'The Battersea Poltergeist' Podcast To Become A Blumhouse Television Series
This article is more than three years old and was last updated in April 2022.
'The Battersea Poltergeist', Bafflegab's much-talked about paranormal cold-cast-style podcast is set to become a television series produced by Blumhouse.
Blumhouse are best known for their supernatural movies including 'Paranormal Activity', 'Insidious' and 'Ouija', but now Blumhouse Television along with Maniac Productions have won the rights to Danny Robins' BBC Radio 4 podcast.
The new scripted series inspired by the nine-part audio series will be based around the gripping podcast that took listeners on an enthralling investigative journey into one of Britain's most baffling poltergeist cases.
The case revolved around evidence of a poltergeist that terrorised a normal family in South London for 12 years, a case that was originally investigated by Harold Chibbett in 1956 and involved reports of paranormal activity that was focused around 15-year-old Shirley.
The television project has also acquired the rights to Shirley's life story. Now 80 and living on the south coast, Shirley opened up in a rare interview with Danny for the podcast about the family's poltergeist, who they called Donald. Even now, six decades on, Shirley still stands by her story and says that the haunting stole her teenage years.
The case was also the subject of a book by Shirley and James Clark, 'The Poltergeist Prince of London: The Remarkable True Story of the Battersea Poltergeist', the rights to this work are also part of the hotly-contested television deal.
The story of the Battersea poltergeist, which involved pots and pans being thrown through the air from empty rooms, levitation and even spontaneous fires, is being developed as the first season of an ongoing scripted series, as well as an unscripted spinoff series called 'Blumhouse's Ghost Story'.
The strange happenings at the Hitchings family home started with banging coming from the ceiling and walls that were so loud that their neighbours on Wycliffe Road thought the family were ripping up floorboards in the middle of the night.
Throughout the original nine episodes, Danny and producer/director Simon Barnard examine the original case files in meticulous detail, while inviting listeners to get in touch with their thoughts and theories on the haunting.
I could not be more excited either! Thanks @michaelseitzman for your faith and enthusiasm for the project - can't wait to get cracking on it with you and @blumhouse!!! https://t.co/v0WiKYXIi8
— Danny Robins (@danny_robins) May 25, 2021
Danny will work on the television adaptation as an executive producer alongside Michael Seitzman of Maniac and Jason Blum and Chris McCumber of Blumhouse Television.
Chris McCumber, president of Blumhouse Television said "from our first listen to Danny's captivating podcast, we were hooked and could easily envision how to bring the story to life – in both scripted and unscripted formats – for television viewers."
Danny said that making the podcast for the BBC had been "an amazing journey", and added "I couldn't have hoped for a better partner than Blumhouse, a leader in the genre when looking to further develop it. I'm thrilled to work with them and Michael to bring the series to life visually. Ghost stories don't get stranger or scarier than this."
"Once you listen to the gripping and terrifying true story of Shirley Hitchings, it's easy to understand why Danny's podcast inspired two-page spreads in every newspaper in the UK," said Maniac's Michael Seitzman. "It was exactly what we'd been looking for to launch our new ongoing series based on true hauntings. As he did with his podcast, Danny Robins will have viewers sleeping with the lights on after they watch his show!"
If you haven't yet heard the podcast that had everyone in the paranormal world hooked, all nine episodes are available to listen to now on BBC Sounds.
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March 05, 2021Test your knowledge of the famous poltergeist case and the investigative journey the podcast's host, Danny Robins, embarked on while exploring the case.
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