Series 1: Case 1: The Evil in Room 611

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It's a rainy night out there. I'm Danny Robbins and earlier this year I made a series called The Battersy Poltika. It told a real life ghost story, and as part of it, I asked people listening to send me their own experiences. Hundreds of people sent me stories of their own strange encounters, things that have haunted them for the rest of their lives. So this new series lets these people tell their stories, but are they genuinely supernatural? Or can they be explained?

Each episode is a new case that I'll be trying to solve. We'll hear from the person it happened to, And then I'll explore their story of a team of experts. And it's not just ghosts, we'll also explore stories of other strange encounters. UFOs, mysterious beasts, and dark folklore come to life. This is the biggest investigation into the paranormal. So are you team believers? Or team sketch. Is the impossible possible?

Dim the lights, if you can, because our first story is a tale of sinister apparitions, poltergeist forces. Dark power May or may not have come back. Uncanny. Case 1. The evil in room 611. There was a very, very strong sense of pure distilled evil coming from this figure. This is Ken. He's a highly respected scientist who very definitely doesn't believe in ghosts. But.

He thinks he saw one. It started to drift towards me. One of the things I can remember was okay this thing wants to do absolute harm against me. Ken's in his sixties, he's wearing a slightly flamboyant tweed waistcoat, and he's got these black-rimmed glasses that remind me of Michael Cain. All the best ghost stories start with the teller reassuring us that they're a person of sound and rational mind. And Ken does pretty well on that front.

So basically I'm a human geneticist. I spend all my time looking to see if I can find genetic causes of human congenital disease. We are a product of everyone that has been our ancestors and our genomes are shaped by that. And what about you? What are you a product of? So I grew up in rural Northern Ireland, in the countryside. Were ghosts a part of your childhood?

They were in the sense that particularly the the generation of my my parents, they had a tradition of telling stories of things that they'd seen or things that had happened. Ghosts were considered to exist, fairies were considered to exist, and um no one of that generation questioned them. I think the younger generation, my generation, questioned everything. This is what really intrigues me, Ken. Science tells us that ghosts can't exist. And yet you are here to tell me a ghost story.

Science doesn't say ghosts can't exist, it depends on your definition of ghosts. ghosts are things that we've seen, but they cannot be explained yet. But this is a ghost story. You're trying to push me into this. This is a story about something that I cannot explain.

Ken's story takes place not in the countryside of his childhood, but in Northern Ireland's capital. So it's nineteen eighty one and he's moved there for university. I was at Queen's University of Belfast. studying microbiology and I stared in the halls of residence. It's the last place in the world you would expect anything to happen. A nineteen sixties tar block, no character called Allenbrook Hall. Pens on the sixth floor. In a double room shared with his friend James.

The room was number six eleven, and I think that's been ingrained in my mind for a long time that number. So you both settle in and then things begin all of a sudden and very dramatically. It was the dead of winter and I had gone to bed, James had gone to bed as well. My eyes were open and something caught my attention. I saw a large black silhouette near the desk of what I had impressioned was a man.

The first thing that struck me, because I was analyzing this data as much as possible, was that I'd never seen anything so black. It was just the blackest black I had ever seen. At exactly the same moment, two things happened. was I could hear in my ears what would I could only describe as very very loud white noise. And also there was a very very strong sense of pure distilled evil coming from this figure. So when you say evil, Ken, that's obviously a word

that we used to describe murderers or dictators. But what does evil feel like? It felt like a force of nature. There was a feeling of everything that is good, everything that is called hope, had disappeared. So there's just complete and utter despair. And I felt it coming through me in waves. And as I looked down the bed I could see ripples in the blankets that was corresponding to this movement of force. And I was thinking, what on earth is going on?

So hold on, you you're literally seeing the blanket move. Yes. And the other thing was that I felt as if this evil was specifically against me. This thing wants to do absolute harm against me. Bloody hell can. And what happened next was it started to drift towards me. And um as it came to my shoulder a adrenaline kicked in and the only thing I could do was just to lie. And as I lunch that Figure and everything else associated with it disappeared.

There was just total silence in the room. There was nothing. So what did you think had happened? I obviously couldn't explain it. So I said to my roommate James, I said The strangest thing ever has just happened to me. And he said to me, said Peter. The strangest things just happened to him as well.

And I was expecting him to say the same thing I'd just witnessed. But he said he's something completely different. He had his eyes closed, was lying in bed, was trying to get to sleep. He saw a point of light. So this point of light got larger. larger and larger in his mind's eye, and he could see the back of the head of a man. And this man turned, gave him a very dirty look, and then disappeared.

Did he describe the man's face? The only thing I can remember him saying it was a young guy. He would have been about the same age as us, basically a student. He said his eyes were closed, but it was as if he was seeing the person in real life. And he felt as if this person also was wanting to do harm against him. He said it was one of the most disturbing things that ever happened. I find this intriguing, so you're both young scientists.

How do you explain this strange shared experience? That's a very, very good question. The most remarkable part of all of that was this force of evil. Not seeing something, not watching blankets move, it was like My goodness, what on earth have I just experienced in terms of a physical force?

I feel like we need to take a break. That was intense. I'm just popping outside. So I think you can hear that Ken is grappling with himself. His rational scientific mind is telling him that this can't be possible. And yet He is seeing this figure in his room. He's feeling this force that he describes as evil. I think he'd probably be able to dismiss it somehow if it was a one-off.

But it's not. This is just the first night, and if you think that that was bad, wait till you hear what happens next.

Okay, so the next day is a Friday. I know it's a Friday because everyone except myself went home for the weekend. Usually we went home for the laundry run, as you know, whenever you're a student. Back to your parents. But I knew I was staying in the room myself that night. And I have to say I was a bit concerned after what's happened the previous night. That feels like an understatement. So I'm alone on the entire floor. I was reading a book. It was about half nine, ten o'clock at night.

and the lights were on. So from the rim I could hear the lift. So, okay, so there's somebody around. And then the lift stopped at the floor I was on and I could hear the doors opening and I thought that's Strange, maybe someone coming to see me. instant I felt the same force of evil, this time coming from my left hand side, which is where the lift was located. And my first thought was, oh my god, not again. And I immediately heard very loud footsteps. It reached the door of the room, stopped.

And then there was this profound silence. Probably lasted a millisecond, but it felt like one of the longest silences ever. And then the door started to bang. It was as if the door was being kicked. Punched at both the top and the bottom at the same time. It felt as if there were multiple fists being hit against the door. Extremely violent. I could see the door shaking and it went through my head is this door going to come off its hinges or not?

What did you do, Ken? Instinct just jumped in again. So I jumped out of bed and in my mind's eye I can still see my left hand on the handle of the door. Felt the door shaking. I think adrenaline was going crazy at that time. Just pulled the door open. And there was nothing. The feeling of evil had gone completely, complete silence.

I saw the lift was stopped at the floor, so I knew I had imagined the lift being somewhere else. But there was nobody. There was no lights on in any of the rooms. I knew there was nobody on the floor anyway. There was nothing there. Ken, you're a scientist. You're used to analyzing data. Could it have been a person? Um

No. The door was being beaten incredibly violently. I opened it while it was still being beaten like that. And there was nobody there. It's just impossible. No one could just uh vanish like that. It's time to bring in some experts. I'm with Caroline Watt, who's a professor of parapsychology at Edinburgh University, and Peter Laws, who's an ordained reverend and a writer on the paranormal. Caroline, your job is to explain ghost stories scientifically. What do you make of this one?

Well first of all, how brave is Ken? I don't think I would have opened the door. Um so kudos for that. The difficulty is knowing what really happened. So he could see something of the room and he saw a black figure. I I can't rule out the possibility that it was a ghost of some sort, um but it did make me think that this could be something to do with a hypnagogic hallucination. So that

a kind of imagery that you experience on the borderlands between being asleep and waking. You can hear loud sounds and noises, you can See things, you can feel a presence, feel fear. So is it almost like the body gets confused? It doesn't know if it's in dreamland or reality.

Yes, I think that's quite a good way of describing it. There's a misconception to think the word hallucination means that you're somehow crazy. Actually we do it all the time. We're particularly good at seeing faces and figures. Possibly because for evolutionary reasons it would be beneficial to be able to spot a possible predator or a possible mate. Peter, this figure clearly had a massive impact on Ken.

Yes, what's particularly sinister is the fact that this figure has chosen that room on that night, and that adds a sense of menace, because you'll think, hang on, there's hundreds of other rooms here. Why this one? Why me? You're a reverence, I'm guessing that you believe in the concepts of good and evil. But what did you make of Ken's description of evil as a physical force?

Well what I find really fascinating about how Ken describes this apparition is that he doesn't just say it's evil, but he says it's the absence of good, which is actually very interesting, because that's a way some theologians have described hell itself. How Ken describes it is almost imagining if something has punched a hole in the world and he is seeing through to something that is anti-good, or if you're religious, anti-god.

Caroline, it's interesting. He doesn't describe the feeling as fear. He uses that word evil. It almost made me think back to those old ghost and fairy stories that Ken's parents told. I think the irrational side of us, if you like, does lurk and maybe it comes out more in the middle of the night. Our fears get magnified and So even with the scientific education, I don't think that you can switch off that side of your being if that's in your DNA.

Let's talk about night two. So we have those footsteps and then the door. Well this is where to me the story starts getting more persuasive because while it's possible that Ken could have fallen asleep while reading, I think it's less likely than the scenario of the night before. This is much more physical. He's hearing noises that are coming from actual objects in his bedroom and also the lift as well.

And this really is more like poltergeist activity, which I find to be personally some of the most convincing evidence in these cases that maybe there is actually something supernatural going on. Caroline, what did you make of the activity on the second night? I think the the simplest explanation is usually the best and that would be though w we heard the lift and then we heard footsteps so a person arrived in the lift and walked along the corridor.

I know that some students were supposed to be away, but there might still be nothers like him who were still there. Interesting, so we have these uncertainties, but we also have this strange corroborating experience of Ken's roommate James, that vision of a man who seems to want to do him harm. Peter, it feels as fantastical as the fairy stories of Ken's childhood.

But could we countenance the idea that there really is something evil or wrong about this room? I think you have to leave that door open, and it depends on what happens next.

I think you'd need more information first before you decide it. Let's get that then. Um so Ken talked about how we inherit the genes of our ancestors, and back in 1981, he decides to go and seek out His ancestors in room six hundred eleven. On the floor there were two other guys in two single rooms that had lived the previous year in that same double room six hundred eleven that we were in. So on the Monday evening I went past the kitchen.

And I saw the two guys together with two other guys and I said this is a strange thing to ask, but is there anything unusual about that room? And they all looked at each other and And I knew I knew they knew something that we didn't know. And I asked them what had happened to them. What they experienced was books flying around the room. A book would literally come off the bookshelf and hit the wall on the opposite side of the room.

Okay, this feels huge here, I think. So we've heard about Ken's experiences and now He finds out that he's not alone. The people the year before also believed that the room was haunted and had these experiences that I guess we would describe as poltergeist. And the story's about to get even weirder. Because let's fast forward.

To the end of the year when Ken finally escapes from room six eleven. He comes back the next academic year to live in a different room on the sixth floor and two new guys move into room six eleven. Those of us who were on the floor from the previous year, we got together and we decided we would not tell them anything about what was known about that room. Ken, so you're doing to them what the people the year before done to you. Why?

Uh made that decision not to tell them because I was thinking about this as maybe this is a bit of an experiment. They're completely new. Let's just see what happens. Um So I would say it was about two to three months after they arrived. They stopped me in the kitchen and they said, Tell me about the room is there something bad? And I asked them what had happened to them. They just want to hear what their stories were.

They said that things started with both of them having nightmares and neither of them usually had nightmares, but they were having regular nightmares that they said they were very dark, they said they were that was waking both of them up during the night. So it began like that. Then it changed to where they would both have exactly the same nightmare at the same time.

And that started to get them worried, why were they dreaming and having a nightmare that involved exactly the same story or scenario? And then it evolved even further, where one of them would have a nightmare and that night nightmare would then be continued by the other one later in the same night. They would compare their stories in the morning and discover that both of their nightmares made a single story. So that got them extremely worried. And then it changed

to poltergeist activity. In their particular case it was cuttlery. Knives and forks would fly through the rim. Pieces of cutlery. Or other sharp instruments would be placed. beside the bed where they would put their feet, so it'd be forks and things like this. Arranged in a certain way that they could hurt themselves whenever they got out of the bed and they perceived us as being something that was malicious and If I remember right, they did not spend very much time in the room after that.

Ken, this is three years running now. What is happening here? I don't know. I don't know. If one incident had occurred and occurred to me, I could have put it down to some sort of Hallucination, but what happened in that room happened to different individuals, often at the same time. I'm really trying to explain this in terms of um with physics.

What would explain seeing that particular thing? What would explain feeling that force? What would explain books moving? I just think about it like now I try to rationalise it. Can't rationalise it.

I'm back with Caroline Watt and Peter Laws who've been listening to all of that. Peter, we've seen more alleged poltergeist activity and what's interesting for me is that this is taking place in a student bedroom. One thing we know about poltergeist cases is they're often associated with younger people, especially teenagers.

Yeah. And you often see this in cases of poltergeists where it can be connected to the stress and trauma of people living in a house. What's intriguing about times of going to college and university is that actually that can be a melting pot of stress. And so it's possible that whatever spiritual element, if it is that, could be feeding off this type of tragic energy.

Or from a sceptic viewpoint, these are people away from home for the first time, feeling unsettled, more likely to be prone to fear and anxiety. Caroline, it feels like these incidents year after year can't all be sleep related. How else could we explain it? Well, I think there's one possibility is that there's something in the environment that is affecting the people in the room, such as electromagnetic activity or infrasound.

We know that low frequency sounds in the environment can create emotions in people, a sense of presence and sometimes a sense of fear as well. And so I was starting to think about what might be a source of infrasound. And what was your theory? because it's got a large amount of electrical activity powering it somewhere. So that will create electromagnetic activity. And it may also create infrasound in in the way that it moves.

So that could create haunt experiences, ghost-like experiences. If I was an investigator, I think I'd want to find out, you know, in the blueprints of the building, where's the power source for the lift? Fascinating. So in this scenario, room six eleven is haunted just by a very tangible environmental factor. I guess some people there will be wondering if that can explain the flying cutlery and the weird shared nightmares. Peter, do you still feel that this could be genuinely paranormal?

I do find it interesting that Ken's background is as a geneticist, because there really could be a sense of a kind of DNA stamped onto a room. What if that room itself retains the trauma and the sadness and the fear of times before and is replaying it for new people? I think we need to find out more about the history of room six eleven. And that's what Ken decides to do back in 1981. So he and his roommate James get talking to the woman who cleans their corridor.

We knew her quite well, so we asked her was there anything unusual, untoward in room six eleven? And um she looked at us and she said that She was wondering when we would ask that as well, and said that she was really uncomfortable cleaning in our room. She always felt as if there was a presence. And she said that had been going on for years. So we asked her, you know, what do you think is going on? And what she told us is that several people had died with a link to that room.

Someone had fallen out of the window. It was thought to be suicide, but there were rumors circulating at the time that the person was pushed. Then she talked about another individual that was in the room, a student. and um that person was shot dead either going to or coming from mass and that was sometime in the early nineteen seventies. And then she also referred to a third person that had died in the room.

And for her these were the three candidates because they'd all died while being a student and living in that room. How would you feel as a scientist if the answer to all of this is that the thing in your room was a dead person come back to life? I would be astonished at the And I would want to know how does that work. But did you think back to that vision James had on that first night, the face of the student who turned to look at him?

Do you think there could be something in that story that Glenna told you? I think it's a remarkable coincidence if there were three people that died in tragic circumstances. to men, I think it's something that should be investigated.

So that's what we're gonna do. We are throwing this case over to you now. I want you to send me your theories on what happened. Or if you've got questions you want me to ask Ken, send those. It would be amazing to hear from anyone who's stayed in room six eleven in Allenbrook Hall. And also I want to hear from anybody who's had a similar experience. Can you help throw light on this? As they say, is a foot, email me uncanny at bbc.co.uk or find me.

Danny Robbins on social media. We'll be coming back to Ken's story later in the series. But next time, on Uncanny. So this is the story of a haunted house. How did you feel living there? Terrified. Absolutely terrified. I could have taken But the knowledge that there's someone in the room with you just horrible. Uncanny was written. Danny Robbins. Music is composed by Evelyn Sykes. Our theme tune is by Lanterns on the Lake.

What's the link between poisoned underpants? They wanted something that verbs against. Cancer and have him die shortly afterwards. I'm Andrew Harding with A Tale of Politics and Paranoia. Some people wanted me dead. Oh, and Link is Jacob Zuma, South Africa's former president. And indeed it was quite a strong poison. That's Poison from BBC Radio 4. To listen to all five episodes, just search for Seriously on BBC Sounds.

Amazon presenterar Simon och hans dejingnärver. Under miljontals år har djur utvecklat sofistikerade paningsritualer. Fåglar dansar, varje rylar och pinger fria med stenar. Och Simon, han ska laga middag. Och han flippar ut. Men simon hoppade på Amazon och köpte ljusstar vingas eftersom han är optimist, en extra tönfort. Ja, Simon, det bor alltid djuing rackare. För dig inte att hända, hoppa på Amazon.se.

Hör upp! Dacks för ett nytt strykttips Kvist Mysterium. Vilket lag spelar på Citiground, håll jag litro tack. Sog i stan. Smart. Nottingham Forest. Rätt hånd. Ett spel från svenska spel, sport och casino för dig över 18 år. Stödlinjen.se