Supporters of Scottish materialization medium Helen Duncan continue to insist that she was genuine, and have mounted an ongoing campaign to posthumously clear her name of a conviction for fraud. And it is true that Duncan did correctly reveal the sinking of the HMS Barham at a time when the ship’s loss was a closely guarded state secret. Still, any claim that she had legitimate paranormal abilities must take into account the remarkably damning photographs taken by Harry Price in his 1931 investigation of the medium. Conveniently enough, all the photos are available online at one Web site.
Beginning with Plate 3, we see material extruding from Duncan’s nose. This material was claimed to be ectoplasm or, as Price called it, "teleplasm." It looks indistinguishable from the lightweight, gauzy material known as cheesecloth. Plate 7 gives us a particularly clear view of the small tears in the material, which very strongly resemble tears in cheap cloth. (Sadly, I have some socks that look like this.)
We are sometimes told that it is not possible to swallow and regurgitate fine fabrics like cheesecloth and chiffon in sufficient quantities to produce a ghostly costume. Plate 9 puts the lie to this objection, showing a woman (not Helen Duncan) demonstrating how a six-foot length of cheesecloth, thirty inches wide, can be rolled up and hidden in the mouth. This amount of material weighs only 1.5 ounces.
Photo 11 is the first of a series showing what appears to be a rubber glove attached to a length of cheesecloth. The captions state that safety pins are visible, but I cannot make them out. Still, a photo of an undervest (on this page; scroll down) seized at a Duncan seance clearly shows a large number of pinholes; the shirt was apparently used to impersonate a "teleplasmic" form.
Plates 19 and 20 show Duncan producing "teleplasm" partly in the form of a girl’s head. The head looks like a paper cutout, perhaps attached with another safety pin. It is reminiscent of images produced by an earlier materialization medium, Eva C.
Plates 21 and 22 give an even better view of the tears in the cheesecloth, as well as the selvedge – i.e., a hem that has been sewn up to prevent unraveling.
Plate 26 shows some "teleplasm" taken from the medium. Plate 27 (same page) shows that under a microscope the alleged "teleplasm" is virtually indistinguishable from ordinary paper.
Harry Price’s firsthand account of the experiments and their aftermath is found here. Included on this page are photos of two obviously phony "spirits" who appeared at a Duncan seance, though apparently not one that Price oversaw. Although Price has a somewhat unsavory reputation for bending the truth, his account of l’affaire Duncan seems well corrobrated by the photos listed above. He includes a brief but impressive explanation of Duncan’s regurgitation method, and presents the evidence for it.
Overall, I find it hard to see why, more than fifty years after her death, Helen Duncan remains a revered figure to some spiritualists. Maybe the explanation is found in the old Groucho Marx quip: "Who ya gonna believe – me or your lying eyes?"