of having those British military guys going to these seances. It's insane. That's such a weird thing that also definitely really happened as well. But again, I guess if there was even a slight possibility that she was a spy they probably wanted to find that out immediately yeah i don't know what do you think what are your thoughts um like you say very bizarre and interesting that this is a topsy-turvy case usually how our investigations go is here's a little bit about how it started. Here's the paranormal shit that happened. Whoa, this is crazy.

Could this be real? And then usually it starts going downhill as soon as we introduce our first witness. Yeah, yeah. They start seeming a little bit crazy. We look into their past. We find some unfortunate truths about them. Yeah. Usually lots of lies and deceit and uh it's a

bit like a scooby-doo episode usually it's pretty clear who's under the mask at the end of course and it's always the business owner or something uh whereas in this case we've got the opposite we've got someone whose character is destroyed at the very beginning yet like you say their powers are so self-evident from that point on it literally leads to a official governmental legal verdict yeah as to the truth of their paranormal claims i mean if you're being arrested in the 1930s 1940s for being a witch you're either really a witch or really good at pretending to be a witch um and i think that's what we have to kind of decide today is helen duncan truly a medium who can communicate with the dead or is she a spy is she a uh uh is she a narc because i was gonna say this is the bit we don't understand

how did she know about the hms hood yes yeah i did a little bit more research into that and it seems like the only um explanation as to how she would know any of this is that some of the information around these very specific uh details weren't quite as top secret as maybe british paranormal.co.uk had implied right it still might not have been um disclosed to the public or released in newspapers but but if like it's if you're in a small community in scotland and you live on the same street as sid yeah as soon as the family know maybe you find out yeah you know word of mouth like these things do spread like people would tell stories people get telegrams things like that and yeah as you said in a small town you know it's all people are going to talk about

is the war yeah in the case of sid i mean that's a pretty weird one it said that sid lived on the same street that was hosting helen duncan's seance it didn't necessarily say that that's where helen duncan lived or that she knew sid uh that's why i thought that one was kind of weird and cool because it's like hey this is just a coincidence that she's in a pub by where this guy lived so if she's getting so like some spiritual vibes or like the visions of someone who's perished, it makes sense that it's the guy who lived 10 feet away from this pub. But it also sounds a little bit like she overheard Sid's grandmother in the street that day

and was like, f***, I'm writing that into tonight's seance. Honestly, you never know. Also, Sid, I think, is a very safe name when it goes to anyone who is involved with oceanic travel i think sid is pretty much what i would go to as well right it's a very piratey name yeah naval name that's fair yeah i think when we're coming down on a conclusion to this case it's not so much the uh paranormal activity that was successful and convincing that we need to think about it's the cheesecloth it's the x-rays you we it's we can't forget about that we can't forget that whenever they wanted to x-ray her

she attacked her own husband and two scientists ran out into the street flipped out yeah gave the evidence to her husband and then tried to lie about it yeah and again as i said i mean she she'd been arrested for fraud a number of times even before uh the incidents in the 1930s where she was predicting facts about the war. So it's already a pretty muddy history. I don't really think we need to think about this one too much. I'm going to go ahead and assume that we're both on the same page here. I think so. I think it's a no this week for Helen Duncan being a, she's referred to as the Blitz Witch.

Wow. Pretty cool name. It's a very cool name to be fair. Makes it sound like she was doing the bombing. It's a no. It's referred to as the blitz witch wow pretty cool name it's a very cool name to be fair it's on like she was doing the bombing it's a no it's gonna be a no it's gonna be a no for me dang it's a double no folks but wow what a story and thank you so much to shane rafferty for emailing this one in we've had some amazing email suggestions actually uh in the last couple weeks and we love reading them so uh so keep sending them in guys thank you so much for listening to this episode of this paranormal life

look folks it's not always going to be a debate every week all right sometimes it's a pretty open and shut case that's actually rule number 11 is sometimes it's simple and this today that's just an idea today was simple all right rule number 12 just go for it okay that's borderline the nike slogan no the nike slogan is rule number 12 okay just do it you that was rule number 12 both times which is it some it changes it's day to day sometimes rule number 12 is change every rule number 13 the rules will change and laws will change depending on the day by the way the days don't matter f**k it every day is friday so they do or don't change if every day is friday it never changes day it does well it eventually it goes from like friday, Friday 2, then Friday 1A, Friday 1AB, Friday 2A, then 2AB.

This is insanity. But then, rule number 13. Okay. The rules don't matter. Every day. A lot of these seem to be like saying, f*** it, there's no rules. And then quickly reinstating a whole bunch of rules to make up for the fact that you just said f*** it. Rule number 14.

If you liked this podcast you have to support us on patreon because that's where we make all our money who is in this country by the way just me now but rule number 15 i want friends is and i think is it a place that's well it's more of like a state of mind now but it's a popular place and it's only going to get bigger. And if people, the reason I'm sure if it's just you, unless you leave your own nation, honestly, I'm thinking about it.

I'm thinking about it. Cause things are getting a little complex. Quite a lot of rules. There's a lot of rules to follow. I'm feeling boxed in around here. I mean, if you, if you don't follow the rules,

what happens? Well, I mean, it's fine from a legal standpoint because rule number 16, f*** the rules, right? I'm pretty sure rules 11 through 15 were also f*** the rules. But I'm just a little worried because rule number 12 is don't break the law. You've already told us 12 twice.

But that was on Friday, B21. This is, what is this? What's today? This is the same day today's monday i said it's 30 seconds ago monday he said it's always friday if you like the show and you like the rules or don't like the rules make sure to support us on patreon where from as little as two bucks a month you can get your name shouted out on the podcast. And for five bucks a month. And we're talking bucks here. American bucks.

If you live in the UK, what is that, like three pounds? Something like that. It's nothing. You can get access to a whole bunch of bonus episodes where we investigate stuff that we could never investigate on the main podcast. And to give you guys a little taster for what those bonus episodes are like here's a clip from this month's episode what i think it watered down to was a program which was essentially a set of tapes or i guess now mp3s that you would listen to that were instructional videos that would guide you through the gateway process which was a way of unlocking your mind

hemi-syncing your brain and being able to perform all these insane uh abilities like psycho diving astral projection disappearing into the fourth dimension so what you're saying is if we can get a hold of these mp3s we could upload them to our podcast feed and hemi-sync the entire paranormal nation at once the police are at the door oh shit all right i gotta blast through these tapes and learn how to teleport it's like the matrix we're trying to like zap out of the room before they bust in i also love the thought that we're being swatted right now so quickly but we're trying to achieve enlightenment in like five minutes put in the first tape what did the buddha say again the first tape's like first you must clear

your mind it's like skip forward skip forward skip forward we skip forward 10 tracks now turn and ask the alien. Where did he go back? Go back far stuff to tape up your ass will listen in prison The SWAT team burst down the doors, and it's just you and me sitting cross-legged so long assholes We close our eyes and nothing out beat us with a baton beat us with a baton oh my god those bonus episodes man they are there you can't miss them it's funny classic thank you so much to all of our supporters if you do support us on the two dollar tier as we said you get a shout out right here on the podcast so thank you too thank you too ishan gurung how's it Gurung? Ishan. Listen.

Wow. There's like, listen. I know what they've been saying on the streets about you, Ishan. You know. What have they been saying? Everyone's saying. But listen, I don't. Whatever everyone says about you, I don't think that. All right.

What do you. Whatever one. You keep saying a lot of people are saying. Well, I just hear a lot of stuff here and there. Good stuff? Bad stuff? No, really. Oh, boy.

But, you know, I don't personally think it. There's just a lot of idle old friends in the military. Oh. They are saying that. That's weird. They're thinking of bringing back that old ass law. The Witch Act? The Witchcraft Act?

Ishan. Oh, my gosh. Yeah gosh yeah ishan throw away your cauldrons break out all your chopsticks get rid they will think it is a wand because whilst i don't think you deserve to be arrested i know you have the cauldrons i know you're very much a witch so they are a witch you did you did say that of course okay yeah but you know i'm just saying they don't deserve nobody does nobody does so uh lay low for a little while, you know, I'm just saying they don't deserve it. Nobody does. Nobody does. So lay low for a little while. Maybe, you know, don't be mixing your potions in public.

Thanks also to Alex Slater. Everyone always knows Darth Vader, but no one talks about Darth Slater. Whoa. Yeah, he was, I mean, he was equally evil. He was like a bad dude. I guess it was a little bit less exciting when he was like rook i am your uncle it doesn't have one degree of separation it doesn't have that same kind of because then luke's like i don't give a shit who's my dad he's like well i can't i don't

want to tell you darth should tell you that i mean it's darth oh Darth, bro, I'm so sorry. Oh my god. He should have been the one. I don't even know why I'm here. I should be on Tatooine kicking a Wookiee in the nuts. I'm gonna leave, man. I was never one for kids. In many ways, I feel like you're my son, but...

Well, I'm not. Just don't tell your sister, Leia. Leia's my sister? Oh, shit. Oh, man. Vader's going to kill me. Thank you, Darth Slater. Thanks also to Jonathan Power.

Jonathan, I know a member of the Powers Nation when I hear it. Glad to hear you're part of the country where there are no laws. I don't know if he's in the country. His second name is Power. Okay. And there's only two names in the Powers Nation. So only people with... Okay, go on.

Power and Powers. You would know that if you'd read the rules. Well, I don't need to because I don't have that name, so I'm never going to be in the nation. You can change it. You can change it. We do allow name changes. So it's all one family?

That's the idea? It's not. It's just me and Jonathan sitting on a rock yelling rules at each other. It's a pretty cool place. I'm glad Jonathan's here. Jonathan's pretty controlling. Yeah, he makes up a lot of the rules. I'm pretty against it.

Thanks also to Ms. Boogie. Ms. Boogie is a little bit of an unfortunate name because she really has two left feet. I swear to God. This is the most graceless person on a dance floor you've ever seen in your life. Oh, not literally. We talk about a lot of paranormal cryptids. I didn't know if this was like a literal infliction or this was just she can't dance. Well, she is a cryptid, but just also can't dance.

She's got two left hooves. but just also can't dance. She's got two left hooves. Because, granted, put the Sasquatch, put the Chupacabra, fill in the blank on a dance floor, you play like a jumping track, like a Bruno Mars uptown funk. Oh, they're popping off. Of course.

It's like an inbuilt reaction. They start popping and locking, shuffling and stuff. But Ms. Boogie, I think that was really what gave it away is to her being from another planet or some shit can't dance no rhythm no funk at all even greys can dance thanks also to esteban fernandez this person um actually tried to join rory's nation but esteban only lasted fernandez uh they got through, I think, after the eighth Friday, 1A through 9B. Sure. They got pretty confused and left. Yeah.

And rule number 27, you have to last at least 10 days to be considered a full member of the Powers Nation. Which is an unbelievably low-barred entry but obviously no one's done it yeah just me and jonathan right and we're both thinking of leaving what yeah even jonathan it's like starting a company or something to be like how's it going he's like we're thinking of leaving yeah you're welcome who's that leave no one thanks also to lucy harrison well if it isn't Lucy Juicy. You know how humans are made up of 60% water? Yeah, something like that, right?

She's made up of 60% Dr. Pepper. Oh, some sort of Peter Parker bit by a Dr. Pepper can. You would have thought juice, right, with a name like Juicy Lucy. But no, 60% Dr. Pepper pepper 40 juice so all liquid all liquid basically half dr pepper half sunny delight so she's a cocktail she is a delicious icy cold beverage on a sunny day not at all human no but refreshing uh you know, comforting, delicious. Oh, I see here. It's a drinks corporation, Lucy Corp.

Yeah, Juicy Lucy Corp. Thank you for your donation. Thanks also to Chris Barnes. Jesus, Chris. Close the door when you enter the paranormal commune. What were you raised in, a Barnes? Oh! Seriously, though, if you could just make sure all the locks are sealed and the door is bolted

shut. What rule is that? That's not for the Powers Nation, that's for the paranormal community. Oh, okay. Alright, and yes, there's a bit of a crisscross. I hope there isn't. And an overlap in laws and rules. There better not be.

But just, you know, make sure the door is shut. Because we've had a couple runners recently and we just want to make sure everyone's safe from the outside. Because the outside's dangerous. It is. We always invite people into the commune, but we don't often let people know about the dangers in the immediate surroundings of the commune. Outside the safe walls of the commune is a lawless,

rule-less dystopia. You don't want to be a part of it. Called Powers Nation. Powers Nation is basically the f***ing moat that surrounds the paranormal commune. Where the rejects from the commune live. It's the demilitarized zone between the commune and the rest of the world. Thanks also to Kate Task. Me and Kate went

on a date and it went a little badly so I think we need to clean the slate. Oh. Yeah. Why would you need to clean the slate? Honestly, I was doing that for the rhyme. I don't really want to get into the situation but you've twisted my arm. We scheduled the date for uh 9 p.m okay i show up 11 30 head to toe covered in cryptid blood i'm fresh

off the hunt of a beast um but you still want dinner i still want dinner i told her to wait for me and she did that was very polite of her um she said what are you hungry for and i said this and i slapped down the head of an enchanted wilder beast yeah that's just not good too hard as well smash the plate enchanted blood went all over her which turns out burns human skin oh i didn't know that i was head to toe in a hazmat suit. Probably should have given her one at the start of the night. That would have made things a bit clearer. It sounds like you couldn't wipe the slate if you wanted to.

Well, sure. It's pretty hard to get enchanted blood off of anything. But, Kate, if you're willing to give me a second chance. She's messaged. She isn't. That's fair. Thanks also to Venenatus. You're willing to give me a second chance? She's messaged. She isn't. That's fair. Thanks also to Venenatus.

That sounds like the name of a certified badass rule breaker. The kind of person that belongs in the Powers Nation. Welcome aboard. But you also obviously need someone who can keep up with hundreds of shifting rules day by day. True. Very true. And i expect you to obey them all uh if they require you to obey them am i making sense no you're like don't ask that when you know you're not like it's a tipsy topsy world every day is friday there's a bunch of rules and if you don't like it stay yeah that you're

right that is topsy-turvy yeah it's it's unconventional it flips the regular world your safe zone your little snowflake bubble into into into my world all right so if that sounds like your cup of tea it doesn't't. Well, that hurt, honestly. I'm not going to pretend like it didn't. I don't know what to say. I know I joke a lot about the rules, but attendance is down. Jonathan's gone. It's just me.

He's gone? He left day one. He got admitted. He couldn't make it to day ten. Ten minutes ago. He left day one. I made it to rule number three, and he just 180'd my strap back out the door. He said, I'm going back to France.

Things made more sense in France. And I was like, Jonathan, wait! Rule 12. Just do it. He's gone. No, Jonathan! He's like, he's like, you said rule 12 was try your best or some shit. Go for it! Rule 12 was go

for it. Go for it. Not a not a rule not a law thanks also to stuart myatt you know what stuart myatt have what it takes to be a lawyer in the powers nation thank you listen it's a very burgeoning new ever-changing field but someone needs to lay down the law and uh and intricately understand the legal code better than even um powers himself does well i think that's great because you know there's a lot of laws and there's a lot of rules and i'm the ruler so we need a law a lawyer and with all these rules it's probably going to be a lot of lawsuits that's true especially with the illegal shit that's going on at the moment and rule suits if that's a thing sure could you drop that down last but not least thanks so much to jake davies

jake davies has rabies he's foaming at the mouth for paranormal content he we just can't give him enough we're like here's a bonus episode you know here's a shout out on the podcast and he's like not enough it's almost as if it that isn't what he needs it's almost as if he needs some kind of vaccine something to cure the rabies yeah he keeps saying like medicine doctor and i'm like okay sure like so here's a bonus episode on the witch doctors of the ancient now hospital okay well we there's a haunted hospital in uh south korea right now i mean his whispers are getting fainter and fainter every day so hopefully uh this month's bonus episode will finally heal him it It's pretty funny, so hopefully it will. Yeah, I mean, we're trying our best.

We're doing all we can do. Thank you to everyone that we shouted out for listening to this week's episode. I hope you enjoyed it. We had a blast recording it, as always. And, hey, there's nothing left to say, but we will see you next week for another episode of This Paranormal Life.