‘I’ve investigated the paranormal for nearly 10 years but this case truly terrifies me’

Since 2017, Danny Robins has spent his days and nights investigating everything that goes bump in the night.  

From ghosts, ghouls, and little green men, Danny’s left no rock unturned in his quest to better understand the Fortean.  

Along the way, he’s written ghostly stage plays, worked on terrifying TV series, and hosted multiple paranormal podcasts – the best known of which is Uncanny.  

This podcast sees Danny interview witnesses who have had uncanny experiences, and has explored everything from poltergeists to UFO sightings. 

His latest spin-off, though Uncanny: Cold Cases, takes a different track. Instead of investigating contemporary phenomena, Danny and his team are looking into some of the UK’s most notorious paranormal cases. 

And while Danny might have spent the best part of a decade obsessing over the otherworldly, he told Metro that one of these cases turned even his blood cold. 

‘I think the one that sticks with me, and it’s one I want to look at for a long time, is The Black Monk of Pontefract, a poltergeist case set up in Yorkshire,’ he explained.  

‘We’ve got candlesticks levitating and chucking themselves at a vicar. It’s got eggs exploding in front of people’s faces, disembodied gloves dancing around in the air, writing on the wall, and it gets really frightening.

‘It builds up to a conclusion where there is actual potential physical harm to people in that house, where people seem to receive injuries from a poltergeist. If you spend a moment thinking about what it would be like to be in that experience and put yourself in the shoes of that family, then it is truly terrifying.’ 

So, what is it about the Black Monk that frightens him so much?  

Well, as he said with a theatrical glint in his eye, it’s a haunting that ‘feels like something out of a Hollywood movie’ adding that ‘the testimony of Diane, the girl in the Black Monk case, is really quite frightening.’ 

‘There’s a moment where a crucifix fires across the room, attaches itself to a girl’s back and leaves what feels like a burn mark on her back,’ he revealed.  

‘If you take it at face value, and you accept the fact there are two people there witnessing this moment, then that seems to suggest that the impossible is possible.’ 

To make matters worse, Danny said, it implies that this ghost had the ‘intention to scare and to hurt.’ 

Danny, at this point, revealed he’s reluctant to point to it as demonic, which raises an interesting point.  

Across all his series, Danny has never once mentioned the demons or the demonic. It seems strange, given their prevalence in pop culture and how quick other paranormal podcasts are to report on them, but Danny thinks they’re ‘tricky territory’. 

‘If you watch films like The Conjuring, which are fun horror movies, based on the well-known American demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, they’re constantly running around telling people you’ve got a demon in your house. 

‘If you did that in real life, that’s incredibly damaging, disturbing behaviour. I mean, I think even telling someone their house is haunted can have huge implications. We’re always incredibly careful with that, and we take the ethical side of it very seriously.’ 

Beyond the ethical considerations, Danny is keen to point out that the idea of demonology is such a specific thing in Northern European and American concepts of religion.  

‘The idea of God and the devil in other places in the world will have entirely different concepts,’ he said.  
 
‘If you’re not religious, why would you believe in it being the devil and demons and so on. So, I think it’s, it’s hugely controversial and hugely debatable territory. We try to stick to the realms of human psychology.’ 

Of course, some cases are so strange that even Sigmund Freud and other masters of the human mind would struggle to explain them. 

Which brings us to Sam the Sandown Clown, a relatively obscure supernatural encounter from 1973, where two children encountered ‘Sam’, a creature who claimed, ‘not to be a ghost’. 

‘It’s a really strange one,’ Danny laughs, his eyes lighting up when I mention Sam’s name. 

‘Is it a ghost? Is it a UFO? Is it neither? Is it both? That’s the question. A little girl on the Isle of Wight who is playing with her friend and then encounters this, this clown-like character who is something inhuman.  

‘To us, it feels very creepy, but [the kids] just view it as a playfellow. I think it’s only later on that it feels unsettling, but it links to the fact that her dad keeps seeing UFOs, as well as to a potential connection there.  

‘It’s deeply, deeply odd. It’s one of those stories that feels like a sort of, almost like a folkloric spirit come to life, and defies explanation.’ 

But that’s the thing with Uncanny: Cold Cases, how does Danny try to explain these stories of the impossible, when most of the witnesses are no longer with us?  

‘I think there’s something very enduring about these cases,’ he explained. ‘Why are we still talking about them? And normally, it’s because there are mysteries at the heart of them that feel inexplicable. 

‘There are other big, famous cases that have not stood the test of time in the same way, like Amityville, which seemed credible at the time, but people now regard as a sham. The cases we’re looking at on Cold Cases generally fall into a much more mysterious category.’ 

Danny does admit to feeling a little frustrated that he can’t talk to the witnesses, but he admits there’s something fun in trying to bring these lesser-known stories to life.  

‘A lot of these cases are stories that we have been familiar with since childhood,’ he said. ‘I remember reading books that featured lots of these cases in them, and the idea of coming back to them and probing them with everything we’ve learned from Uncanny. It feels like you can bring a lot of useful stuff to these cases.’ 

Uncanny Cold Cases airs weekly on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds and will also be available to watch on the Uncanny YouTube channel. 

Uncanny: Fear of the Dark is at Soho Walthamstow on 5 & 6 May  

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