Danny Robins and the Uncanny Allure of the Arena Ghost Story

“To be honest, the escalating scale of the events hasn’t come as a total shock,” says Danny Robins. “Because right from the very earliest days of the podcast, we were receiving this healthy, almost overwhelming amount of listener mail and emails. Instead of waning, that public fascination has just kept growing over time.”

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Robins is the broadcaster, playwright, and former sketch comic who turned Britain’s quiet fixation with the supernatural into a sprawling multimedia enterprise.

Best known as the writer behind 2:22 A Ghost Story — a West End and touring juggernaut that has drawn everyone from Lily Allen and Cheryl to EastEnders and Hollyoaks alumni into its rotating dinner party since 2021, and the creator of BBC audio investigations The Battersea Poltergeist (2021), The Witch Farm (2022), and Uncanny (launched in 2021), he cut his teeth in alternative comedy during the early 2000s. His early career spanned BBC Two’s spoof documentary We Are History (2000), BBC Radio 4 sketch show The Museum of Everything (2004–2006), CBBC’s Young Dracula (2006–2014), and fringe parodies before he turned his attention toward the unexplained.

(Editor’s Note: I was utterly thrilled to get the chance to interview Danny shortly before attention turned to the Edinburgh Fringe. I’ve been a fan since The Museum of Everything — I’ve met few other fans of said Museum, but I keep the flame alive. These days Uncanny is mandatory listening chez QR, and 2:22 is one of the better ghost stories I’ve seen on stage in the last decade.)

UncannyCon 2026: Bringing Campfire Intimacy to the Birmingham ICC

Now, Uncanny is preparing for its largest staging to date: UncannyCon 2026. Having grown from London’s 300-seat boutique venues to 2,000-seat halls, the convention heads for an arena-scale gathering at the ICC Birmingham this November. For an operation built on hushed testimonies, bedroom shadows, and intimate audio-only confessions, stepping into an arena presents an obvious paradox: how do you translate campfire intimacy to thousands of people at once?

“For me, the real joy of scaling up to something like UncannyCon isn’t just about playing bigger rooms—it’s about having the chance to actually be among the audience,” Robins says. “I genuinely love hearing people’s stories firsthand, and UncannyCon allows for those sharing moments and deep conversations to happen between #TeamSceptic, #TeamBeliever, and everyone in between, on a huge, fantastic scale.”

He is adamant that larger rooms do not require pantomime theatrics.

“If you think about your favourite band—you see them play a small venue and then you see them play big arenas. Something changes. But I think at the heart of it, if there’s an integrity to it, if that thing is good… I went to watch my favourite band, very appropriately named Ghost, the Swedish metal band. I went to see them at the O2 recently, and it was brilliant. It didn’t feel any less intimate in a weird way. It just felt really exciting; they’d upped their game with pyrotechnics and video backdrops.

“We’ve done that a little bit on our Uncanny tours. We’ve grown from smaller venues to playing quite big venues now—I did the Royal Albert Hall recently—but the power of these ghost stories still raises a hair on the back of your neck. If we were running around firing out T-shirt cannons and had a cheesy, naff approach to it, then absolutely, that would be horribly wrong. But by keeping it real, holding onto the integrity of Uncanny, it just allows more people to experience it. One of the problems with the previous UncannyCons was that loads of people missed out. When we did it for 300 people, there were many more who were disappointed not to come. But at heart, it will still be this thing of hearing from witnesses and hearing from our experts. I think you’ll find that it still retains that sense of intimacy.”

That ambition to open the doors wider extends beyond physical auditoriums. Marking the announcement of a global livestream for his sell-out tour Uncanny: Fear of the Dark—filmed at his hometown Soho Theatre Walthamstow and streaming this September—Robins (in a subsequent press release) echoed that same desire to include those left outside the room.

“It’s been a long-held ambition to give international access to the live show experience, and now we’re finally able to do just that,” he said in a recent statement. “I’m particularly pleased that the show was filmed in my local theatre… and I can’t wait for more people to be able to see it for themselves.”

Nor is the convention designed as passive listening. The Birmingham programme blends forensic witness interrogation with some competitive fan engagement.

“UncannyCon is different; it’s a different beast,” Robins explains. “It is more of a series of talks, but it will still have a sense of the show to it. Being in the ICC at Birmingham, you’ll feel excited. You’ll feel that little shiver down your spine, absolutely. We’ve got fun things like ‘Uncannyversity Challenge’—our take on University Challenge with questions about the series—and we’ll be recording a live episode there as well, which is always great.”

Team Sceptic vs Team Believer: Science, Parapsychology, and Grief

The core of that appeal remains the dialectic between Robins’ regular sparring partners: parapsychologist Dr Ciarán O’Keeffe and folklorist Dr Evelyn Hollow. Where conventional television ghost hunts lean into manufactured shrieking or smug dismissal, Robins insists on keeping both viewpoints grounded in rigorous debate.

“When you look at Ciarán and Evelyn, what people sometimes miss is that they both actually come from a very similar place of scientific, sceptical outlook,” Robins explains. “Neither of them takes anything at face value, and neither accepts things blindly. They have simply reached completely differing conclusions when it comes to their ultimate worldviews. But because they share that academic baseline, they are able to engage in this incredible, good-faith discussion. It’s an honest, respectful investigation, not a cheap shouting match.”

Robins’ own perspective has altered since his early broadcasting work, which included teaming up with O’Keeffe to expose fraudulent mediums on BBC Three’s The Bullshit Detective in 2005, followed by his 2016 BBC Radio 4 series Haunted.

“With all of us, you see a kind of shift in our positions over time,” he says. “You know, I think if you go back and listen to my first series, Haunted, back in 2016, then you get a sort of more sceptical me as well. So I think you can’t be exposed to all these stories over this period of time and not have it do something to you. It does, I think, chip away a little bit at the idea of the finiteness of scepticism. You definitely find yourself straying into the realms of, ‘Well, maybe it is possible.'”

That willingness to inhabit the middle ground sits at the heart of his work.

“It’s just, you know, I think every other paranormal show ever has pretty much played to one audience or the other. You preach to the converted either way, really, don’t you? It’s either people who are absolute sceptics or absolute believers. It’s either running around with night vision cameras and screaming at mediums, or it’s science kicking the hell out of ghosts and not walking away until they stop moving.

“But I think that idea of sitting happily in a place where both sides have been catered for just instantly takes your show to a wider audience. Because actually, there are so many people out there who aren’t sure what they think either. Like me, basically. I get so many people coming up to me and going, ‘I didn’t realise how interested in ghosts I was.’ Lots of people who wouldn’t have traditionally seen themselves as someone interested in the paranormal find these stories fascinating, and the places they lead us to—the history, the science, the way it makes us question ourselves and our universe.”

Beneath the spine-tingles sits an unavoidable encounter with grief and mortality. For Robins, examining a haunting is less about spectacle than about probing the stark reality of human loss.

“Yeah. I mean, being a person is a complicated and confusing process, isn’t it? We are trying to make sense of what it means to be human—the nature of how we work—throughout our whole lives. And then there seems to be this horrible, cruel, arbitrary moment when that stops. All of that work trying to make sense of being human feels pointless because suddenly we’re dead.

“The idea of the paranormal is about imposing meaning on that, I guess. Sort of saying that there is potentially an answer to some of those strange mysteries, and that maybe life continues beyond death. I feel a little tingle down my spine even as I say that. It’s such a powerful idea. It gets to the very nub of what we’ve been doing ever since the dawn of time. The invention of religions, the foundation of any kind of belief system, is trying to explain those mysteries. The paranormal is just setting out to do the same kind of job that Catholicism or Buddhism is doing. That fascinates me. I love the idea that we haven’t cracked everything there is to do with being human.”

Reminded of those early debunking days alongside O’Keeffe, Robins is quick to note how far his outlook has shifted from those fiercely sceptical beginnings:

“Yeah! Well, that’s a long time ago. But I have to say, that’s where I met Ciarán [O’Keeffe]. And that was very heavily sceptic, obviously, as we met exposing bogus mediums. I’ve definitely changed over the years. I think I’ve always been fascinated by ghosts, but definitely as a kid, I viewed them as fun stories—something essentially fictitious, just like superheroes or Star Wars. A great set of stories to lose yourself in. But the more I met people who’d had actual experiences that they felt were paranormal, the more you find yourself questioning that.

“Over the last few years, I’ve been subjected to this intensive crash course in being up against these stories. Just the sheer amount of stories that come in now through emails and social media via Uncanny. I’m constantly being confronted by things that I can’t explain, things that frighten me, things that move me, things that baffle me. And always, it’s sitting in front of someone where you look into the whites of their eyes and you feel that they are telling the truth. Not mad, possibly still scared. It really does make you question your own beliefs when you’ve got someone just like you sitting opposite you describing something that should really be impossible.”

From The Battersea Poltergeist to 2:22: Class, Politics, and Stagecraft

Robins’ storytelling instincts were forged in live performance long before his audio work took off. Even his early Edinburgh Fringe work circled the paranormal, including a 2003 spoof that prefigured the believer-versus-debunker dynamic.

“It was called Live Ghost Hunt, actually,” he recalls. “It was a parody of Most Haunted. It was a show I did at the Pleasance with a guy called Dan Tetsell, and we basically played the characters of a ghost hunter and a medium. I remain very proud of it. It was a really funny show, and it was funny and scary, which is not an easy thing to pull off. I think that sort of shows my obsession with this subject stretching so far back. I keep coming back to it.”

That theatre-maker mentality still informs his approach to audio and staging alike.

“Very much so. I was a kid who grew up absolutely obsessed with theatre. I was in a youth theatre when I was a kid; I was going to watch the RSC do Shakespeare aged six or seven. I’ve never lost the buzz I feel sitting in a theatre—that moment where the theatre darkens and the magic comes alive. What we’ve always set out to do is create something that doesn’t feel like your average podcast live show, where it’s people sitting around on chairs essentially just recording a podcast in front of an audience. It feels very theatrical. We use soundscapes and illusions.”

That grounding paid off during the 2020 lockdowns, prompting a deliberate break from commercial television commissions.

“It’s a funny thing, isn’t it? It’s like that moment where some entertainer suddenly announces they’ve found God. It was just always there for me as this subject I was so interested in. I spent years trying to be so many different things to different people—a bit of a jack of all trades. Doing music journalism, radio sitcoms, working on panel shows, doing stand-up. Being a bit of a gun for hire and always going, ‘How can I make you happy? Whether it’s Radio 4 or BBC One, what box can I tick for you?’

“And then there was just a moment where I was like, ‘You know what? I’m just going to do something about the thing that I really care about, and tell it in the way I want to tell it.’ It happened during lockdown. I thought, if I was in lockdown, desperate for entertainment, this is the story I would want to hear. And that was The Battersea Poltergeist. That set the template. My play, 2:22 – A Ghost Story, I actually wrote over five years—before The Battersea Poltergeist. The roots of all the ghost podcasts lie in that play, really. All of these things interlink and speak to my consistent fascination with this subject and my attempt to find answers.”

In 2:22, rationalist husband Sam wages intellectual war against his partner’s convictions inside their gentrified London home. It is a friction that directly mirrors the social fractures Robins sees across contemporary Britain.

“I did always intend that. I spent a lot of years doing comedy that was very much not political—fun, frivolous, and facetious,” says Robins. “Whilst I’m proud of it, I hit a stumbling block where I felt dissatisfied and wanted to say something a little bit more profound. I moved into drama and documentary because I wanted to say something about the world.

“Uncanny does have an agenda behind it. Not an overt one, but just that we live in a very divided world, and maybe the key to being happier people is to be a little less divided and a little more open-minded. The paranormal is a very divided world if you take it at face value. 2:22 embodies that clash between scepticism and belief. The middle-class gentrifier, Sam, pours scorn on those who believe, pooh-poohing it. You see that clash in society all the time. People looking down on others, scorning them for their beliefs. So many problems in our society stem from people not being listened to. The demonisation of one group by another, the refusal to listen… it creates a simmering cauldron of anger and despair. The more you get entrenched in those positions, the harder it is to find common ground.”

Yet after sifting through thousands of claims, phantom knocks, and cold spots, does Robins find himself desensitised to fright?

“It’s a slightly complicated position,” he admits. “I definitely used to be more of a scaredy-cat. I used to lie in my bedroom at night and spook myself out and start to see the shadows moving in the corner. I don’t find myself doing that as much. There’s something about being exposed to these stories kind of upping your threshold. Like somebody consuming drugs and suddenly you need to chase that bigger high every time.

“But I don’t ever lose my capacity to be really moved and provoked by these stories. They take you to strange places and ask really odd, troubling questions. For me, the scary thing is the implications of these stories—that if these are real, it forces you to rewrite your whole concept of how the universe works. That’s a mind-blowing thing. There’s a fear factor in both paths. If Team Sceptic are right and ghosts don’t exist, I find that quite a frightening idea—that death is the end. And if Team Believer are right, that’s frightening as well! I’d be absolutely terrified if I saw a ghost. I’m immersed in this every day, so I never cease to be excited. I love the fact that I’ve found something at this point in my life that just feels constantly thrilling.”

Yet for all the arena dates, the sleepless listeners, and an empire constructed around things that scrape in the night, the man orchestrating Britain’s largest campfire circle is still waiting for his own knock at the door.

“Oh, no, no, never,” he says. “I find myself living vicariously through the stories, really. Kind of thinking that I’d like to have an experience one day, but also feeling, ‘be careful what you wish for.’

Featured Image: Uncanny_2025_563x292_NOTT

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UncannyCon 2026 will take place Sat 21st November 2026. For more information, click here: https://www.dannyrobins.com/uncannycon26