A Scottish medium who was the last person in Britain to be tried for witchcraft is to be the subject of a new feature film.
Helen Duncan, a mother of six from Callander, Stirlingshire, was jailed in 1944 under the 1735 Witchcraft Act after she said that she had a vision of the sinking of a Royal Navy vessel.
Duncan, who died aged 59 in Edinburgh in 1956, claimed to have supernatural abilities and held seances. At one she claimed to have contacted a sailor who had died on the HMS Barham.
The news that it was torpedoed with hundreds of lives lost had not been made public and she was brought to the attention of the authorities.
Duncan, who was dubbed "Hellish Nell", was arrested, branded a traitor and jailed for nine months.
Production companies Studiocanal and The Picture Company have bought up the rights to a script based on historian Malcolm Gaskill's 2001 book about Duncan called Hellish Nell: Last of Britain's Witches.
Gaskill did years of research into Duncan's life and is a leading expert in the history of witchcraft and the supernatural.
An announcement for the film said the script by US-based screenwriter Chris Basler will centre on "Duncan's family drama with her husband and young children as she explored her supernatural faculties throughout her life".
Basler discovered the book and wrote the script on spec before sharing it with The Picture Company. He will serve as executive producer on the film.
Cambridge-based historian Gaskill wrote on Twitter: "Delighted that my book Hellish Nell, the story of troubled spiritualist medium Helen Duncan, imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act in 1944, looks set to become a major feature film. And it's only taken twenty years!"
Duncan had been invited to Portsmouth in 1941 by a local church to demonstrate her abilities of spiritual materialisation.
At a seance, she reportedly summoned the spirit of a dead sailor who lost his life alongside 800 others during the sinking of Royal Navy warship HMS Barham.
It was sunk by a German U-Boat in November 1941, but had not been declared officially lost until the following January.
The government had chosen to keep it secret in order to mislead the enemy and maintain morale.
On 19 January, 1944 another s ance in Portsmouth was interrupted by a police raid where she and three members of the audience were arrested.
She was eventually tried by jury at the Old Bailey and subsequently found guilty of contravening section 4 of the Witchcraft Act of 1735.
After the verdict Winston Churchill wrote to the Home Secretary questioning the use of the Witchcraft Act. As a result of her case, the Act was repealed in 1951.
A number of campaigns have been launched in recent years to grant Duncan a posthumous pardon.
