BBC Radio 4, December 23, 2022 and BBC Sounds

A childhood haunting that never fades

With almost as much flair as the Godfather of spooky Christmas stories, Dickens himself, Danny Robins flourishes his writing wand and casts a wintry spell over BBC Sounds this festive season. Yes Danny, we’ll ignore the cat poo in your snowy garden, that’s not so Dickensian, you’re right. Intrigued? Read on…

We hear Kevin’s tale in reverse, starting in December 1999 with bags being rustled and opened – not something that could have been done by a cheeky rodent. Descriptions of furniture that ‘seemingly had a life of its own’ moving, with audio and visual phenomena being experienced over years, adds to the tension. This is no small matter, as Evelyn Hollow explains. If you actually witness a statue of an angel moving across a table, it’s going to stay with you.

Not content with Kevin’s tale of the childhood phantom that tormented him and his mother over a number of years in Glasgow, one of our experts is a psychotherapist with a lot of experience with children: Roslyn Grainger. She posits some theories relating to the interesting dynamic between Kevin and his young mother – still technically a child herself when she had him – explaining their complexities in a very clear and accessible way. It’s very easy to see how the map of young Kevin’s world could have included paranormal activity, even with the “strong” mother, that he describes with such obvious pride and love, by his side.

That being said, surely there would need to have been a powerful trigger for the fear that Kevin still feels all these years later? A trigger like a dreadful woman with scaled, burned skin and sharp nails sitting on his mother’s side of the bed? It’s not just black and white though, life is rarely that simple. As Roslyn points out: “sometimes there’s an in-between.”

Verdict: Perfect spooky listening for a cold winter’s night, to keep us going until the Uncanny Live broadcast on 30 December and then the TV specials in 2023! 8/10

Claire Smith