BBC Radio 4 podcast Uncanny features ghost story in Queen’s University’s Alanbrooke Hall

The podcast, the first in a new series entitled Uncanny, allows a former Queen’s student to recount his brush with “pure distilled evil” in the university’s halls of residence.

Ken, described as a highly respected geneticist, talks to host Danny Robins, about a frightful night in room 611 of Alanbrooke Hall in the Elms student village in 1981.

He said: “It was the dead of winter, I’d gone to bed, James (Ken’s roommate) had gone to bed as well.

“Something caught my attention. I saw a large, black silhouette near the desk of what I had the impression was a man,” Ken tells the podcast.

“The first thing that struck me, because I was analysing this data as much as possible, was that I’d never seen anything so black. It was just the blackest black I’d ever seen.

“At exactly the same moment two things happened. One was I could hear in my ears what 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.”

“It felt like a force of nature, everything that is good, everything that is called hope had disappeared, so there’s just complete and utter dispair.”

Ken went on to give other examples of unexplained phenomenon during his time on the sixth floor of Alanbrooke Hall, which is now demolished.

Presenter Danny Robins gave an interview to BBC Radio Ulster following the success of the first episode of his podcast.

He said: “It’s an index of how strange he finds this experience that he wanted to talk about it and for Ken, he wants answers, he wants people to come forward, if people lived in Room 611 did they have similar experiences?

“Already, since this went out last week, we’ve had people coming forward with other experiences.”

• BBC Radio 4’s Uncanny is available on BBC Sounds with new episodes added weekly.

——— ———

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our advertisers — and consequently the revenue we receive — we are more reliant than ever on you taking out a digital subscription.

Subscribe to newsletter.co.uk and enjoy unlimited access to the best Northern Ireland and UK news and information online and on our app. With a digital subscription, you can read more than 5 articles, see fewer ads, enjoy faster load times, and get access to exclusive newsletters and content. Visit https://www.newsletter.co.uk/subscriptions now to sign up.

Our journalism costs money and we rely on advertising, print and digital revenues to help to support them. By supporting us, we are able to support you in providing trusted, fact-checked content for this website.

Ben Lowry

Editor