BBC Radio 4
17 episodes listed below
A haunting argued through evidence.
The Battersea Poltergeist follows the strange case centered on 63 Wycliffe Road, where the Hitchings family reported noises, thrown objects, letters, fires, and a presence called Donald. It balances Shirley's memories with documents, witnesses, skeptics, and experts who keep the story suspended between fraud, fear, and the inexplicable.
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The Battersea Poltergeist is a grave, curious investigation into the reported haunting of 63 Wycliffe Road in Battersea. It begins with a box of old files and keeps asking what those papers can actually prove. At the center is Shirley, described as the only surviving witness to events that began around the Hitchings family home. The reported phenomena are vivid: knocking, moving chairs, flying pots and pans, levitating objects, scratching sounds, handwritten messages, drawings, voices, and spontaneous fires. The show does not simply present these details as spectacle. It slows down around them. Harold Chibbett's original case files, family diaries, police reports, newspaper coverage, and later expert interpretations are used as a kind of map through the unease. Dramatic reconstructions place pressure on ordinary domestic scenes, then the investigation pulls back to ask what a skeptic would make of them. That movement is the show's strongest habit. A claim appears. A counterclaim follows. Then another document, witness, or expert view reopens the question. Shirley's testimony carries much of the emotional force, especially when she is pressed on whether she could have produced the letters consciously or unconsciously. The handwriting evidence creates one of the series' hardest turns. It suggests an answer, but not a comfortable one, because the scale, timing, and family impact of the communications remain difficult to square. The show also looks outward, comparing the Battersea events with Enfield and with an earlier Elland Road poltergeist case investigated by Harry Price. Those parallels make the story feel larger, but the series stays tethered to streets, rooms, dates, names, and records. It is interested in belief, but wary of surrendering to it. It is skeptical, but not dismissive. Listeners looking for quick scares may find it too patient. Listeners drawn to cold cases, contested testimony, and paranormal claims under pressure will find a rare balance of atmosphere and scrutiny.
Made for: For listeners who like paranormal stories treated as investigations rather than campfire tales. It also suits audiences drawn to witnesses, documents, contradictions, and unresolved family history.
What sets it apart: The series pairs dramatized reconstruction with a disciplined return to files, timelines, expert disagreement, and Shirley's living testimony. Its power comes from refusing to choose too quickly between fraud, fear, memory, and something stranger.
A paranormal cold case, re-investigated through a thrilling blend of drama and documentary. The true story of one of Britain's strangest hauntings, with Dafne Keen and Toby Jones. Presented by Danny Robins.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
A document-led haunting investigation that keeps witness testimony, skeptical explanations and unresolved fear in productive tension.
Danny Robbins rebuilds an alleged 1956 haunting from family testimony, Harold Chibbett's files, police and newspaper reports, and dramatized scenes inside 63 Wycliffe Road.
A haunted-house file waits to see how long you can balance doubt against flying cookware.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A steady return to the noises, the letters, and the questions that refuse to settle.
This bonus episode stays close to the noises at the center of the Battersea case and follows the ways they keep pulling at everything else: animal, structural, seismic, or something harder to name.
A tense chapter that tightens the evidence while leaving the mystery open.
The chapter shifts the focus to the letters and the chance that the obvious answer is not the right one. It keeps expert certainty, family memory, and old suspicion in play, which gives the case a loose, unsettled feel instead of a neat one.
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…
A witness-led haunting story that keeps dread, doubt, and domestic detail in the same room.
This episode shifts the Battersea haunting onto Shirley, the surviving witness, and lets memory carry the weight of the story. Harold Chibbett's 1956 investigation gives the account its frame, while the moving chair, the kitchen breakfast argument, and the reports of pots and…
A careful ghost story that treats a famous haunting like evidence, not folklore.
The episode opens with Danny Robbins carrying a box of case files into the shed, and the Battersea haunting quickly feels less like folklore than an archive sorted in real time.
Ira Glass frames weekly theme-driven segments spanning family secrets to Portland's protest conflict.
Shankar Vedantam unpacks the psychology behind relationships, careers, and money through researcher interviews.
David McRaney interviews researchers on cognitive bias, motivated reasoning, and why minds change.
Ryan Holiday pairs daily Stoic lessons with long-form guest conversations at his Texas bookstore.
NHPR's Jason Moon investigates the Bear Brook barrel murders and a New Hampshire wrongful-conviction case.
Russ Roberts interviews authors and economists on ideas from classical liberalism to AI.
Back in the shed, the noises are back too.
The final episode of The Battersea Poltergeist brings Danny Robbins to a confrontation with Shirley Hitchings over handwriting expert Emma Bache's finding that Shirley 'almost certainly' wrote the letters attributed to the ghost Donald — a conclusion Shirley insists is impossible but cannot fully refute.
Shirley becomes the focus.
The haunting chooses a focus.
A cardboard box starts the haunting.