Uncanny · BBC Radio 4

Series 5: Case 1: The Haunted Street (Halloween Special)

October 31, 2025·1 hr 8 min·5 clips

Virginia's daughter Tatiana — now a sceptical politics student — describes seeing a large dark silhouette of an old man with wide dark eyes standing at the foot of her bed, smiling at her 'in a way that was also kind of scary.'

1. Uncanny's fifth series opens with a Halloween special in which host Danny Robbins investigates a potential haunted street in Bath, asking whether paranormal activity can infest not just one house but an entire row. 2. Danny Robbins hosts and writes the series; his regular experts are forensic psychologist and sceptic Dr Kieran O'Keefe and parapsychologist Evelyn Hollow, with comedian and actor James Acaster joining as a celebrity guest sceptic for the live second half. 3. The central thesis is whether multiple independent witnesses across four houses on the same Georgian street can be explained by a single cause — supernatural or otherwise — or whether each house represents an unrelated coincidence. 4. Witness Virginia, a woman in her 40s working in the voluntary sector, moved to the ten-house Georgian street in Bath in the 2000s with her husband Charlie and three young children, attracted by the house's atmosphere and views. 5. The haunting began insidiously with taps found running throughout the house, which Virginia initially attributed to herself until the pattern became undeniable — a hot tap blasting steam at 6am, with taps on across every floor simultaneously. 6. Plumber Stanley tells Danny on record that multiple taps failing simultaneously, hot water bypassing safety cut-offs, and the same tap turning back on after being switched off is a probability he would describe as requiring 'external forces' — and is unable to provide a plumbing explanation. 7. Virginia's sceptical sister dismissed the taps story as sleep deprivation — then went upstairs alone and found the shower already running; Virginia interpreted this as the entity listening and defending her, calling it 'a different ballgame.' 8. Virginia described feeling the house contained a child — 'naughty, prankish behaviour' — and spoke aloud to whatever was present, telling it it was welcome but asking never to be seen. 9. After Virginia knocked on neighbours' doors on a Sunday and discovered that 4 of 10 houses on the street were reporting similar activity, one male resident told her: 'It's not about believers and non-believers — it's about the haves and the have-nots on the street.' 10. Virginia's husband Charlie was furious at the door-knocking, believing she had 'stirred something up and reawakened something'; that night, their young daughter Tatiana was found screaming on the landing. 11. Tatiana — now a sceptical politics student in her 20s — describes waking fully, becoming conscious of a presence, turning over, and seeing a large pitch-black silhouette of an old man at the foot of her bed with wide dark eyes and an unsettling smile; her memory has never changed. 12. Kieran O'Keefe visits the street with an altimeter and infrasound meter, measuring a 110-foot altitude difference between the top and bottom of the steep street and detecting a high infrasound reading directly at Number One, the most affected house, attributable to nearby busy roads including London Road and the A46. 13. The infrasound theory connects to research by Vic Tandy at Coventry University, who traced a laboratory haunting to an extractor fan producing low-frequency vibrations that made a fencing blade move by itself. 14. Neighbours Adam and Alice — retired psychiatric nurses in their 60s who still live at Number One — report that on their first day in the house a pressure cooker disappeared and reappeared on the kitchen table in front of them, the start of a pattern of objects vanishing and reappearing. 15. Builders renovating Number One experienced a plumber who refused to re-enter the bathroom after a single visit, tools going missing, doors opening from turned handles, and windows opening by themselves; Adam noted that activity seemed to intensify during any building work. 16. Adam found his copy of Mojo magazine with all edges completely blackened 'as if somebody had gone round it with a match' — cold, no heat residue — which Evelyn identifies as 'destruction,' the third stage in the classic poltergeist progression. 17. The name 'Mrs Brown' appeared written in Victorian-style pencil script, 30 centimetres tall, across the top panel of Adam and Alice's dining room door — Evelyn calls this 'communication,' the fourth stage, and notes it is extremely rare for poltergeist cases to involve physical written communication. 18. Kieran examines the door at Number One and notes the writing was at the very top of the door panel — an adult height — acknowledging that whoever wrote 'Mrs Brown' was an adult, whether human or supernatural. 19. Listeners fascinated by the intersection of historical buildings, collective paranormal testimony, and the debate between infrasound psychology and genuine hauntings will find this episode richly detailed. 20. Listeners who need a definitive resolution will find the episode deliberately open-ended — the investigation is ongoing and Adam and Alice still live at Number One.

As heard by us

A Halloween haunting that turns one Bath street into a genuinely uneasy case.

Uncanny begins its new run with a Halloween walk through Bath, following Danny Robbins above the Georgian streets and widening a single 2009 haunting into a question about the whole road.

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Why you'd press play

You start on one Bath street and end up wondering whether the whole street in Bath is haunted.

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