Uncanny: I Know What I Saw with Danny Robins

Join Danny Robins and his team of experts for a terrifying and thought provoking evening, featuring chilling new real-life stories of the supernatural, experienced by ordinary people from ordinary places, brought to life on stage through thrilling theatrical invention, using exquisite sound, projection and video design.

MEET THE TEAM

DANNY ROBINS

Danny Robins is an award-winning British writer, broadcaster and journalist. He created The Battersea Poltergeist, a podcast series for the BBC that combined drama and documentary to tell a real-life ghost story, starring Toby Jones and Dafne Keen. It became a global phenomenon – the #1 Drama Podcast across the whole world, with more than 4 million downloads and counting – sparking a bidding war for the TV rights. Danny is now adapting it with Hollywood producers Blumhouse. The series won the Gold Award for Best Serialised Podcast at the New York Festivals Radio Awards.

Danny’s new BBC podcast series Uncanny, telling individual stories of paranormal encounters, from ghosts to UFOs, is another multi-million download hit.

Danny’s play 2:22 – A Ghost Story, a contemporary-set modern supernatural thriller starring Lily Allen, opened in the West End in August 2021, playing to full houses and rave reviews. It returned for a second run in December 2021, and is still running a the Gielgud Theatr

He has created and written various shows for TV and radio, including the BAFTA-nominated hit series Young Dracula for BBC1 and Rudy’s Rare Records and The Cold Swedish Winter for BBC Radio 4. He also created the Haunted podcast series for Panoply, which explores real-life ghost stories.

Most impressively though, he came second in the UK Air Guitar Championship (he was robbed) and he bizarrely once had a Number 11 hit single by accident. Ask him about it when you see him.

CHRIS FRENCH #teamsceptic

Chris French is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, where he is also Head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, as well as being a Patron of the British Humanist Association.

He is a member of the Scientific and Professional Advisory Board of the British False Memory Society. He has published well over 150 articles and chapters covering a wide range of topics within psychology. His main area of research is the psychology of paranormal beliefs and anomalous experiences. He frequently appears on radio and television casting a sceptical eye over paranormal claims, as well as writing for the Guardian and The Skeptic magazine which, for more than a decade, he also edited.

His books include Anomalistic Psychology, co-authored with Nicola Holt, Christine Simmonds-Moore, and David Luke (2012), and Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and Experience, co-authored with Anna Stone (2014). His next book, The Science of Weird Shit: Why Our Minds Conjure the Paranormal, will be published by MIT Press in early 2024.

EVELYN HOLLOW #teambeliever

Evelyn Hollow is a double academy award winning Scottish writer and paranormal psychologist.

She was a resident author at Esoterica Zine for more than four years, was the recipient of the 2015 Lonely Planet Travel Writing Scholarship, the occult columnist for Corvid Culture, written numerous articles for HAUNTED magazine, and has taught writing classes at everywhere from universities to arts festivals. She has also been featured in exhibitions at ESAF and is the creator of The Baer Archive. She is currently writing her first book, a hardback non-fiction, which will be published worldwide on Ivy Press (Quarto Publishing Group) in September 2024.

She is a former psychology lecturer and holds a Master of Research degree in Paranormal Psychology. She now consults as a paranormal psychologist and expert for various TV shows and podcasts — most recently the smash-hit BBC shows The Battersea Poltergeist , The Witch Farm, and Uncanny. She is also from the Warner Bros. TV shows Spooked Scotland and Spooked Ireland, which stream on Discovery Channel+.

Evelyn gives guest talks on paranormal history and the quantum physics of anomalous phenomena.

DEBORAH HYDE #teamsceptic

Deborah Hyde is an author, presenter and producer. She wants to know why people believe in the supernatural, and uses psychology, cultural anthropology, history and folklore to shed light on this intractable strand of human nature.

She makes frequent TV appearances, has written for periodicals such as ‘The Guardian’ and ‘The Fortean Times’ and has contributed material to book anthologies. The latest is about the cryptozoological Hull Werewolf which will appear in ‘Werewolf Legends’. For ten years, Deborah was Editor-in-Chief of ‘The Skeptic’ and is a fellow of The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

Deborah regularly speaks on her subjects, having gone from Las Vegas to New York City, from Wroclaw, Poland to Sofia, Bulgaria. She hosts events for Conway Hall, the oldest surviving freethought organisation in the world, and for Fortean London’s special annual events there.

 CIARAN O’KEEFE #teamsceptic

Ciarán has been fascinated by ghost stories since a very young age. He was a voracious reader as a boy – books by Clive Barker, James Herbert, M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft – and it fuelled an interest in ghostly experiences. Around the same time, Arthur C. Clarke had his TV show, Mysterious World, and he was hooked.

In 1984, when the movie Ghostbusters came out, he knew that’s what he wanted to do. A degree in psychology in the US and research at the Institute of Parapsychology [founded by Dr J.B. Rhine, a pioneer in the field] started a long path of study, qualifications and experience to finally gain a PhD in a parapsychology topic and live my dream of becoming Dr Venkman [the role played by Bill Murray in Ghostbusters].