I’ve heard so many tales of terrifying spirits – here’s my fave, says UK’s leading ghost expert Danny Robins
HE has achieved cult status as the nation’s ghost guru but Danny Robins is haunted by one small fact – he’s never actually seen an apparition.
The dad-of-two reveals that when fans stop him in the street to share their spookiest stories, he often wishes he had his own chilling tale to tell in return.
But the self-confessed sceptic — who says he wants to believe in the supernatural — admits he might run a mile if he met a spectre.
Danny, who hosts the popular Uncanny podcast, adds: “I’ve spent a lot of my life desperately wanting something to happen to me.
“I find myself wishing for a plate to fly past my nose or an apparition to walk out of a wall.
“I have not had my experience, so I desperately want to — and yet at the same time I think, ‘Be careful what you wish for’.
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“Because when people talk on my podcast about their experiences, you can hear the tremble in their voice, how frightening it still is. So I don’t know if I’m brave enough to see a ghost.”
Danny, 47, is fast becoming the nation’s most famous ghost storyteller, with Uncanny on Radio 4 investigating a different supernatural case in each episode.
The series recently spawned a TV show of the same name, currently airing on BBC2, which is expected to return for a second series.
Danny also has a new book, Into The Uncanny, is on a live sell-out tour of the UK and has won rave reviews for his hit West End thriller, 2:22 A Ghost Story.
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‘Pure, distilled evil’
Like the podcast, his TV series has a more measured approach to investigations than shows such as Most Haunted — with fans joining Danny as he delves into eerie mysteries.
Asked where he stands on ghosts and ghouls, he candidly admits: “I’m a sceptic who wants to believe.”
But ghosts do appear to follow him about as he recalls “some freaky moments” on his tour.
Danny explains: “We went to Warwick Arts Centre in Coventry and they were telling us about a ghost that had only recently started appearing in their cinema.
“It appeared for the first time during John Wick: Chapter 4 and I thought that is quite a way to begin a ghost story.
“This couple appeared during the credits, just sitting there. They would be the only people in the cinema and then, when the lights came up, they would disappear and there was no way they could have got out. It was freaky.”
Danny calls it a “real privilege” when people trust him with their scary tales.
He adds: “Some come up to me after the live show and share stories, and sometimes they are quite moving stories about people they have lost or moments when they have had a really profound experience.”
Recalling a case that featured in the first series of the Uncanny podcast, Danny continues: “One of the first emails I was sent was from a woman who felt she had seen the ghost of her best friend, who had died of cancer.
“Years after that, she went to see a medium in a village hall, thought the medium was terrible and, just as she was leaving, the medium grabbed her and said, ‘I couldn’t tell you this while I was on stage because the person didn’t want me to, but I had a message come through for you’.
“Then she said the exact dying words her best friend said to her — ‘Keep partying Laura-Bear’, which was her nickname.
“It always stuck with me and it was just one where I felt, no matter how I looked at it, I couldn’t find an answer.”
Another favourite is his first ever case for Uncanny, The Evil In Room 611.
It features Northern Irish geneticist Ken, now in his 60s, who describes how he and others at Alanbrooke Hall in Belfast — a tower block housing students from Queen’s University — were haunted by a figure of “pure, distilled evil” in the same room over the course of three years in the early 1980s.
Danny says: “This is the story that started it all. It was terrifying and impossible.
“Ken was kind of the perfect Uncanny witness, and he said, ‘I don’t believe in ghosts and yet I think I have seen a ghost’.
“It changed my life in a way because that was the thing that suddenly captured everyone’s imagination on Uncanny.”
Danny, who grew up in Newcastle, has had an obsession with ghosts since he first found haunted house stories in his school library.
As a teen, he was a stand-up comedy support act for Geordie joker and pal Ross Noble.
And he insists it’s vital to see the funny side when probing the paranormal.
Danny says: “It can get very deep and dark and serious, talking about frightening stuff, about death, and I think a little bit of humour is important. It keeps us sane.”
Danny has also written sitcoms and made travel and music documentaries.
In fact, he was a jobbing comedy writer, struggling to make ends meet, when he stumbled into his current line of work after a friend told him her ghost story.
Danny says: “It just felt so real and so compelling, and inspired me to write 2:22 A Ghost Story.
“I realised that everybody I knew would react to her in different ways. Some people would support her, some would mock her, some would be irritated by her.
“I thought, ‘What if you distil all of that into a couple?’. And so 2:22 just took that premise of what happens if one half of a couple has seen something and half of the couple doesn’t believe in ghosts.
“It’s that push and pull between scepticism and belief.”
The play, currently touring the UK, has featured an all-star rotating cast including Lily Allen, Cheryl Tweedy and Jaime Winstone as leading character Jenny.
Terrifying hauntings
He says: “For me it was a really special moment having Cheryl on board because I am a North Easterner and so is she. Hearing Jenny performed with a Geordie accent was a really lovely thing.”
Danny’s career took off when he appealed for ghost stories on social media.
The response led to podcasts Haunted and The Battersea Poltergeist, about teenager Shirley Hitchings — who was plagued by a poltergeist called Donald in one of Britain’s most terrifying hauntings.
Danny says: “The Battersea Poltergeist was mind-blowing. I started making the podcast in my shed during lockdown and, a couple of episodes in, I had Hollywood producers on the phone trying to buy the film rights.”
Actors Daisy May Cooper and Reece Shearsmith are among Danny’s star fans, with both having featured on the Uncanny podcast, picking their favourite episode.
Daisy’s was about climbers Phil MacNeill and Jimmy Dunn, who woke to find their ice axes being thrown about in a Scottish mountain shelter at Christmas 1974.
Comedian Jason Manford also told his own terrifying tale. Danny recalls: “He was performing in a play and Zoom-calling his child, who kept seeing this man in the background. His child said, ‘Why is that man there, Daddy?’ And Jason was like, ‘There is no man there’.
“It was a soldier and then Jason discovered there was a ghost of somebody who dressed as a soldier in the theatre who had been murdered while appearing in a play. It was creepy.”
Danny says he is banned from talking shop at home in Walthamstow, North East London, where he lives with Swedish wife Eva, also 47, and their sons Leo, 11, and seven-year-old Max.
He adds: “They hate it. It freaks them out. They are into Halloween, they just don’t like real ghosts.”
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Luckily for Danny, he has plenty of spirited fans desperate to share their spooky stories with him.
- All episodes of Uncanny are available now on BBC iPlayer. Uncanny: I Know What I Saw tours until December 1. For more information, go to uncannylive.com.
