'Broken Veil' Podcast Explores A Haunted, Hidden Essex You Can’t Google

Will Maclean and Joel Morris' new podcast, 'Broken Veil', wraps up its six-part run this week. From the first episode, listeners are slowly taken through the broken veil and into an unsettling, possibly supernatural, and definitely strange place. At its core, this podcast is all about stories - not over-the-top theatrics or ghost-hunting gimmicks, but tales told with a creeping sense of unease.

Will, best known for the excellent supernatural novel 'The Apparition Phase', and Joel, who's written for 'Charlie Brooker's Wipe' and 'Philomena Cunk', speak with friends who've experienced unusual encounters. These aren't classic ghost stories or alien sightings, but they're odd, believable, and often difficult to shake.

Of course, this leads to inevitable questions about authenticity. Some of the contributors are actors and comedians, and there are hints that certain elements may have been shaped for narrative effect. But that's not really the point. This isn't a show about proving or debunking. It pulls you in, and soon it becomes about much more than whether the stories are literally true.

The real hook for me was the journey the hosts took me on. Not content with just retelling these strange events, Will and Joel get in the car and head out to explore the places where these stories supposedly happened. What unfolds is less a paranormal podcast and more a kind of documentary road trip through forgotten corners of Essex.

This journey reignited the same sense of wonder I've felt when exploring parts of the UK in search of Cold War relics, derelict airfields, and long-abandoned outposts. That's what makes 'Broken Veil' so satisfyingly nostalgic. Because the hosts find themselves wrapped up in a mystery that seems to distort reality, they can't just Google the answers - and neither can we. That feeling of not knowing is a big part of the appeal. It's a real-world exploration, driven by curiosity and instinct, and it brings back memories for anyone who ever spent time driving around the countryside with only a vague map and a sense that something odd might be just over the next hill.

That's not to say I wasn't trying to Google the answers - I absolutely was. From the first episode, featuring actor Tony Way, I was hooked. I found myself scouring Google Maps for rural roundabouts with three blind exits and a dead tree, searching for old airfields, and cross-referencing Ministry of Defence land against podcast clues in a desperate hunt for the elusive "Scaffold Hill."

Episode two introduced the eerie term "scratching mass," and by then I was also searching for "Station 14" and the cryptic "Noctuax," a sinister organisation, which – of course – you won't find registered with Companies House. Episode three, featuring director Al Campbell and a disturbing encounter in a military bunker, had me digging into filming locations inside old nuclear bunkers. By the time comedy actor Paul Putner appeared in episode four, I was chasing clues in church architecture and stained glass.

None of it led anywhere, and yet that was the point. The mystery becomes more important than the facts. The journey becomes the destination.

What really makes the series work is the structure. The writing is tight, the pacing deliberate. Each episode builds on the last, with layered references, callbacks, and subtle interconnections that stitch the series into something that feels like a single, coherent journey rather than six isolated accounts. It's a level of craft and care that's often missing in this genre.

'Broken Veil' isn't trying to be definitive. It doesn't give you answers, and that's exactly why it works. It's about uncertainty, memory, strange feelings that hang in the air long after the moment passes. Whether you believe in anything paranormal or not, this is a rare podcast that captures what it feels like to suspect there's something just beneath the surface - and maybe to wish, quietly, that you never find out what it is.