About Helen
Helen Duncan Materialization Medium
Helen was one of the most remarkable and talented materialization mediums of her time. To date, there is no one who has been able to come close to what Helen could do.
Helen's Life
Victoria Helen McCrae MacFarlane was born on the 25th November 1897at Back Row in Callander, Perthshire, Scotland to Isabella and Archibald MacFarlane. Her father’s occupation was a master slater. She was the fourth eldest daughter and one of eight children.
On 27th May 1916, she wed Henry Horne Anderson Duncan. After her marriage, she was known as Nell (or Nellie) Duncan.
As a child, Helen was described as a ‘bonny lass’ but soon began to exhibit some of the psychic abilities that were to cause trouble for her throughout her life.
Once, at school, the teacher wrote some questions on a blackboard and the pupils had to write the answers on their slates. Helen wrote the numbers of the questions down but didn’t know the answers. She prayed for help and to her astonishment the answers appeared on her slate. The teacher saw the answers weren’t in her ‘childish scrawl’ as he put it and accused her of cheating. Helen denied she had copied other children’s answers but couldn’t explain how the answers had appeared.
In another instance, Helen kept thinking of the number ‘1066’. Later, during a history lesson, as the teacher was talking about the Battle of Hastings and wrote 1066 on the blackboard, he suffered a heart-attack.
As both Helen’s parents had female relations who had had the ‘gift’ they were unconcerned by their young daughter’s psychic ability at first as they thought she would grow out of it. However, as Helen grew-up her ability seemed to develop and grow stronger.
Helen’s mother eventually became so concerned that she took her teenage daughter to the local doctor for him to check if there was anything physically wrong with the girl’s eyesight and hearing. The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong. To Helen’s mother’s embarrassment, Helen warned the doctor not to go out that night but he did and his car skidded off the road in a snowstorm.
Helen’s prediction of the village doctor’s demise was condemned by the local Presbyterian minister who accused her of “consorting with the devil”.
This embarrassment for the family coupled to the fact there was no work locally meant Helen left the family home at just 16 years of age.
She went to Dundee where, at the outbreak of World War One, she worked in an ammunitions factory then in a jute factory and later as a nurse.
Whilst working as a nurse, her best friend, Jean Duncan, introduced Helen to her family including her brother Henry Duncan. Apparently, Henry’s first words to Helen were, “So we meet at last.” Both had apparently had visions of each other before they met.
Henry had an interest in the supernatural and instead of suppressing Helen’s talent, encouraged it.
In 1916, the couple married. Henry had been invalided out of the army as rheumatic fever had badly damaged a valve in his heart and he became a cabinet maker. Early married life was a real struggle for the young couple who had little income and an ever-increasing amount of mouths to feed. In total, Helen had six children; Bella, Nan, Lillian, Henry, Peter and Gena as well as two that died in infancy.
During these years, Helen tried to supplement the household income by repairing and washing bed sheets and shirts for one penny an item and also took a job in a bleach mill.
At this time, Helen had a premonition that Henry was in trouble. She rushed to his workshop to find he had suffered a heart-attack. Although she managed to get him the help he needed to save his life, it was obvious he could not work again full-time.
Henry encouraged Helen to develop her psychic talent which at this time included clairvoyance, clairaudience, psychometry and precognition. Helen was able to hold an object and give information about the owner with uncanny accuracy.
Helen would often go into a deep sleep or trance and it was during one of these that the voice of a Dr. Williams told Henry that his wife had the potential to materialize spirits.
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