‘Uncanny’: Danny Robins Explores A Haunting Spirit Dubbed “The BBC Presenter”
Anne, now a resident of a small village outside of York, recounts her chilling experiences from 1989. She had recently moved into a 1970s house with her young son and husband. The house, previously owned by an elderly man named Alf, was an average, characterless building. “It was a 1970s build absolutely devoid of any character. Just average, just like we were,” Anne describes.
The oddities began after Anne and her husband renovated their kitchen. Anne experienced a startling phenomenon: a mysterious poke followed by a clear, male voice saying, “good evening.” The voice, described by Anne as having a “BBC presenter voice… that kind of clipped, middle-class accent,” continued to haunt her at different times of the day, often accompanied by a physical sensation of being poked.
Despite sharing these experiences with her husband, Charlie, he remained skeptical until he too encountered the strange phenomenon. The incidents escalated when a forceful poke and the slamming of a kitchen door left Anne terrified, leading her to seek refuge with a friend.
The story culminates with Anne seeking help from a vicar, leading to a ritual that appears to have quelled the disturbances. “So the vicar turned up on Sunday afternoon and he said some form of words and flicked holy water around. And then we thanked him very profusely. And he left and we thought well, wouldn’t have done any good. It did because nothing else ever happened,” Anne recalls.
But that’s not the end of Anne’s story. As Anne recounts, “I took my son for a hair appointment. There was a lass in there called Lorna… She sat me down, had my boy on my lap, and she started snipping away, making polite conversation.” Anne mentioned moving into a house nearby, and Lorna casually asked, “Oh, did you buy Alf’s house?”
The conversation that followed unveiled a chilling background. Lorna revealed that Alf’s brother-in-law, who once lived in the house, was an ex-army man and a former radio announcer with “impeccable diction.” This man, afflicted with dementia in his later years, exhibited bizarre behaviours. Anne’s reaction to this revelation was one of shock and realisation: “My blood ran cold… That’s the man who’s been in my house. You would expect him to sit down and read you the news. Very well spoken, clear, enunciation. And it felt like some kind of answer.”
