SPOILERS

“Holy Crap, Scott.”

There’s a T-shirt quote for you! If you set your alarm for 6pm on 6/6 to tune in to part one of the Uncanny Summer Special, you didn’t expect to sleep well that night, did you?

Our witness for this haunting holiday horror is Scott, and he does indeed sound rather nervous as he sets the picturesque scene for us, taking us back to his family Summer trip to Newfoundland in Canada, in 1998 when he was 14. Even in the coastal sunshine, they stumble across an escapee from Davy Jones’ locker outside a disused outbuilding. Now, an old fisherman isn’t out of place along the rugged and isolated homesteads of the Atlantic shoreline, but stay tuned to learn why this “grizzled old sea-dog” stayed in Scott’s mind.

Deborah Hyde and Evelyn Hollow, experts we’re familiar with from previous episodes, posit hypotheses from different perspectives, leading to a fascinating discussion involving sleep paralysis (I was ‘today-years-old’ when I learned incidents of this often involve hearing footsteps), EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) and trigger events.

The “suffocating fear” described by Scott as he witnessed his sleeping younger brother, Callum, being thrown through the room above his head, seems consistent with descriptions from those who have experienced sleep paralysis… and were the family already in prime psychological position to hear things that go bump in the night? These are plausible explanations that could explain some of the phenomena, but what if ghosts are perhaps some form of energy by another name? What if that energy can, after all, manipulate sound, and maybe even the physical world?

Don’t end it there, Danny!  Part two drops with a Listen Live event on social media on Monday 13 June at 9pm.

Verdict: Uncanny’s back with a… sinister thud… even your summer holiday isn’t safe! 8/10

Claire Smith