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Stray item/idea from real life


Cancer

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If you have a spiritualist or other occult sort in a pulp campaign, you can Do Things to that character for what seems like spurious reasons of national security. From a book I just finished....

 

On Tuesday, 25 November 1941 HMS Barham was sunk by U-331 in the Mediterranean, losing 862 of 1258 aboard. The U-boat went deep immediately to evade depth charge attack, and while it did escape, they didn't see the sinking or identify what they'd hit. The Royal Navy intercepted and decoded the U-Boat skipper's report afterward; he reported that he had torpedoed an unknown British battleship with unknown effect. So the navy suppressed the news, waiting several weeks to inform next of kin, and several months to admit the loss of the ship.

 

However ... famous spiritualist Helen Duncan, in a seance in Portsmouth only a few days after the sinking, made contact with one of the dead sailors. The Admiralty tried to discredit her (which only added to her reputation). Eventually (early 1944) they arrested her, got a conviction, and imprisoned her for nine months under the 1735 Witchcraft Act, as someone was afraid she'd tell the Germans when and where the D-Day invasion was going to be.

 

Source: Sealing Their Fate, by David Downing, pp. 148-9.

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