Reading– Into The Uncanny by Danny Robins

Danny Robins presents a wonderfully spooky podcast called Uncanny. He is also the award winning journalist behind the podcast The Witch Farm and TV series and Podcast The Battersea Poltergeist. The paranormal isn’t really my usual genre but I must admit Robins’ boyishly sincere and enthusiastic presenting style makes for enjoyable listening. He is someone who desperately wants to believe in ghosts but has yet to be convinced.  As he would say, he is hovering between Team Believer and Team Sceptic. The people recounting their personal brushes with the inexplicable are often very credible; scientists, policemen, doctors and the like. Intelligent people who understand that what they have witnessed is impossible but, as the theme song to the podcast attests, they know what they saw.

Into The Uncanny is Robins’ new book which covers never heard before stories, all of them exceptionally chilling. Robins throws in a couple of personal anecdotes and, had I been the editor, I would have omitted the one about his garden shed, it’s just a bit over the top and daft. Other than that, he really is a first rate story teller. Research for this book takes him to Rome to investigate suspected poltergeist activity. Let me ask you a question, if you thought your rental property was haunted by a terrifying poltergeist would you ask a teenage boy to babysit? Then there is the perfectly normal family who had the misfortune to be left with both auditory and visual hauntings after an architectural dig disturbs something (or someone) on their land. The mother and daughter both struggled psychologically for years after these frightening events and Robins treats them very respectfully. I always wonder if the people who sell these supposedly haunted properties disclose the activity to any potential purchasers. 

Robins, possibly the Louis Theroux of the paranormal, can persuade just about anybody to let him look around their potentially haunted property and it is when he takes the original witnesses back to the scenes of the hauntings that things really start to become interesting. The book also covers some UFO activity, again with extremely credible witnesses but, for some reason, these stories don’t interest me so much. I do wonder if he wouldn’t be better to keep the green men separate from the ghosts. Overall a brilliant read and do check out Robins’ podcasts too. 

Watching – Leave The World Behind on Netflix

Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke star in this apocalyptic thriller. They play Amanda and Clay Sandford, a couple who decide to take their two children on a vacation to a luxury rental home. While in bed one night they are woken by a knock on the door and find GH Scott, the owner of the property and his daughter, Ruth, standing there in evening clothes having supposedly come from the opera. GH explains that there has been some sort of blackout and asks if they can come in and spend the night rather than driving back to the city. Amanda is immediately suspicious and Ruth, played by Myha’la, bristles at what she perceives as Amanda’s thinly veiled racism.  Does Amanda not believe that a GH, a black man, played by Mahershala Ai, can possibly be the owner of such an impressive property? To be honest, if complete strangers turned up at my door in the middle of the night begging to be let in I would be suspicious as well. Ruth and GH end up sleeping in the basement, albeit it a very nice basement, of their own house.

The plot is fairly predictable, fear and uncertainty spreads as nobody knows what is happening or who is behind the events A prepper and neighbour, played by Kevin Bacon, is all stocked up with food and medicine but brings out his shotgun when asked for help. There are a couple of genuinely shocking moments, one involving out of control Teslas and the other a gory dental scene. Overall, Leave The World Behind doesn’t offer anything that I haven’t seen a dozen times before.  It is over two hours long and I really had lost interest by the unsatisfactory ending. 

Listening to – Stories from the Village of Nothing Much on ITunes

This gorgeously relaxing podcast is written and narrated by Kathryn Nicolai. Nicolai describes herself as “an architect of cozy”, she has another podcast designed to help listeners sleep, called Nothing Much Happens which has been downloaded over one hundred million times. Listening to Nicolai’s wonderfully soothing voice is almost a form of meditation. The stories themselves are simple yet well written. In them Nicolai potters around the pretty village where her fictional self lives finding cheering things to do to brighten up the winter. Pleasure is found in simple things, a delicious cup of coffee or a browse around a Christmas market. Everybody is friendly and time spent alone is something to be cherished. This village is somewhere that I would quite like to move to myself. If you are feeling frazzled at this busy time of the year then do listen in.

Cover Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Thank you for reading,

Samantha