BBC Sounds, April 19, 2023

NB Some spoilers if you’ve not heard the episode

“Whatever’s going on inside is far from ordinary.”

Loathe as I am to misquote Belinda Carlisle, I would rather not leave a light on for whatever the hell is in number 67.

How can a room sound like it’s being completely trashed with not a thing out of place a second later? Danny dives in to some compelling theories from the Uncanny Community and for me, the fact that the perpetrator of the nocturnal noises doesn’t put their clocks forward to accommodate BST adds to the plausibility.

I’m with Evelyn when  it comes to fearing voice phenomena more than anything else, it’s absolutely terrifying, and certainly features in my adolescent nightmares. Then the family gets some terrible health-related news, that even I immediately think could be an explanation for some of the events that James’ poor Mum has suffered. Danny points out, though, that this doesn’t explain the fact that other witnesses experienced the same things as she did.

When she lost her battle and stepped through the veil, the phenomena stopped abruptly. Now, you could certainly surmise that this is because she was the focal point of the haunting… or you could suggest that the moment she was on the same plane of existence as whatever had been haunting them, she called them off her boy. Yes, that’s perhaps a romanticised way of looking at this, but that’s my style. When you hear the end of the tale it’s achingly sad. How brave James is to share this with us all.

Verdict: Darkness shrouds ‘number 67’ as one family has to deal with more than its fair share of tragedy.  8/10

Claire Smith