Fright club: why chills are hot

The paranormal has hit prime time, with scary podcasts and TV shows more popular than ever. Why does the unexplained have sucha holdonus?

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A Sunday afternoon in December and London's Southbank Centre draws its usual eclectic crowd: tourists, young families, culture lovers. But as I move through the people, a pattern starts to emerge.

The cavernous space is dotted with people wearing the same black T-shirts printed with bold white lettering. Many read "Team Sceptic", even more say "Team Believer". Some, curiously, bear the phrase "Bloody Hell, Ken!" If you're into the paranormal - ghosts, UFOs, demons, witchcraft, Bigfoot, etc - you'll recognise them as slogans from Uncanny, a hit BBC podcast that first aired in late 2021 and has since snowballed into a many-pronged behemoth of ghoulish entertainment, replete with a show, a live tour and a bestselling book. (Ken, by the way, was the protagonist of the first ever episode, recounting his experience at the hands of a poltergeist in his student halls of residence.) Today, Uncanny acolytes myself included - from the UK and beyond have coalesced for UncannyCon, a celebration of the platform and immersive foray into the spectral unknown.

There will be interviews with "witnesses" (as they are known on the show), cold-case investigations and a live recording of an upcoming episode of the podcast.

The excitement is palpable. Some settle in at the pop-up fan art table, while others queue at the merch stand. The crowd intensifies at the back of the hall, where a long queue snakes to a meet-and-greet table at its head. In the centre sits Danny Robins, Uncanny's creator, host and high priest, flanked by Evelyn Hollow and Dr Ciarán O'Keeffe, parapsychologists and regular Uncanny contributors. O'Keeffe is the foremost voice of Team Sceptic, Hollow the de facto leader of Team Believer (though perhaps more as an empath than a zealot).