The sanctity of a civilised court room demands rationality, but the laws of the distant and not so distant past in this jurisdiction are entrenched in the uncanny.  Rules safeguarding the impartiality of the jury are grim “wards” against the spiritual chaos that once dictated verdicts. The infamous case of the Ouija Board jurors, aka R v Young[i] only thirty years ago is not merely a legal curiosity: it is a modern chilling echo of a centuries old struggle defining the judiciary’s absolute commitment to a secular process that refuses to share its authority with the spectral world. The ancient rule, now applied to Google and the smartphone, has always been simple: the court cannot tolerate a decision derived from an unvetted external source.

When Law Bowed To The Supernatural-Ancient Past?

For millennia, the outcome of a criminal trial in Britain was terrifyingly dependent on the supernatural, viewing the legal process as a mechanism for Divine Judgement[ii]. The state feared the power of the otherworldly more than it trusted human evidence.

Prior to the 13^th century, the determination of guilt was not based on evidence but on the Judicium Dei [iii](Judgement of God). The accused’s fate lay not with the court but with the elements of the earth itself.

The Ordeal of Hot Iron: The accused would carry a piece of red-hot iron. If their subsequent wound was judged “unclean” after three days-a sign of God withholding his grace-the accused was condemned to death. The burden of proof was literally placed upon a miracle.

The Ordeal of Cold Water: This was an essential test in early witch-finding. If the bound accused floated, the pure water was thought to reject them as impure agents of the Devil, condemning them as guilty. The collapse of these ordeals after the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 was the first, forced act of separation between the secular law and the spiritual realm, necessitating the creation of a human, rational jury[iv]

Legislating against the Demonic: The Witchcraft Acts

Even after the rise of the jury, the judiciary was consumed by the fear of the demonic. The Act against Conjuration, Witchcraft and dealing with evil and wicked Spirits 1604 (1 Jas.4 1. c. 12)[v] made contacting the demonic a capital felony, ensuring that the courtroom remained a battleground against perceived occult evil.

The Pendle Witch Trials (1612): This event is a spectral stain on UK legal history. Ten people were executed based on testimony that included spectral evidence, dreams, and confessions extracted under duress. The judges and juries legally accepted that the Devil and his agents had caused tangible harm. The failure to apply any rational evidential standards resulted in judicial murder.[vi]

Even the “rational” repeal in the Witchcraft Act 1735 (9 Geo. 2. c. 5),[vii] which only criminalised pretending to use magic (fraud), haunted the system. The prosecution of medium Helen Duncan in 1944 under this very Act, for deceiving the public with her spiritualist services, demonstrated that the legal system was still actively policing the boundaries of the occult well into the modern era, fearful of supernatural deceit if not genuine power.

The Modern Séance: R v Young and the Unholy Verdict

The 1994 murder trial of Stephen Young[viii], accused of the double murder of Harry and Nicola Fuller, brought the full weight of this historical conflict back into the spotlight. The jury, isolated and burdened with the grim facts of the case, succumbed to an uncanny primal urge for absolute certainty.

The jury had retired to a sequestered hotel to deliberate the grim facts of the double murder.During a break in deliberations on the Friday night, four jurors initiated a makeshift séance in their hotel room. They used paper and a glass to fashion a crude Ouija board, placing their life-altering question to the “spirits” of the deceased victims, Harry and Nicola Fuller.

The glass, according to the jurors’ later testimony, moved and chillingly spelled out the words “STEPHEN YOUNG DONE IT.”

The Court of Appeal, led by Lord Taylor CJ, ruled that the séance was a “material irregularity” because it took place outside the official deliberation room (in the hotel). This activity amounted to the reception of extrinsic, prejudicial, and wholly inadmissible evidence after the jury had been sworn. The verdict was quashed because a system based on proof cannot tolerate a decision derived from ‘the other side’

The core rule remains absolute: the verdict must be based only on the facts presented in court. The modern threat to this principle is not possession by a demon, but digital contamination, a risk the law now treats as functionally identical to the occult inquiry of 1994.

The Digital Contamination: R v Karakaya[ix]

The Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 (CJCA 2015) was the formal legislative “ward” against the digital equivalent of the séance.

The New Medium: In the 2018 trial of Huseyin Karakaya, a juror used a mobile phone to research the defendant’s previous conviction. The smartphone became the unauthorised medium. The Legal Equivalence: The Juries Act 1974, s 20A (inserted by CJCA 2015)[x] makes it a criminal offence for a juror to intentionally research the case. In the eyes of the law, consulting Google for “defendant’s past” is legally equivalent to consulting a ghost for “who done it.” Both are dangerous acts of unauthorized external inquiry.

The Court of Appeal, in R v Karakaya quashed the conviction because introducing external, inadmissible evidence (like a prior conviction) created a real risk of prejudice, fundamentally undermining the fair trial principle raised in Young.

The lesson of the Ouija Board Jurors and the digital contamination in R v Karakaya is a chilling warning from the past: the moment the courtroom accepts an external, unverified source—be it a spirit or a search engine—the entire structure of rational justice collapses, bringing back the judicial catastrophe of the Pendle Trials. In 2025, the UK criminal justice system continues to fight the ghosts of superstition, ensuring the verdict is determined by the cold, impartial scrutiny of the facts.

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[i] R v Young [1995] QB 324

[ii]R Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water: The Medieval Judicial Ordeal (Oxford University Press 1986). (https://amesfoundation.law.harvard.edu/lhsemelh/materials/BartlettTrialByFireAndWater.pdf)

[iii] J G Bellamy, The Criminal Law of England 1066–1307: An Outline (Blackwell 1984) p42

[iv] Margaret H. Kerr, Richard D. Forsyth, Michael J. Plyley

The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Spring, 1992), pp. 573-595 

[v] https://archives.blog.parliament.uk/2020/10/28/which-witchcraft-act-is-which/

[vi] https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/The-Pendle-Witches/

[vii] Witchcraft Act 1735 (9 Geo. 2. c. 5) https://statutes.org.uk/site/the-statutes/eighteenth-century/1735-9-george-2-c-5-the-witchcraft-act/

[viii] R v Young [1995] QB 324

[ix]  R v Karakaya[ 2020] EWCA Crim 204

[x]The Juries Act 1974, s 20A https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/23/section/20A