‘Oh. Em. Bloody. Gee.” Danny Robins, “high priest of the paranormal”, has removed his trademark red anorak and is pacing around the London Palladium stage telling ghost stories. A phantom baby. A haunted Teams meeting. A … “hairy flasher”. He dissects each tale with parapsychologists Evelyn Hollow (Team Believer) and Ciarán O’Keeffe (Team Sceptic – he exposed Most Haunted’s medium, Derek Acorah, as a fraud in a rift Robins calls “the Biggie and Tupac of the paranormal”). The rapt audience – a harmonious mix of millennials, boomers and gen Z – are eager to share their own stories, too: a woman’s voice quivers into a microphone as she describes a skeleton that wanted to stab her sister. This is the enthralling world of Uncanny.
A lot has happened in the five years since Uncanny started life as a Radio 4 paranormal investigations podcast, with those spine-tingling opening lyrics, “I know what I saw.” In the first episode, The Evil in Room 611, Robins met scientist Ken, who recalled unexplained scares from decades ago in his university halls. Details of an evil dark figure and shaking doors were met with the reaction: “Bloody hell, Ken.” Two experts then shared their theories: parapsychologist Caroline Watt proffered hypnagogic hallucinations, while ordained minster Peter Laws claimed poltergeist activity.
