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Uncanny (BBC Programme / Podcast)

Another thing to ponder:
In the case of those stories where only a single witness is available, we have only their word it ever happened.
People just don't want to consider that it might be a hoax.
Then there could be bandwagon jumpers. Anyone could contact uncanny and say "oh yes I was in room 611". We can only hope that some form of checks are done to verify this.
 
Yes true. There was the curious Uncanny episode that was cancelled at the last minute a few weeks ago. It had been promoted as a "new witness to room 611". I suspect it was cancelled because they discovered the new witness was a hoaxer, or had mental health issues. Something the BBC wanted to stay away from. The comments by Danny Robins next episode seemed to allude to this ("trust us it was the right decision"). All very intriguing.
 
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All I can find out about the cancellation/postponement is that it wasn't due to a hoax.
It's been suggested that the 611 story was pulled because the University is sick of people pestering them about it. This can't be the reason because they replaced the new 611 story with an old 611 story.
 
The latest episode "Harry Called" freaked me out a little bit. I listened to it twice in my lunch hour today.
The witness Will did sound genuinely disturbed recounting the incidents.
It reminded me of something that happened regularly with my old Nokia mobile phone some years ago. Although not a paranormal experience it was still a bit strange to me. The experience lasted over a couple of months. Overnight I would sometimes receive voice mail messages from a lady speaking in hushed tones, sometimes on a very crackly line.
I would find my phone beeping in the morning. In every message she would say the same thing: "Mr * The package is ready to pick up in the agreed location" or "Your package is ready for you to collect at the agreed time".
*The name of the person the lady was talking to was never my name so clearly the lady had the wrong number. I have been wracking my brain trying to think of the name since listening to Uncanny earlier but can't remember it. I even asked my parents this evening if they could remember the name but they can't either.
The messages were not left every night but after quite a lot had appeared in my voicemail box I started to get a bit worried. I played them to my parents and asked them what to do about them. My Dad said they sounded dodgy; perhaps criminal activity or undercover operations. I suggested trying to call the number they were supposed to be coming from but my Dad said "to just leave it. Don't get involved son".
The messages went on for a couple of months, always being left in the middle of the night roughly every other night. Then they just stopped.
After a brief period of relief thinking that the lady had given up calling, realising she had the wrong number, they started again for a couple of weeks before stopping abruptly again. I never had any more messages after that but I am still curious as to what the hell was going on. I lost the voice mail messages which I had kept when my phone unexpectedly died and I changed to a different network.
 
I tried to listen to "Harry Called", twice last night but fell asleep after listening a couple minutes. No reflection on the podcast. I listen to podcasts to fall asleep to.

The odd thing, I found was why was Will so adamant that his friends were not pranking him? He gives no reasoning when Danny asks him about this possibilty.

I too am curious as to how the messages were received by the people answering the phone. What exactly was said? Was there any questions of how the voice sounded? Male? Female?

If I had someone leaving me messages, I would be asking all kinds of questions of the people taking the messages, especially if I knew no one with that name.

Then when Will actually gets the call himself, he can't make out what is being said and says that it seemed if the person he could hear was not speaking to him. So, crossed phone lines? And why would the caller apparently be able to leave clear intelligible messages for Will to call, but be unintelligible when speaking to him?

I have to listen to the rest tonight (probably only 10 minutes left), but this story doesn't really seem to fit. The teller has a lot of disparate details that don't really make a coherent story. It seems like several different stories put together to make one.
 
Venkmans on the case said:
The latest episode "Harry Called" freaked me out a little bit. I listened to it twice in my lunch hour today.
The witness Will did sound genuinely disturbed recounting the incidents.
It reminded me of something that happened regularly with my old Nokia mobile phone some years ago. Although not a paranormal experience it was still a bit strange to me. The experience lasted over a couple of months. Overnight I would sometimes receive voice mail messages from a lady speaking in hushed tones, sometimes on a very crackly line.
I would find my phone beeping in the morning. In every message she would say the same thing: "Mr * The package is ready to pick up in the agreed location" or "Your package is ready for you to collect at the agreed time".
*The name of the person the lady was talking to was never my name so clearly the lady had the wrong number. I have been wracking my brain trying to think of the name since listening to Uncanny earlier but can't remember it. I even asked my parents this evening if they could remember the name but they can't either.
The messages were not left every night but after quite a lot had appeared in my voicemail box I started to get a bit worried. I played them to my parents and asked them what to do about them. My Dad said they sounded dodgy; perhaps criminal activity or undercover operations. I suggested trying to call the number they were supposed to be coming from but my Dad said "to just leave it. Don't get involved son".
The messages went on for a couple of months, always being left in the middle of the night roughly every other night. Then they just stopped.
After a brief period of relief thinking that the lady had given up calling, realising she had the wrong number, they started again for a couple of weeks before stopping abruptly again. I never had any more messages after that but I am still curious as to what the hell was going on. I lost the voice mail messages which I had kept when my phone unexpectedly died and I changed to a different network.
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Did they not realise that Mr ? wasn’t turning up when they told him to?
 
I remember when I was a probably mid teens we would get hold of a phone number and start ringing it at unsociable hours and ask if “X”was there.
We could drag this on for weeks until we would phone up, again at a very unsociable hour and when answered would say “this is X…has anyone left any messages for me?”
Cue shouting and cussing, but that was it. Never would we phone again.

Not one-off my proudest moments, but students? Who knows if they knew the craick and were continuing it for a long time after?
 
brownmane said:
I tried to listen to "Harry Called", twice last night but fell asleep after listening a couple minutes. No reflection on the podcast. I listen to podcasts to fall asleep to.
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Same'ere! :chuckle:
I'm currently on early earlies, up before 5am, so it's hopeless really.
 
I have to admit to (still) not having listened to this, but in reference to the Guest Book - if I go and stay anywhere that has a guest book, like a holiday cottage or Air B&B, then one of the FIRST things I do is read the guest book. It often has ideas or suggestions of things to do or places to go; things like 'fabulous stay, our day on Loch Ard was a particular highlight'. That sort of thing.

So if one person has mentioned a ghost or seeing something pretty much anywhere in the guest book, it gets read by many many other people, and, perhaps, added to. Suggestion can't be discounted.

Of course, perhaps this is dealt with in the episode (and maybe the guest book is locked away somewhere and only produced at the end of a visit), but, yes, it would be very unusual for a guest house owner not to check EVERY message as it was left, just in case visitors had had a dreadful time and were about to leave a horrible review somewhere!
 
There's a very haunted house nearby that was active from 1971 - 2016 and is now a holiday cottage. I'm really tempted to book a room to see if they have a guestbook and to rifle through the entries.
(The online reviews are very good, so perhaps some editing has taken place).
 
guitarh said:
It was one of the better Uncanny episodes so far. My thoughts: The incident with the figure sitting on his bed sounds like classic sleep paralysis, I actually thought that was the weakest part of the episode. However, the rest of the episode was really good, a chilling ghost story. The telephone calls could partially be explained by a faulty telephone line. But the fact it was preceded by "Harry called" is to me the unexplainable part. Interestingly, this means someone actually spoke to the caller, before taking the message "Harry called" (so the telephone line was not unintelligible to the 1st person). This would have happened on the multiple calls that were received (the witness claims over 30 missed calls "from Harry") before he was actually at home and took the call "from Harry" and heard the static noise. And also, his claim that these phone calls followed him to different locations, suggests it is not a technical fault in the telephone line. So either he is making the story up, or his friends played a prank, or something odd did happen. Interesting!
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I also thought this was one of the best episodes so far, really intriguing.

One ommision is did he ask the people who took the calls for more details of what exactly was said and what Harry sounded like...? Also did he press for details such as was there laughter/giggling in the background or any other hints that this was his mates winding him up
 
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DrPaulLee said:
There's a very haunted house nearby that was active from 1971 - 2016 and is now a holiday cottage. I'm really tempted to book a room to see if they have a guestbook and to rifle through the entries.
(The online reviews are very good, so perhaps some editing has taken place).
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This strikes me as a more than worthwhile research task!

I'm going to be seeing lots of guest books in the next few months and will study them with interest.
 
The whole story is fascinating.
I've been talking to one of the surviving children (he's now 66) and he's loaned me his mum's surviving notebook as well as information given in two 6 hour interviews.

The official story is that soon after moving in, the family were subject to the whims of a poltergeist. A few months later, a medium managed to banish the ghost.

The real story is that the disturbances went on for decades and many members of the family died including the younger daughter aged 5. The deaths could be a coincidence of course. So for a long time the family went through hell.
But why tell people that the ghost was exorcised? The reason is that the family received so much abuse, including the church that they made up a cover story. They just had to live with it.
The medium visited the property about 7 times and he managed to get rid of the ghosts one by one, except for the last which he couldn't remove.
 
IMG_20230419_134613330_MFNR~2.jpg
 
Douglas Scott Rogo's 1979 book on phone calls from the dead was mentioned. We have threads on 'phone weirdness' including two on the specific subject of apparent after-death telephone contact.

(Rogo was incidentally mysteriously murdered in 1990 at the age of 40.)

Around the time Rogo's book came out, phone weirdness and especially the supernatural aspects were very much in the air. A flap, like spoon-bending. There were magazine and tabloid stories about it.

I was interested, partly because of enjoying general strangeness and partly because I'd heard of the phreaking.

(Also, for a while in 1979 I lived in a house with a very modern Trimphone which could only take incoming calls.
It was a novelty to me; hadn't had any type of phone before and the Trimphone was always lit up. I'd see it at night and wonder if the dead might like to ring me on it. :chuckle: )

The episode's events started in 1992. At this time 'phreaking' was certainly a thing.
We have a thread on it, started by @Ermintruder. 'Phreaking' was mentioned by others and myself before then although I can't find my own references to it. Gone in the purges perhaps.

Phone Phreaking: The Net Before The Internet

Here's a comment of mine on that thread:

I first heard about phreaking from the Guardian in the late '70s. Tried to discuss it with people, nobody knew what I was on about.

So since the late '70s I have believed that telephones are no more credible than are photographs; both can be manipulated to deceive. Not only can you not believe your own eyes, your ears can be fooled too.
All of this applies tenfold today of course, but we're talking about 1992.

In light of this, my first thought was that the telephone aspects are a prank.
The calls Will picked up could have been phreaked (dunno what else you'd call it) to present a crossed line instead of a direct connection.

Dunno about the mustachio'd man though.
 
DrPaulLee said:
And despite my best efforts I can't get most people enthused by this. Why do I waste my time.
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Assuming you haven't yet done so, might I suggest that you record an interview with the witness you are in contact with to secure his testimony and enable us to hear the events in his own words? Extended poltergeist activity is such a rare phenomenon and he isn't getting any younger
 
I'm working on it! He's ok with being interviewed, it's just arranging a time. His sister has access to the mother's audio recordings but I don't hold out much hope of getting them. I've also been in touch with the other surviving brother via his wife. He seemed very keen to answer some questions so I sent some off but was disappointed in the response as they were one word answers or just repeating what I had said as a reply. I have since found out that his health is very poor.
Mum, dad and three sisters have passed on, as has the medium who partially exorcised the house.
 
Regarding 'Uncanny', I can't remember how I discovered the podcast, but it is in fact what led me to discover this Fortean forum. One day I discovered Uncanny Series 1 and was impressed by it. I researched the series a bit further, and viola, found this very interesting forum filled with kind people!... Although I'm a skeptic, I do enjoy a good ghost story, and the Uncanny podcast seems well produced. It does have its faults though. eg: It was initially promoted as "the biggest ever research project into the paranormal" (using social media to crowd source information) but that whole angle seems to have disappeared now!... But despite the faults, I think the overall quality of the show is quite high. I've searched out other podcasts such as 'Monsters Among Us' and in my humble opinion they are nowhere near as good. Maybe it's just the stronger narration each episode of Uncanny has, or the numerous narrative tricks to keep the audience engaged? Whatever it is -- when the episodes are good, they are compelling. Great storytelling. Room 611, the Newfoundland holiday house, and Harry Called are all highlights. I'm curious what the TV version of Uncanny will look like.
 
I had heard stories of Uncanny and the other Danny Robins series but for some reason held off listening to them. Until one day, late at night in the bath with several ice cold beers I decided to give it a try.
I listened to about 5 or 6 episodes at a time and it obviously took quite a few sessions to get through them. A lot I thought were interesting, a few dull but a couple really chilled me (especially the one were the girl was told to keep partying by the medium). I think a lot of the chills I got come not necessarily from the stories but from the creepy ambient sound design.
FWIW, I've skipped a few episodes this year. I found the Battersea Poltergeist to be more enticing than The Witch Farm. I will have to re-read testimony as I think it ends differently than The Witch Farm.
 
DrPaulLee said:
I had heard stories of Uncanny and the other Danny Robins series but for some reason held off listening to them. Until one day, late at night in the bath with several ice cold beers I decided to give it a try.
I listened to about 5 or 6 episodes at a time and it obviously took quite a few sessions to get through them. A lot I thought were interesting, a few dull but a couple really chilled me (especially the one were the girl was told to keep partying by the medium). I think a lot of the chills I got come not necessarily from the stories but from the creepy ambient sound design.
FWIW, I've skipped a few episodes this year. I found the Battersea Poltergeist to be more enticing than The Witch Farm. I will have to re-read testimony as I think it ends differently than The Witch Farm.
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What did you think of Case 13: The Return of Elizabeth Dacre? It's my favourite. :)

Plenty of individually strange and varied incidents, an identifiable ghost, bad enough vibes to wreck a marriage, a reliable-sounding witness, a solid history behind the setting of the haunting... Perfect. :nods:
 
I'm not sure 'Harry' would necessarily have needed to know Will's room number in the uni halls

.My memory of uni halls is that students took ownership of their rooms and put posters up etc to make the space theirs. I would bet this extended to those phone message pad things that were on or next to the door and that these would have been personalised by the students. It may have been a simple "Will's Messages" or whatever but it would have been enough.

Alternatively, if Will was a bit of a looker then you can guarantee enough students would have known which room was his...! Either way, I think that aspect can be explained. What I do find curious is that most young students head home during the frequent uni holidays, especially Christmas, Easter and the summer holiday yet he doesn't mention any calls at his family home.
 
escargot said:
[...] my first thought was that the telephone aspects are a prank.
The calls Will picked up could have been phreaked (dunno what else you'd call it) to present a crossed line instead of a direct connection.
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Bear in mind that just because something could be faked does not mean that it was faked. I recon a couple of my ghost encounters could have been faked, if someone really wanted to, but the enormous effort and expense involved would make an actual ghost encounter far more likely. Also, with pranks, part of the fun is usually (but not always) the "we got you good" mockery afterwards.
 
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