BBC Sounds, 14 June 2023

“Don’t have nightmares… and if you do, pray that they aren’t about your terrifying past life as a German fighter pilot.”

The Hay-on-Wye Festival has evolved over the years into a veritable gala of the literary arts, where the written and spoken word are celebrated, not just in picturesque Wales but in partner fetes all over the world. It brings writers, readers and listeners together, and it’s only right that podcasts are now included in the artforms that are enjoyed by festival-goers.

Danny Robins takes to a Hay stage with the ever erudite Evelyn Hollow, and a celebrity guest in the form of David Baddiel. There are two creepy cases under the microscope, the first potentially a recurring dream from a past-life and the second from the well-haunted London Underground.

Uncanny has always had an… er, uncanny… knack of walking the tightrope between belief and scepticism, but Baddiel comes dangerously close to toppling from said tightrope into the dark canyon of ridicule. Fortunately, Danny has a safety-net at the ready, and swoops in to save the day with one of his well-timed and affable quips.

Past-life theory isn’t something that this podcast has explored before, but when we hear that a man who recognised being in a single-eater cockpit from his dreams and spoke a language he doesn’t know in a dream, it’s pretty compelling. Explainable, though, theoretically. Add to that the fact that he used to say “when he was a man, he was a pilot” when he was a toddler, and there’s a definite spike on the spooky-scale.

With ghost cases, if there are ever multiple witnesses, that increases the believability. If those witnesses had the same experience multiple different times, that factor increases again. The very reasonable explanation here is that workers on the Underground have to have experienced trauma, by the very nature of the dangers that have existed in those dark tunnels for over a hundred years, thus, they could be more likely to have visions that aren’t real, that come from that trauma. The brain is a strange thing sometimes. But… those same dangers mean that lives have most certainly been lost, increasing the chances that those visions of a lost girl are exactly what they appear to be.

The best bit of a live Uncanny show is that there’s also an opportunity to hear some audience theories, stories and engage in a live debate, which is endlessly fascinating, and makes me look forward to the shows that Danny and the gang have planned, as the second series heads for its finale.

Verdict: A nice opportunity to dissect a couple of cases live, with an audience ready to lap it up. Bodes well for the Uncanny tour coming up later in 2023. 8/10

Claire Smith