Download or read book The Strange Case of Hellish Nell written by Nina Shandler and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2009-03-25 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On March 23, 1944, as the Allied Forces were preparing for D-Day, Helen Duncan -- "Nell" to her six children and four grandchildren and "Hellish Nell" to her detractors -- stood in the dock of Britain's highest criminal court accused of witchcraft! At the time of her arrest, Helen Duncan was Britain's most controversial psychic, a celebrity medium with a notorious reputation. During her seances, she channeled spirits who spoke from the world beyond, and on a few occasions, her "spirit" seemed to know too much: Helen's seances were accurately revealing top-secret British ship movements. Intelligence authorities wanted "Hellish Nell" silenced. Using diaries, personal papers, interviews, and declassified documents, Nina Shandler resurrects this strange episode and explores the unanswered questions surrounding the trial: Did "Hellish Nell" channel spirits of the dead who gave away wartime secrets? Was she a calculating charlatan or the innocent target of obsessive wartime secrecy? Why did the Director of Public Prosecutions try her as a witch, and not a spy? Sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, The Strange Case of Hellish Nell is a true crime tale laced with psychic phenomena and wartime intrigue.
Download or read book Hellish Nell written by Malcolm Gaskill and published by Penguin Press. This book was released on 2023-10-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the last criminal trials using the 1735 Witchcraft Act was, improbably, in London in 1944. The accused was Helen Duncan, a middle-aged Scotswoman. This is her extraordinary story. Helen Duncan - known since childhood as 'Hellish Nell', for her uncontainable nature - was one of the most popular mediums of the twentieth century, holding seances around the country where she was believed to manifest the spirits of the dead. What happens when we die? It was the question of the age for a generation which had endured one world war and now was living through another. Mrs Duncan's seances offered an answer. But when she started foretelling naval disasters, she also attracted the unwelcome attention of the secret service. And so just weeks before the Normandy landings, absurdly, anachronistically, she was prosecuted for witchcraft and jailed. Was Nell a conjurer, a martyr or a security risk? Hellish Nell was first published in 2001 to widespread acclaim. It remains in this revised edition a fascinating window into the unsettled spiritual and psychological mood of the times: a sensational tale of spectacle, credulity and cruelty, and of Britain's last witch.
Download or read book Leaves from a Psychist s Case book written by Harry Price and published by . This book was released on 1933 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Accused written by Willow Winsham and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2016-09-19 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true stories of eleven notorious women, across five centuries, who were feared, victimized, and condemned for witchcraft in the British Isles. Beginning with the late Middle Ages—from Ireland to Hampshire—hundreds of women were accused of spellcasting, wicked seduction, murder, and consorting with the devil. Most were fated for the gallows or the stake. What did it mean for these prisoners to stand accused? What were they really guilty of? And by whom were they persecuted? Drawing on a wealth of primary sources including trial documents, church and census records, and the original sensationalist pamphlets describing the crimes, historian Willow Winsham finds the startling answers to these questions. In the process, she resurrects the lives, deaths, and mysteries of eleven women subjected to history’s most notable witch trials. From Irish “sorceress” Alice Kyteler who, in 1324 was the first accused witch on record, to Scottish psychic Helen Duncan who, in 1944, was the last woman imprisoned under Britain’s Witchcraft Act of 1735. Dames, servant girls, aggrieved neighbors, suspect widows, cat ladies, prostitutes, mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters. Accused brings all these victims, and the eras in which they lived and died, back to life in “an incredibly well researched . . . stunning and admirable piece of work, highly recommended” (Terry Tyler, author of the Project Renova series).
Download or read book The Case of Helen Duncan written by Maurice Barbanell and published by . This book was released on 1945 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Family Nobody Wanted written by Helen Doss and published by Northeastern University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-01 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Doss's charming, touching, and at times hilarious chronicle tells how each of the children, representing white, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Mexican, and Native American backgrounds, came to her and husband Carl, a Methodist minister. She writes of the way the "unwanted" feeling was erased with devoted love and understanding and how the children united into one happy family. Her account reads like a novel, with scenes of hard times and triumphs described in vivid prose. The Family Nobody Wanted, which inspired two films, opened doors for other adoptive families and was a popular favorite among parents, young adults, and children for more than thirty years. Now this edition will introduce the classic to a new generation of readers. An epilogue by Helen Doss that updates the family's progress since 1954 will delight the book's loyal legion of fans around the world.
Download or read book Mantel Pieces Royal Bodies and Other Writing from the London Review of Books written by Hilary Mantel and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2020-10-01 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stunning collection of essays and memoir from twice Booker Prize winner and international bestseller Hilary Mantel, author of The Mirror and the Light
Download or read book That Old Black Magic written by Cathi Unsworth and published by Serpent's Tale. This book was released on 2018-03-08 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: April 1943: four boys playing in Hagley Woods, Worcestershire make a gruesome discovery. Inside an enormous elm tree, there is the body of a woman, her mouth stuffed with a length of cloth. As the case goes cold, mysterious graffiti starts going up across the Midlands: 'Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?' To Ross Spooner, a police officer working undercover for spiritualist magazine Two Worlds, the messages hold a sinister meaning. He's been on the track of a German spy ring who have left a trail of black magic and mayhem across England, and this latest murder bears all the hallmarks of an ancient ritual. At the same time, Spooner is investigating the case of Helen Duncan, a medium whose messages from the spirit world contain highly classified information. As the establishment joins ranks against Duncan, Spooner must face demons from his own past, uncover the spies hiding beneath the fabric of wartime society - and confront those who suspect that he, too, may not be all he seems ...
Download or read book Happiness for Beginners written by Katherine Center and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2015-03-24 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As seen on Netflix - from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bodyguard and Hello Stranger Helen Carpenter can’t quite seem to bounce back. Newly divorced at thirty-two, her life has fallen apart beyond her ability to put it together again. So when her annoying younger brother, Duncan, convinces her to sign up for a hardcore wilderness survival course in the backwoods of Wyoming—she hopes it’ll be exactly what she needs. Instead, it’s a disaster. It’s nothing like she wants, or expects, or anticipates. She doesn’t anticipate the surprise summer blizzard, for example—or the blisters, or the rutting elk, or the mean pack of sorority girls. And she especiallydoesn’t anticipate that her annoying brother’s even-more-annoying best friend, Jake, will show up for the exact same course—and distract her, derail her, and . . . kiss her. But it turns out sometimes disaster can teach you exactly the things you need to learn. Like how to keep going, even when you think you can’t. How being scared can make you brave. And how sometimes getting really, really lost is your only hope of getting found. Happiness for Beginners is Katherine Center at her most heart-warming, captivating best—a nourishing, page-turning, up-all-night read about how to get back up. It’s a story that looks at how our struggles lead us to our strengths. How love is always worth it. And how the more good things we look for, the more we find.
Download or read book The Ruin of All Witches written by Malcolm Gaskill and published by Random House. This book was released on 2024-08-20 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping story of a family tragedy brought about by witch-hunting in Puritan New England that combines history, anthropology, sociology, politics, theology and psychology. “The best and most enjoyable kind of history writing. Malcolm Gaskill goes to meet the past on its own terms and in its own place…Thought-provoking and absorbing." —Hilary Mantel, best-selling author of Wolf Hall In Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails, property vanishes, and people suffer convulsions as if possessed by demons. A woman is seen wading through the swamp like a lost soul. Disturbing dreams and visions proliferate. Children sicken and die. As tensions rise, rumours spread of witches and heretics and the community becomes tangled in a web of distrust, resentment and denunciation. The finger of suspicion soon falls on a young couple with two small children: the prickly brickmaker, Hugh Parsons, and his troubled wife, Mary. Drawing on rich, previously unexplored source material, Malcolm Gaskill vividly evokes a strange past, one where lives were steeped in the divine and the diabolic, in omens, curses and enchantments. The Ruin of All Witches captures an entire society caught in agonized transition between superstition and enlightenment, tradition and innovation.
Download or read book The Trial of Mrs Duncan written by C. E. Bechhofer Roberts and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2022-10-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Download or read book Spellbound written by Sophie Page and published by Ashmolean Museum Oxford. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spellbound' explores the concept of 'magical thinking', which describes how people in all ages and cultures have sought to connect with an unseen world of perceived power. This concept of magical thinking is used here to explore the history of medicine and the mind, focusing in particular on magic's secular expressions. Spells, magical objects and rituals are engines of hope, and hope is essential to physical and mental health, indeed to survival. These ideas are explored and conveyed through the extraordinary visual culture of magic, offering an introduction to diverse magical objects, from the exquisite, such as engraved rings and illuminated manuscripts, to the unsettling - a shoe embedded in a wall or a bull's heart pierced with nails. Exhibition: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (31.08.2018 -- 06.01.2019)
Download or read book How Change Happens written by Duncan Green and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "DLP, Developmental Leadership Program; Australian Aid; Oxfam."
Download or read book Witchcraft A Very Short Introduction written by Malcolm Gaskill and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-03-25 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Witchcraft is a subject that fascinates us all, and everyone knows what a witch is - or do they? From childhood most of us develop a sense of the mysterious, malign person, usually an old woman. Historically, too, we recognize witch-hunting as a feature of pre-modern societies. But why do witches still feature so heavily in our cultures and consciousness? From Halloween to superstitions, and literary references such as Faust and even Harry Potter, witches still feature heavily in our society. In this Very Short Introduction Malcolm Gaskill challenges all of this, and argues that what we think we know is, in fact, wrong. Taking a historical perspective from the ancient world to contemporary paganism, Gaskill reveals how witchcraft has meant different things to different people and that in every age it has raised questions about the distinction between fantasy and reality, faith and proof. Telling stories, delving into court records, and challenging myths, Gaskill examines the witch-hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and explores the reinvention of witchcraft - as history, religion, fiction, and metaphor. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book American Hauntings written by Troy Taylor and published by Whitechapel Productions. This book was released on 2017-04-13 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the mediums of Spiritualism's golden age to the ghost hunters of the modern era, Taylor shines a light on the phantasms and frauds of the past, the first researchers who dared to investigate the unknown, and the stories and events that galvanized the pubic and created the paranormal field that we know today.
Download or read book Untranslatability written by Duncan Large and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-07-27 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first of its kind to explore the notion of untranslatability from a wide variety of interdisciplinary perspectives and its implications within the broader context of translation studies. Featuring contributions from both leading authorities and emerging scholars in the field, the book looks to go beyond traditional comparisons of target texts and their sources to more rigorously investigate the myriad ways in which the term untranslatability is both conceptualized and applied. The first half of the volume focuses on untranslatability as a theoretical or philosophical construct, both to ground and extend the term’s conceptual remit, while the second half is composed of case studies in which the term is applied and contextualized in a diverse set of literary text types and genres, including poetry, philosophical works, song lyrics, memoir, and scripture. A final chapter examines untranslatability in the real world and the challenges it brings in practical contexts. Extending the conversation in this burgeoning contemporary debate, this volume is key reading for graduate students and researchers in translation studies, comparative literature, gender studies, and philosophy of language. The editors are grateful to the University of East Anglia Faculty of Arts and Humanities, who supported the book with a publication grant.
Download or read book War Brides written by Helen Bryan and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1939 the lives of five women are about to collide in the sleepy little village of Crowmarsh Priors.Evangeline has eloped from New Orleans with a naval captain, Alice is resigned to life as the parish spinster, Elsie is evacuated from the East End to be a maid for Lady Marchmont, Tanni has fled from Vienna with her newborn son, and high-spirited Frances is to see out the war with her godmother. Together these five women face hardship, passion and danger, and form a bond that sees them through their darkest hours, and lasts for the rest of their lives.
