S03-E09 - The South Shields Poltergeist
Haunted UK Podcast: History, Hauntings and the Unexplained
Steven Holloway
4.5 • 652 Ratings
🗓️ 13 January 2023
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A terraced house in South Shields.
Doors slamming on their own.
Toys thrown from the darkness.
Messages appearing where no message should be.
In this episode of Haunted UK Podcast, Steve explores one of the most intense modern poltergeist cases recorded in Britain: the South Shields Poltergeist.
The story centres on a young family — known publicly as Marc, Marianne, and their three-year-old son Robert — whose home allegedly became the focus of violent and disturbing paranormal activity in 2005.
What began with misplaced objects, open doors, and strange sounds in the walls soon escalated into furniture moving, cold spots, toys being hurled across rooms, threatening messages, and physical attacks
As the activity grew more frightening, paranormal investigators Darren W. Ritson and Mike Hallowell became involved, documenting the case in detail and later co-authoring The South Shields Poltergeist: One Family’s Fight Against an Invisible Intruder. During their investigation, they reported witnessing objects move, unexplained sounds, strange recordings, text messages sent from phones that could not have sent them, and even a dark, shadow-like figure said to attack Marc with claw-like hands.
But the case is not without controversy. Despite claims of photographs, video evidence, and multiple witnesses, critics have questioned why so little material has been released publicly, whether the family could have staged events, and whether the entire case was an elaborate hoax.
Disturbing, violent, and deeply divisive, this episode examines poltergeist activity, physical attacks, paranormal investigation, sceptical doubts, and the unsettling question at the centre of the South Shields case: was this one of Britain’s most frightening hauntings — or a story that still refuses to prove itself?
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Transcript
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| 1:30.7 | Whichever platform you choose, we're sure you'll enjoy the bonus content. Thanks for listening and enjoy the episode. I received a telephone call from a very distressed Marianne, informing me that her unwelcome guest |
| 1:57.7 | had been causing absolute mayhem inside her home. Objects were being thrown |
| 2:03.3 | around. Doors were being opened mysteriously and slamming closed on their own. Horrendous thumps |
| 2:09.6 | and bangs were reverberating around the house. Taps were being turned on. Their possessions were |
| 2:15.7 | disappearing from their original places and then |
| 2:18.5 | reappearing just as mysteriously. And their young child, Robert, began to see people in the |
| 2:25.3 | house. Exert from an interview with Darren W. Ritson, paranormal investigator and co-author of the book, The South Shields Poultergeist, |
| 2:36.9 | One Family's Fight Against an Invisible Intruder. |
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