Review: THE BATTERSEA POLTERGEIST - LIVE!, The Clapham Grand

Sixty-three Wycliffe Road is a quiet terraced house in Battersea, just south of the River Thames. A stone's throw from the station, it's an ideal spot for modern real estate standards. But in 1956, life turned into a living nightmare for the Hitchings family.

Danny Robins's podcast about the ordinary working-class household torn apart by a haunting was an immediate success earlier this year. It's now been turned into a thrilling live show that introduces further evidence and new supernatural activity.

Paranormal psychologists Ciaran O'Keeffe and Evelyn Hollow get to work on the case hosted by Robins. The writer is in his natural habitat, as gleeful as a child holding a jar of sweets giving all the facts and analysing them with the specialists. O'Keeffe and Hollow are the two plates of the scales: he is extremely sceptical, she believes the events were real.

This new incarnation of the project mainly goes over the same "proof" we heard on BBC Sounds, picking apart witness statements and theories, but does so with more humour and lighter moments. While the "spook factor" is there, it's somehow muffled by the panel-like delivery. The live investigation, however, still has a perfectly gauged ghost story feeling to it.

Lights and sounds come to their aid (Robins loves a sound effect), and the show is very entertaining for the fans of the genre. The avid listeners who followed the podcast from its start will be given some more meat to chew on and the newbies will be introduced to one of Britain's ripest mysteries. In the second act, Robins and the experts answer questions from the audience, addressing their doubts and critiques on the spot the best they can.

All in all, it feels just like getting further episodes of the series and the end product is bound to change nightly as the tour progresses. The London date, held a mere mile away from Wycliffe Road at The Clapham Grand on Halloween, was probably a special one and featured Shirley Hitchings herself - the haunted girl, now in her 80s - in the audience answering questions, as well as another victim of a potential entity.

The ageing woman reiterated and confirmed the signs of Donald the poltergeist and how it followed her and her family for 12 years. It all started with terrifyingly loud rumbling noises and quickly moved to physical violence, objects being thrown across the room, and even as many as 60 letters allegedly penned by Donald appearing daily in the house.

There's certainly a lot for sceptics to dissect and equally as much that will please believers. Ultimately, whether the attendees end up being #TeamSceptic or #TeamBeliever, the production is bound to incite heated discussions as soon as the lights go up again. Robins has found his ghostly niche and has us absolutely spellbound.

The Battersea Poltergeist - Live! is now on tour.

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