Professor David Wilson investigates how faith and spirituality can be exploited by scammers and fraudsters to target vulnerable people who are looking for answers to life’s big questions. He looks back to World War II to explore the story of Helen Duncan, a self-styled psychic medium from Edinburgh who claimed to be able to talk to the dead. He discovers how she convinced hundreds of people that she was for real, and how she was targeted by the authorities when she apparently revealed classified information about the sinking of a warship in 1941. Duncan ultimately became one of the last people to be prosecuted under the Witchcraft Act, and was sent to prison for claiming to be psychic. Despite this, many people continued to believe in her powers, and, on release, she resumed holding seances until her death.

David delves deeper into the world of the paranormal with Evelyn Hollow, a parapsychologist who has studied the ways in which people react to apparent supernatural events. Evelyn explains some of the ruses used by fake mediums, such as getting information about audience members in advance. But Evelyn keeps an open mind about whether some people may genuinely be sensitive to forces we don’t yet understand. To get a better idea about how our perception may be manipulated, David interviews mentalist and magician Paul Nardini, who performs a mind-reading trick on David that does indeed seem to defy explanation.

To find out more about fraudsters who exploit people’s need for faith, David speaks to Hope Bastine, who endured an abusive childhood inside the notorious Children of God cult, before escaping and ultimately seeing one of the abusers behind bars. The cult sold the idea of eternal life, and its followers gave up everything to devote themselves to its vision. It was ultimately a lie, but David and Hope discuss how the quest for some kind of spiritual belief is hard-wired into us, and can make us vulnerable to those who claim to have the answers to life’s big questions. Show less