Danny Robins Explores New Theories About The Twillingate Haunting In Newfoundland
This article is more than two years old and was last updated in February 2024.
Over the last two weeks, Danny Robins has been sharing the story of a nightmare holiday in Newfoundland in the 'Uncanny' summer special. A family staying in a holiday home on the island of Twillingate in 1998 were terrorised during the night.
After two dramatic episodes featuring Scott and his dad Brian's case, the 'Uncanny' summer special came to an end with a live edition recorded at the Hay Festival in Wales, but before Danny got stuck into the four new cases at the festival, there was time for an update on the Newfoundland haunting.
Danny said, "I've just been going through some of the emails that you've sent me, and we've got some brilliant theories coming in, lots of interesting thoughts on possible environmental factors for the haunting and we know that we're dealing with a pretty extreme environment in Twillingate. It's known as the iceberg capital of the world."
One theory that Danny shared came from a listener named Jason Broom who asked if there are sea caves in the cliffs under the house? Jason think that the presence of caves could explain the various thuds that Scott and his family heard in the house, and the sound of footsteps in gravel that Scott's dad, Brian, heard from the bedroom window. He speculates that the sound could have been stones being thrown against the cave walls by the sea.
It's a good theory, but it seems unlikely as Danny told us in the first part of the story that the old windswept house was built against a cliff face, not on top of a cliff. Furthermore, upon arriving Scott and his family saw the creepy old fisherman in a boathouse near the house, which suggests that the house was at sea level, otherwise they'd have been looking down from the cliff at the boat house.
Photo: pixabay.com
Another major environmental factor at Twillingate is its icebergs, something that Lee, and John Cox contacted Danny about. They both pointed out to Danny that large sheets of ice and icebergs can produce loud cracking sounds or low breaking sounds. Danny also questioned whether they could cause the ground around them to vibrate or move in some way. Could this explain the part of Scott's original story which involved the bed he was sharing with his brother, Callum, shaking?
Another listener, Sheila, had another theory on this. She wonders whether an earthquake was to blame. Sheila told Danny that she has found herself in the middle of an earthquake and felt the bed underneath her rocking from side to side as Scott described. To add weight to this theory, Sheila checked whether there were earthquakes in Newfoundland and found that it is in an earthquake zone.
Another listener named Hugh got in touch with a theory about how Callum might have been thrown out of bed, but strangely it had an uncanny link to a former case from the podcast series. Hugh wrote to Danny to tell him that while sharing an apartment in Scotland his housemate's boyfriend was thrown across the bedroom. Hugh put this down to the flat's dodgy electrics and damp in the bedroom. Hugh's theory at the time was somehow in rolling up against the wall whilst in bed, the guy created an earth and the electricity had flowed through him throwing him out of bed.
But Hugh admitted that he was never totally convinced by that theory and after hearing Scott's story of Callum, he wonders if it might have been something else... especially when you factor in the location. The incident took place at an apartment in Glasgow on 39 Gibson Street. Fans of 'Uncanny' will remember that this is the same street that Phil the climber from the Luibeilt case lived in.
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Photo: © Alan Murray-Rust
Phil also had some strange experiences on Gibson Street after he went to Luibeilt and there is another famous poltergeist case involving some students in 1958 which took place in another house on that same street. Danny asks, "could we have somehow here stumbled across a poltergeist equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle?" Adding, "we must come back to this."
One of the most obvious questions about Scott's story is whether anyone else has stayed in the house and had experiences. With the house in Twillingate serving as a holiday let and seemingly being so haunted, you'd expect that others will have had similar experiences there, but Danny said they've been unable to track down anybody else who's stayed in the house to see if they have had similar experiences.
However, Danny did find a reference to a similar experience linked to Twillingate. He explained, "it comes from a book called 'Haunted Towns: Ghost Stories From Newfoundland & Labrador' by Geraldine Ryan-Lush and it tells the story of a couple who arrive at a Twillingate B&B and are told all the other rooms are full, so they'll have to have the attic room. The B&B owner leaves them for the night giving them the key. The woman of the couple falls asleep but is quickly woken by loud banging. Her husband has been awake for ages hearing banging and voices from the roof."
Although not the same house, there are similarities to Scott's story, especially the B&B run by Michael that Scott's family first visit, only to be told there were no rooms and being taken to the coastal house. This is made all the more chilling when Danny tells listeners about the end of the story of the couple in the B&B, "at breakfast, they go down and this is a detail that really chimes with Scott story, there don't seem to be any other guests. So why were they given an attic room?"
Photo: © Andrew Lih
After the Twillingate update, Danny shared four new ghost stories with the audience in Hay-on-Wye. He said "since the show came out last year, we've received hundreds probably 1000s of emails from people who have experienced a ghost. So tonight, I have chosen a selection of some of the most intriguing, odd and frightening stories from my casebook. Each of these is a brand new case."
The four news cases included Amanda's tale of a grey lady and invisible hands that walked her around her bedroom in an old farmhouse when she was a baby, Tony's story of encountering the vision of a dead woman while tackling a house fire in Northampton, and Laura's account of a time slip that she experienced on Oxford Street in London in 1993.
There was also a celebrity ghost story from comedian, Jason Manford, who once shared a dressing room with the ghost of a murdered actor in the Adelphi Theatre in London.
All three parts of the 'Uncanny' Summer Special are available to listen to now on BBC Sounds. You can subscribe now on BBC Sounds and future episodes will automatically drop into your feed.
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