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Uncanny (BBC Programme / Podcast)

MorningAngel said:
I’ve not heard all of it yet. Danny does get on my nerves describing people all the time.

My only problem with the ‘Victorian’ ghost is she’s dressed but has her hair down. Victorian ladies had their hair up otherwise they’d be thought of as floozy. If she had her nighty on I could understand it. Although maybe she took her hair down when she got home.

Not a great fan of the skeptic.
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The 'ghost' changes her clothes. Perhaps she has bad hair days.
 
The Guest Book - excellent listening. Just what I like best: people talking about experiencing weirdness, optionally scared out their wits, I'm not fussy.

Sounds like Danny saw the guest book. It would be hard, though not impossible, to fake.
However, I'd expect the entries to be read by the landlord as often as possible, not left until the place is being sold. It's valuable feedback, free, and the place would be serviced after every letting.

Brilliant comments though. If the house were still an Air B'n'B, Techy and I would hunt it down and rent it. :cool:
 
S2. Case 8: The Guest Book.
The comments left by the Air B&B renters were very interesting. I just wonder if the owner Malcolm may have made a jocular comment to some tenants along the lines of "watch out for the ghost!". If the renters genuinely had no knowledge about spooky experiences in the house and hadn't been primed in any way to expect a haunting, then their reviews left in the guest book would seem to be pretty compelling evidence.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
S2. Case 8: The Guest Book.
The comments left by the Air B&B renters were very interesting. I just wonder if the owner Malcolm may have made a jocular comment to some tenants along the lines of "watch out for the ghost!". If the renters genuinely had no knowledge about spooky experiences in the house and hadn't been primed in any way to expect a haunting, then their reviews left in the guest book would seem to be pretty compelling evidence.
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Agreed. As I said though, why hadn't these comments been read sooner? They should have been seen routinely as part of the housekeeping.
 
I enjoyed The Guest Book episode. I like the traditional ghost story.

Odd that they tended to discuss the visible ghost more so than the "malevolent" unseen - it may only be my interpretation.

Trying to identify the ghost that both saw was interesting in that they tried to link it to the former owner who had died. It does illustrate to me, the assumptions that people have regarding what or who ghosts are.

I, myself, would not immediately think that it is necessary for someone who had lived and died while in home to be the haunting. I have never figured a theory that works for why a place might be haunted.

The question of why the woman felt a malevolent presence that didn't want her was short on discussion. Was there something psychological that was happening at the time she first felt it? Why was he drawn to the home as though he belonged and was welcomed there? Two very opposite reactions to the home. Those emotions, I would have been interested in further exploration.
 
brownmane said:
I, myself, would not immediately think that it is necessary for someone who had lived and died while in home to be the haunting. I have never figured a theory that works for why a place might be haunted.
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You're quite correct.
The ruins of Basing House down here in Hampshire are said to be haunted by Oliver Cromwell, but he died in the palace of Whitehall in London. Similarly, the haunted gallery in Hampton Court supposedly features an occasional replay of a screaming Catherine Howard, and yet she met her fate months later and several miles away at the Tower of London. The idea that a ghost is somehow created where that person died would seem to be a false one.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
You're quite correct.
The ruins of Basing House down here in Hampshire are said to be haunted by Oliver Cromwell, but he died in the palace of Whitehall in London. Similarly, the haunted gallery in Hampton Court supposedly features an occasional replay of a screaming Catherine Howard, and yet she met her fate months later and several miles away at the Tower of London. The idea that a ghost is somehow created where that person died would seem to be a false one.
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Good point.

Personally I am not into these 'famous dead people from bygone times haunting famous old buildings' type of hauntings that get repeated ad infinitum. I much prefer everyday people having unexplained experiences in often unremarkable buildings. I've posted a few on here along with links to active researchers' work, such as the on-duty police officer who, whilst sat in his patrol car, watched a farm labourer disappear through a solid barn wall.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Good point.

Personally I am not into these 'famous dead people from bygone times haunting famous old buildings' type of hauntings that get repeated ad infinitum. I much prefer everyday people having unexplained experiences in often unremarkable buildings. I've posted a few on here along with links to active researchers' work, such as the on-duty police officer who, whilst sat in his patrol car, watched a farm labourer disappear through a solid barn wall.
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As you'll know, we have a spiffing thread on Ghost Stories from Everyday People. One of my favourite reads.
 
Catherine Howard at Hampton Court is a fiction. I know a tour guide who had access to the records and he is sure the story is a recently modern invention to drum up tourism at the end of the 19th/start of the 20th.

Most of the ghostly stuff there is more mundane and mostly unspectacular with the possible exception of the figure at the doors captured on CCTV
 
DrPaulLee said:
Catherine Howard at Hampton Court is a fiction. I know a tour guide who had access to the records and he is sure the story is a recently modern invention to drum up tourism at the end of the 19th/start of the 20th.

Most of the ghostly stuff there is more mundane and mostly unspectacular with the possible exception of the figure at the doors captured on CCTV
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I think I saw a dark figure going up some stairs at H C. I’m not 100% ruling out an optical illusion though.
 
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MorningAngel said:
I think I saw a dark figure going up some stairs at H C. I’m not 100% ruling out an optical illusion though.
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Wasn't there a Hampton Court ghost debunking, concerning the light shining through a certain window on a Long Gallery at certain times of the day?
 
escargot said:
TELL.
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I think it might have been these stairs. I was walking past the doorway which is to the courtyard. As I went past I saw something black go up the stairs. I did wonder if it was an effect from my hair and the staircase. I can’t remember which way I was going to discount that or not.

IMG_1077.jpeg
 
DougalLongfoot said:
The question of whether ghosts haunt the place they died is brought up in Danny's play, 2:22 A Ghost Story. One of the characters declares that hospitals should be full of ghosts if they haunt the place they died.
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Any number of literary and dramatic works could be quoted here. Folklore has it that ghosts are the spirits of the dead who have unfinished business on Earth.

For example; in the fillum Ghost, after Patrick Swayze's character Sam dies in hospital he see the spirits of other deceased patients ascending straight to to Heaven or wherever.
Sam finds himself unable to move on because he needs to protect his fiancée Molly.

(I love Ghost. Makes perfect sense in relation to the beliefs I was brought up with. Dunno about the Shadow Creatures though.)
 
I used to work on my own at night in a tiny shop for students on the site of Alanbrooke Hall (Queen's Halls Of Residence). I was there from 2001 - 2003. I never actually went into any of the accommodation high rises though. If I'd known about this case, I would've made it my business to go into Alanbrooke for sure. There's conflicting information online as to when Alanbrooke was demolished. But most common date given is 2004.

I never had any weird experiences. I worked a 4 or 5 hour shift iirc and sometimes you wouldn't get a single customer. A busy night would be maybe 10 customers. I just listened to John Peel, smoked and studied. The Troubles were over by then too.

Must say the weird overhaul of the episode earlier this season has kind of thrown Uncanny off kilter for me. Must get back into it
 
Soul_Doubt said:
I used to work on my own at night in a tiny shop for students on the site of Alanbrooke Hall (Queen's Halls Of Residence). I was there from 2001 - 2003. I never actually went into any of the accommodation high rises though. If I'd known about this case, I would've made it my business to go into Alanbrooke for sure. There's conflicting information online as to when Alanbrooke was demolished. But most common date given is 2004.

I never had any weird experiences. I worked a 4 or 5 hour shift iirc and sometimes you wouldn't get a single customer. A busy night would be maybe 10 customers. I just listened to John Peel, smoked and studied. The Troubles were over by then too.

Must say the weird overhaul of the episode earlier this season has kind of thrown Uncanny off kilter for me. Must get back into it
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I agree that Uncanny suffered a 'wobble', however the two latest episodes on Rendlesham and The Guest Book have, in my option, put Uncanny bang back on track.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
I agree that Uncanny suffered a 'wobble', however the two latest episodes on Rendlesham and The Guest Book have, in my option, put Uncanny bang back on track.
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How d'you mean, a wobble?
 
Paul_Exeter said:
The two episodes that were recorded live were perhaps better suited to being tacked on at the end as per DVD extras, they weren't really strong enough to be episodes in their own right when compared against season one and the other season two episodes
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Yeah, those episodes with an audience are all a little bit too 'woo' for me. They're a bit 'end of term-y'. A good solid episode focusing on one thing is much more up my street.
 
Well the latest episode - Beast of Langeais - is going to divide opinion...! A dual-witness experience that is perhaps easy for skeptics to dismiss out-of-hand yet it mirrors other cryptic reports from across the world - a foul stench in particular - and the two guys are sincere
 
CharmerKamelion said:
Yeah, those episodes with an audience are all a little bit too 'woo' for me. They're a bit 'end of term-y'. A good solid episode focusing on one thing is much more up my street.
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That's the direction he wants to go in, giving live performances with guests. The gimmicky screaming put the kibosh on that for me. :chuckle:
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Well the latest episode - Beast of Langeais - is going to divide opinion...! A dual-witness experience that is perhaps easy for skeptics to dismiss out-of-hand yet it mirrors other cryptic reports from across the world - a foul stench in particular - and the two guys are sincere
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Of all places, the drawbridge of Langeais is quite an unexpected place to witness a paranormal event. It's located in the middle of the town. The area is densely populated, with plenty of houses sitting all around the castle. It's not an isolated and gloomy fortress in the middle of nowhere. Neither does it have a reputation for being haunted.

The castle was the site of king Charles VIII's mariage, a happy event. If my memory is correct, king Charles died after slipping over some fecal matter while hurrying towards a competition of jeu de paume, thereafter striking a lintel with his head. But this accident happened in Amboise, not in Langeais ... So unless the king's ghost wanted to remember his mariage ceremony, bringing back with him the stench of his fatal accident in Amboise, I can't find any significant cause for the haunting of this drawbridge.

Could some locals, irritated by seeing two foreign youth camping in the middle of the town, have decided to play a memorable prank on them ? That would have been tempting.
 
I thought the new episode was a little thin. Half of the runtime seemed to be taken up with updates from other cases. But, if that was the story in its totality, then that's that.

I did quite enjoy it though - mainly because it had (yet another) Northern Ireland connection
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
Quite creepy.
Slightly further south than the region of France I know well.
I'm determined to visit Langeais now next time we're over there.
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Will there be special attention to the castle drawbridge? I bet there will. :nods:
 
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