Episode 3: Interview with a Ghost

January 28, 2021·31 min·2 clips

Daily Mirror photographer Graham Morris describes being hit in the head by a flying Lego brick and watching objects hurl themselves across a room.

Shirley becomes the focus. The episode starts with a body apparently hovering over a bed, then turns to the colder question: why would Donald be attached to her? Chip's theory hits hard. He says a teenage girl is always at the centre, and Shirley remembers being horrified by the thought. The fear gets personal fast. When the host asks whether Shirley felt in danger, her answer wavers enough to make the room feel tighter. Then the inquiry opens out. Ros and Graham bring in Enfield, where a child seemed to float and a window frame nearly gave way. A Lego brick gets a surprising amount of weight. Graham Morris, the first photographer inside, says one hit him, while Ros pushes back against the easy answer that someone simply threw it. Belief changes the air here. Once a poltergeist is possible, the ordinary rules start slipping. The reporter sounds shaken too. After making a Radio 4 documentary, he says he never wanted to go near this sort of story again. That reluctance says plenty. The episode cares less about spectacle than about what long-running strangeness does to the people stuck inside it. Janet became an unwitting celebrity after Enfield, and the same machinery starts closing around Shirley in 1956. Police reports reach journalists, the story snowballs, and private terror turns into something people come to watch. Even the newspaper language around a 15-year-old girl feels invasive. By the end, the haunting is Donald, but it is also the crowd outside the door.

As heard by us

A ghost story that keeps the question open while the dread keeps building.

Episode 3 stays close to Shirley while the haunting tightens and the circle around her widens to reporters, neighbours, and other witnesses. The episode works because it lets the strange details sit without overexplaining them: the child seeming to float, the arm striking the…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you want a ghost story that keeps asking what to believe.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Battersea Poltergeist