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Uncanny (BBC Programme / Podcast)

Good news is that there will be an 'Uncanny' Christmas Special (23rd I believe).

Danny has done a great job with the Heol Fanog case, however it was always going to divide skeptics and believers more than ever before. Not least because, unlike the Battersea poltergeist, it lacks eyewitnesses from outside the family involved (who weren't mediums or spiritualists). personally, I am itching for another full series of 'Uncanny'.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
...personally, I am itching for another full series of 'Uncanny'.
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If you haven't already listened to it, I would recommend again Danny's earlier non-BBC Podcast, Haunted. (Available here.)

Almost identical in format to Uncanny, and most of the stories are quality.

I am generally immune to such things - the simple enjoyment I get from the stories generally outweighing all else - but The Thing in the Attic episode, which manages to be both utterly bonkers and utterly sinister, actually gave me one of my very rare bad dreams. The last two episodes - focused on the now demolished Middlesex Hospital in central London - has also stuck with me since I first heard it. In fact, just checking through the episode list - although a couple left me a little unconvinced, I don't think there was an outright clanger in there.
 
Spookdaddy said:
If you haven't already listened to it, I would recommend again Danny's earlier non-BBC Podcast, Haunted. (Available here.)

Almost identical in format to Uncanny, and most of the stories are quality.

I am generally immune to such things - the simple enjoyment I get from the stories generally outweighing all else - but The Thing in the Attic episode, which manages to be both utterly bonkers and utterly sinister, actually gave me one of my very rare bad dreams. The last two episodes - focused on the now demolished Middlesex Hospital in central London - has also stuck with me since I first heard it. In fact, just checking through the episode list - although a couple left me a little unconvinced, I don't think there was an outright clanger in there.
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Marked it. Thanks.
 
I must admit, I didn't enjoy Witch Farm as much as Danny's other shows. As noted by others, we never seemed to get independent witnesses actual testimony, just Liz's reports of what other people had said.

I really do think this was a family under stress from (particularly Bill's) mental health issues and alcoholism that started attributing lots of unconnected things to a supposed haunting.
 
DougalLongfoot said:
I must admit, I didn't enjoy Witch Farm as much as Danny's other shows. As noted by others, we never seemed to get independent witnesses actual testimony, just Liz's reports of what other people had said.

I really do think this was a family under stress from (particularly Bill's) mental health issues and alcoholism that started attributing lots of unconnected things to a supposed haunting.
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I agree. It didn't grab me as much as previous ones. I found my attention wandering. It had its moments for sure, but it did seem rather too strung out. I hope he has some good stuff in the wings for when 'Uncanny' returns.
 
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Spookdaddy said:
The last two episodes - focused on the now demolished Middlesex Hospital in central London - has also stuck with me since I first heard it.
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I thoroughly enjoyed those last two episodes and they left me wanting more, unfortunately there were no further episodes. I think the Producer, Panoply, stopped producing podcasts altogether.

As an aside it was my employer that built the residential development that now sits on the former site of the Middlesex Hospital but I’ve not heard of anything spooky going on during the construction or afterwards. I only visited the project once during the construction period, but I visited the hospital a couple of times when my first-wife-to-be went in for a couple of days in about 1979, to have her wisdom teeth taken out under general anaesthetic
 
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Tempest63 said:
I thoroughly enjoyed those last two episodes and they left me wanting more, unfortunately there were no further episodes. I think the Producer, Panoply, stopped produced podcasts altogether.

As an aside it was my employer that built the residential development that now sits on the former site of the Middlesex Hospital but I’ve not heard of anything spooky going on during the construction or afterwards. I only visited the project once during the construction period, but I visited the hospital a couple of times when my first-wife-to-be went in for a couple of days in about 1979, to have her wisdom teeth taken out under general anaesthetic
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I'm kind of glad they dumped the NoHo Square name proposed by the original developers. (Apparently 'North Soho' was around long before the term 'Fitzrovia' was coined - relatively late in the day - but it still seems somehow faux and awkwardly wannabe. And 'Fitzrovia' is a word which - possibly - references a pub as the centre of local geography and culture, by - possibly - people drinking in that pub at the time they came up with the name. Which is good enough provenance for me.)

I must have walked past the Mortimer Street side hundreds of times, but never went inside. I've been told by someone who worked there that the Middlesex had a reputation for hauntings, and generally weird events, which marked it out even among those who worked in the NHS and were therefore used to such locations, and their inherent spookiness - but I've never been able to find much detail.

(I got quite excited on stumbling across one publication, but it turned out to be about the West Middlesex hospital - and, up to now, a copy has proved impossible to track down.)
 
Spookdaddy said:
but it turned out to be about the West Middlesex hospital
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I did a few weekends moonlighting there for a mate of mine to sort out the pressure regimes across the operating theatres. We got them functioning correctly, signed off by the consultant, but the French General Contractor refused to pay us. They were over budget and knocked every little contractor they could. Now I pray Argentina wallop France in the World Cup final as I have detested everything French since that time.
 
Spookdaddy said:
I'm kind of glad they dumped the NoHo Square name proposed by the original developers. (Apparently 'North Soho' was around long before the term 'Fitzrovia' was coined - relatively late in the day - but it still seems somehow faux and awkwardly wannabe. And 'Fitzrovia' is a word which - possibly - references a pub as the centre of local geography and culture, by - possibly - people drinking in that pub at the time they came up with the name. Which is good enough provenance for me.)

I must have walked past the Mortimer Street side hundreds of times, but never went inside. I've been told by someone who worked there that the Middlesex had a reputation for hauntings, and generally weird events, which marked it out even among those who worked in the NHS and were therefore used to such locations, and their inherent spookiness - but I've never been able to find much detail.

(I got quite excited on stumbling across one publication, but it turned out to be about the West Middlesex hospital - and, up to now, a copy has proved impossible to track down.)
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I'm the opposite. I always think 'Fitzrovia' sounds make up. Like a middle European country invented for a spy novel.
 
catseye said:
I'm the opposite. I always think 'Fitzrovia' sounds make up. Like a middle European country invented for a spy novel.
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To be honest, I think that was maybe not far off the effect someone was aiming for. Although Fitzroy Square and the Fitzroy Tavern, and the ancient Duke of FitzRoy, are obvious points of reference - I don't think anyone knows precisely where, when and by whom the name 'Fitzrovia' was coined; sometime in the 1930's by Augustus John is one fairly reasonable, but entirely unproven, theory. Given the number of famous writers, poets, artists, journalists, politicians and assorted hangers on who packed out the area at the time (with a very considerable amount of that frequency being spent in boozers for very many of them) it's maybe not really surprising that a sozzled consultation over a table of stout and scotch whisky might have resulted in something that almost immediately entered the local lexicon.
 
catseye said:
I'm the opposite. I always think 'Fitzrovia' sounds make up. Like a middle European country invented for a spy novel.
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Fitzrovia is the name given to the area, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzrovia
Its where we used to go for Greek food back in the day and I would meet my late father in law (first marriage) for a bevvy in the Duke of York if I was about that area lunchtime or evening. He was a finishing artist on a lot of the leading woman's magazines and that part of the publishing industry was based in the area at that time.

The project, initially titled NoHo Square as mentioned by @Spookdaddy was shelved for a while and the name changed to Fitzroy Place when it was re tendered some years later and we won the bid to build it. Projects are often given a build name and their real titles are applied once complete.
 
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Tempest63 said:
...The project, initially titled NoHo Square as mentioned by @Spookdaddy was shelved for a while and the name changed to Fitzroy Place when it was re tendered some years later and we won the bid to build it. Projects are given a build name and their real titles are applied once complete.
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Paul Willets wrote a book about the influential, but now somewhat forgotten, Alec de Antiquis murder - which took place on Charlotte Street (within view of the Fitzroy Tavern, I seem to recall). Willets refers to the area as North Soho - in fact the book is called North Soho 999. I've had a look at a few other sources, and from what I can tell 'North Soho' and 'Fitzrovia' appear to have been more or less interchangeable, and for some time were both used at the same time to describe the same area - it look like it might be some time around the 1960's that Fitzrovia started to become the more common usage.

Somehow I find NoSoHo more appealing than NoHo - and it would kind of be more accurate.

Bit of trivia: In his autobiography Albert Pierrepoint states that he was actually walking along Charlotte Street at the time of the killing (he was a regular at the Fitzroy Tavern, so not at all outside the realms of possibility) - some time later he would hang two of the men convicted of the murder he had been so close to.
 
Spookdaddy said:
Paul Willets wrote a book about the influential, but now somewhat forgotten, Alec de Antiquis murder - which took place on Charlotte Street (within view of the Fitzroy Tavern, I seem to recall). Willets refers to the area as North Soho - in fact the book is called North Soho 999. I've had a look at a few other sources, and from what I can tell 'North Soho' and 'Fitzrovia' appear to have been more or less interchangeable, and for some time were both used at the same time to describe the same area - it look like it might be some time around the 1960's that Fitzrovia started to become the more common usage.

Somehow I find NoSoHo more appealing than NoHo - and it would kind of be more accurate.

Bit of trivia: In his autobiography Albert Pierrepoint states that he was actually walking along Charlotte Street at the time of the killing (he was a regular at the Fitzroy Tavern, so not at all outside the realms of possibility) - some time later he would hang two of the men convicted of the murder he had been so close to.
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In my time I was also a regular at the Fitzroy Tavern and I always thought Fitzrovia sounded like something from 1984 that we had always been at war with.
 
Tempest63 said:
Fitzrovia is the name given to the area, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzrovia
Its where we used to go for Greek food back in the day and I would meet my late father in law (first marriage) for a bevvy in the Duke of York if I was about that area lunchtime or evening. He was a finishing artist on a lot of the leading woman's magazines and that part of the publishing industry was based in the area at that time.

The project, initially titled NoHo Square as mentioned by @Spookdaddy was shelved for a while and the name changed to Fitzroy Place when it was re tendered some years later and we won the bid to build it. Projects are often given a build name and their real titles are applied once complete.
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Yes, I know where it is. I've been there. My mum and dad used to live not too far away. But I think it sounds made up.
 
Spookdaddy said:
…the influential, but now somewhat forgotten, Alec de Antiquis murder - which took place on Charlotte Street (within view of the Fitzroy Tavern, I seem to recall).

Bit of trivia: In his autobiography Albert Pierrepoint states that he was actually walking along Charlotte Street at the time of the killing (he was a regular at the Fitzroy Tavern, so not at all outside the realms of possibility) - some time later he would hang two of the men convicted of the murder he had been so close
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I covered that murder here:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/coincidences.9144/page-86#post-1944724

- with background info and photos.

maximus otter
 
catseye said:
...But I think it sounds made up.
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I think the thing is, that it is made up - and made up relatively recently. (The London Encyclopaedia - a good go to source for technical information - claims that the usage started 'towards the beginning of the 2nd World War'. I think it's the London writer Ed Glinert who mentions the Augustus John claim.)

What's unusual though - and rather appealing - is that, not having been whittled by the flow of history, and rather than being created by a property developer or local authority, the word seems to have originated somewhat spontaneously, and very likely in the pub.

I can quite see how a group of creative drinkers - possibly after a bout of internecine falling out - and wishing to delineate and distinguish their particular Bohemian manor from that of Soho to the south, Bloomsbury and all its literary associations to the east, and Marylebone and its poshers to the west, might have come up with such a name.

I've posted this Fitzrovia snippet before (on the People You Thought Were Dead thread):

...on one occasion I thought a tramp had come and sat on the table next to me at a coffee shop near the Fitzroy Tavern (also London). The tramp, on closer inspection, turned out to be David Threlfall - who clearly had to smarten himself up a bit in order to play the part of Frank Gallagher. When I finished my coffee and walked around the corner I had to skirt around Bill Nighy, who was leaning at an odd angle against a shop window.

Two actors I know not to be dead but who - at the time - looked like they might be.
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Apologies. We appear to have gone right off thread.
 
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Happy days! Just listened to the Christmas special... Danny has confirmed there will be a second series next year. Also, there are going to be TV specials on BBC2, and there's going to be another 'Uncanny live' which will land on 30th December. There's also going to be an Uncanny fan convention event in March in London. It must be very popular!

Regarding the xmas special, I wasn't very keen on the sceptic. She raises a few interesting points but seemed to be jumping to a lot of conclusions about the son's and mother's relationship considering she's never actually met them.
 
Spookdaddy said:
To be honest, I think that was maybe not far off the effect someone was aiming for. Although Fitzroy Square and the Fitzroy Tavern, and the ancient Duke of FitzRoy, are obvious points of reference - I don't think anyone knows precisely where, when and by whom the name 'Fitzrovia' was coined; sometime in the 1930's by Augustus John is one fairly reasonable, but entirely unproven, theory. Given the number of famous writers, poets, artists, journalists, politicians and assorted hangers on who packed out the area at the time (with a very considerable amount of that frequency being spent in boozers for very many of them) it's maybe not really surprising that a sozzled consultation over a table of stout and scotch whisky might have resulted in something that almost immediately entered the local lexicon.
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The Fitzroy Tavern was a much loved watering hole during my decade in London, you’ve just jogged a lot of memories!
 
Cloudbusting said:
Happy days! Just listened to the Christmas special... Danny has confirmed there will be a second series next year. Also, there are going to be TV specials on BBC2, and there's going to be another 'Uncanny live' which will land on 30th December. There's also going to be an Uncanny fan convention event in March in London. It must be very popular!

Regarding the xmas special, I wasn't very keen on the sceptic. She raises a few interesting points but seemed to be jumping to a lot of conclusions about the son's and mother's relationship considering she's never actually met them.
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It is brilliant news :)
I feel Danny is pushing back against the tide of Youtube and tv ghost hunting sensationalised :bs: about ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot etc that we have been subjected to over the past two decades. When you reflect on it, we have had very little quality and an awful lot of dross (mostly involving night vision cameras and hysterical presenters). Well done Danny and thank you.
 
Just listened to the Christmas episode. Chilling. In some way it reminds me of the hag of Blue Bell Hill, although the context is very different; it's almost folkloric in nature. In this case it's uncomfortably close to horror film cliché, and I'm not sure what to make of that.
 
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Frideswide said:
Just had hysterics in the first minute. The witness is said to have "a strong Glasgow accent". No he doesn't! :rollingw:
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I've certainly heard stronger Glasgow accents; on the other hand there were a couple of places where it took me a good few seconds to process what the witness had just said into an intelligible sentence.
 
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