Danny Robins tells us why we’re obsessed with ghost stories and what makes a truly ghoulish tale great
Ghost stories are for life, not just for Halloween. Tales of horror are hardwired in our DNA, but it would seem that the genome for spooks can be amplified by certain civil factors. We are, undoubtedly, living in an era where the zeitgeist has conjured ghosts back out from under the bed and right to the sleepless fore once more. Amid this unfortunate draconian renaissance, Danny Robins has scuttled about wafting a magnifying glass towards the dark tales lingering in the nooks and crannies of society—shining a light on the murky mystery of the great unknown.
Whether it’s his shockingly brilliant play 2:22, Uncanny, his planned new book, possible new film, or intriguing new podcast The Witch Farm, the most gleeful shed-based ghost purveyor of modern times knows a thing or two about what makes our ghoulish obsession tick. Thus, we decided to pick his brains on why we want to be spooked more than ever, and the stories that truly give us food for thought at 3am on a Tuesday morning.
“I think there are definitely factors that are to do with the world that we’re living in at the moment,” Robins begins as we delve into the wherefores of the modern paranormal revival. “You could argue we live in greater proximity to death than we have since the Second World War. We’ve got war in Europe, we’ve got the existential threat from climate change, we’ve got Covid-19. We’re forced to think about our mortality.”
With the world proving a bit of a horror show, it’s almost a comfort to think that there’s even spookier happenings somewhere, and oddly, the potential affirming boon they provide. As Robins continues: “Inevitably, that makes you think about these big questions, and it doesn’t get bigger than that question of what happens to you after you die. That’s the basis for every religion. It’s the kind of the conversation that keeps on giving, you could talk about that anywhere in the world and people would have an opinion.”
But it isn’t just the amplified knowledge of death and our constant wrestling match with the reality of the curtain call, the world also seems to have been beset by a meshuga stranger than the fiction of most old fables. “I think you can draw parallels between now and the end of the First World War, and the end of the Second World War,” Robins adds, “that kind of chaos—chaotic uncertainty of just not knowing what’s going to happen next in society, and with that comes a kind of fear.”
Thus, the tales we tell are a natural mirror of this. It just so happens that nobody is telling them better than Danny, as his charm and humour offers a comfort blanket for us to clutch in the ensuing mystic nightmares. “So, I think you’ve got that, you’ve got all the questions. And then you’ve also got, the way that art reflects back society,” he explains. “You’ve got this horror in society, and extreme behaviour in society, we live in the age of Trump, and we’re used to seeing extreme stuff, extreme views, extreme violence, extreme sadness, all sorts. Our tastes become amplified. We need more extreme content. I think horror dominates in those ages.”
This is a historic truth. Science fiction – the ghost stories younger cousin – was borne for the age of upheaval. During the ‘Year Without Summer’ as a volcanic ash cloud cast a black cloak over the world and thrust it into a stormy, murky mess in 1816, Lord Byron dared the occupants trapped in a barracked, storm-suppressed Geneva villa to come up with a terrifying tale to occupy themselves with that evening. Mary Shelley went off and looked back at the wild explosion of scientific advancements from the century earlier and thought ‘what if they could go wrong’, therein lies the satirical crux of Frankenstein—a groundbreaking doctor who, by rights, should’ve had his medical license revoked.
A keen student of all things ghastly, this was not lost on Robins. He adds: “If you want to go even further back, look at like Jacobean times, you know, King James, the King, who was writing books about demons and witches being burned. You see the drama of that time is soaked in blood and full of ghosts, so I think it’s a kind of processing mechanism as well, we’re trying to make sense of what’s going on around us.”
Also, in an era of opinionated certitude, it would seem that no matter how much of a sceptic you are, the right ghost story is a bottomless interrogation of your beliefs. “We won’t find an answer for this during our lifetimes,” Robins accepts, despite his best efforts. “We’re not going to categorically be able to prove if ghosts exist, or don’t exist in any way that’s going to satisfy everybody. But I love the journey.”
Continuing: “I love the investigation. I love the fact that it’s this mystery that you just dive into, and it keeps on giving. The stories I focus on however many times you interrogate it as a sceptic, coming at it from all these different theories, all these different points of view. I just feel like they have this kind of little thing at the core of them that you cannot quite explain, you cannot quite answer and I, I just I love that.”
That’s the beauty of his niche. It’s not really about scaring you, it’s just about the mystery—it’s the unknown that proves perturbing by proxy, and the fact that it comes in a white cloak or silver craft over the quaint and slightly mental village of Todmorden, just adds a quirky aesthetic. It’s true crime without answers. “As human beings we crave mysteries, we love detective stories. We love the idea of setting ourselves a problem and trying to solve it. I go straight to the most delicious mystery because it’s a mystery that never comes to an end. Any detective story you read, ultimately, there’s a point where you learn who the killer was. Whereas this just keeps on going. You could just talk about it nonstop.”
So, I put it to the master, what exactly is it that makes for the juiciest peach in the spooky mystery pantry? “It’s a really good question and I don’t think there are hard and fast rules,” he declares. “I tend to think of all the Uncanny episodes as three act structures. The classic three act structure, which is that you meet somebody who, in most cases, doesn’t believe in ghosts, or is living a life where they’re not expecting this thing to happen.”
But it can’t stop there. “Then this really strange thing happens it’s bizarre, and life changing,” Robins excitably adds. “Then something further happens, and this convinces them that it must be real—it gets stranger. Then the third act is that you reach a point where there’s something that is really lasting, because it feels genuinely unexplainable, and it’s also about how it changes this person.”
After all, we can be sceptical all we like, but denying someone’s own experiences is like denying that someone else feels cold. The fear in Robins’ cases is palpable. This forces us to empathetically engage. That’s why they’re so interesting. “For me, it’s a journey as a person,” he explains. “The difference between the kind of shows that I’m doing and the kind of most of the paranormal shows out there, is that they’re really obsessed with places, and they talk about the place, the haunted castle, the haunted pub, and wanting to make sense of the place. Actually, I’m interested in the person, and I’m interested in the journey the person’s gone on, and how it’s changed them.”
Adding: “The more it has impact that has on that person, the more impact it’s going to have on you as the audience. Realness is the key for me. If you believe in what this person is telling you, then that has a huge implication for you because suddenly you feel if it happened to them, it could happen to you. That’s what really frightens me, the realness of it.” If someone can go from scepticism to looking at the sky or checking into a strange hotel and completely change then who’s to say it couldn’t happen to little old you.
As the perfect tagline proclaims, ‘I know what I saw’. These stories are experiential, and in this sense, while they can be explained, they can’t be denied. “We change our beliefs based on finding evidence, you know, on our experiences,” Danny agrees. It’s as simple as this, “if you have something happen to you, you’re going to form an opinion on it.”
So, from where does our modern Marry Shelley take his inspiration? “The horror films that have no impact on me at all are the ones that just feel like they’re laden with CGI and kind of cheap jump scares that feel kind of unconnected to character. They’re just trying to shock us from nowhere. When I get inside a character’s head in a film like the Babadook, for instance, that’s such an effective horror movie, you really get inside the head of that person and you’re not sure if it’s real, or if it’s paranormal and it’s a horrible film about mental disintegration.”
Then, the spook master general of the ghostly zeitgeist concludes with a classic: “I’m a big fan of Mike Flanagan’s work, who did The Haunting of Hill House but, for me, The Exorcist remains one of the most effective horror movies, you know, that idea of someone that you love transforming?”
