5282 Series 5: Episode 11
27th April 2026
In: 5282 BLOG
Hauntology 2
We return to Hauntology, the cultural phenomenon where some people feel that the media of their 1970s childhoods was decidedly weird.
The team ask who wanted to scare children, and why? Dave suggests there are four foundational 'truths' underpinning Hauntological content; the paranormal is real, the occult is real, UFOs are real and the end is nigh. Dave, Rob and Kevin discuss how these fringe ideas migrated to the main stream.
They then consider three writers whose content is at the heart of Haunted books, TV and film.
The episode rounds off looking at modern responses to the subject.
All this in just over an hour.
There is so much we could not cover, but just like The Daleks, Hauntology will be back.
The Background
The Child and the Family by Donald Winnicott
Radicals in UK Teaching
Neil Postman The Disappearance of Childhood
Blavatsky and Theosophy
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
Atomic and Cold War
The Creatives
Trevor Preston
Roger Price
Dr Christopher Evans
John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris
Recommendations
Drew Mullholland: Three Antennas in a Quarry
Scarred for Life: Scarred for Life The Album (Volume 1)
One Key Magic: Worldly Noise And Electronic Atmospheres
Boards of Canada
Matt Berry: TV Themes
Burial: Ghost Hardware
The Stone Tapes
BBC: Life On Mars
BBC Sounds: The Lovecraft Investigations
BBC Sounds: The Dark Is Rising
Handspan album inspired by the book
Scarfolk
Additional music not mentioned in episode
1
The Hardy Tree: Stagdale EP 1
Frances Castle’s accompanying music for her Stagdale graphic novel.
A TV composer recalls their school recorder practice and hires a new-fangled drum machine to create backing music for a childrens series set in 1973 tangentially involving Nazis, buried treasure and rural angst.
Theres an equally affecting EP 2, where two lives separated by three decades becoming increasingly entwinned. Frances recalls her 70s north London childhood, recalling the nearby 2nd world war anti aircraft battery position, and seeing contemporary bomb shelters being uncovered then filled in on the high street.
2
David Boulter: St Ann’s
Paul Wellers’ Stanley Road is an album with Hauntological themes dealing with love and loss and a dark cloud the sun just about kept at bay.
Likewise David Boulters mostly instrumental album concerns his love and melancholy for his street, in a part of Nottingham which changed rapidly in the 1960s and 70s. The rain was either arriving or leaving, the sun too bright to watch TV so you shut it out, and the new exciting homes were quickly suffering from national decline. What those homes replaced, old terraces with outside loos and ice inside the windows, were still talked about fondly. Your gran lived round the corner, everyone had a job.
All this is nicely captured in thirteen simple elegant tracks, with guitar, bass, recorder and toned down electronics.
3
Black Channels: Two Knocks For Yes
Proper scary. Poltergiests. Oscillators. Spoken word testament to the eerie and frightening.
One of only two releases from this radiophonic group, and anyone who has followed BBCs Uncanny and all that orbits it will be on familiar although not necessarily happy territory.
4
The Sodality of Shadows: Phantom Cities
Beats driven music for what sounds like the TV theme for a security services up against something uncanny drama. This time in the early 90s, in a weirdly derelict docklands. Time travel? Alternate history, in which Callaghan called the election at the right time and easily beat Thatcher? Whichever, it was an early role for Andrew Lincoln and The Sodality of Shadows get to grips with the half realities of any great city. Especially one prone to fog, temporal instability and the questionable relevance of a secret society that meets in Abingdon Grove.
5
Micro Moon: Figure in a Landscape
After the previous recommendations, something to lull you into an uneasy sense of calm. Electro acoustic psychogeography. Landscapes empty of people but not memory.
Bob Fishers The Haunted Generation
We return to Hauntology, the cultural phenomenon where some people feel that the media of their 1970s childhoods was decidedly weird.
The team ask who wanted to scare children, and why? Dave suggests there are four foundational 'truths' underpinning Hauntological content; the paranormal is real, the occult is real, UFOs are real and the end is nigh. Dave, Rob and Kevin discuss how these fringe ideas migrated to the main stream.
They then consider three writers whose content is at the heart of Haunted books, TV and film.
The episode rounds off looking at modern responses to the subject.
All this in just over an hour.
There is so much we could not cover, but just like The Daleks, Hauntology will be back.
The Background
The Child and the Family by Donald Winnicott
Radicals in UK Teaching
Neil Postman The Disappearance of Childhood
Blavatsky and Theosophy
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
Atomic and Cold War
The Creatives
Trevor Preston
Roger Price
Dr Christopher Evans
John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris
Recommendations
Drew Mullholland: Three Antennas in a Quarry
Scarred for Life: Scarred for Life The Album (Volume 1)
One Key Magic: Worldly Noise And Electronic Atmospheres
Boards of Canada
Matt Berry: TV Themes
Burial: Ghost Hardware
The Stone Tapes
BBC: Life On Mars
BBC Sounds: The Lovecraft Investigations
BBC Sounds: The Dark Is Rising
Handspan album inspired by the book
Scarfolk
Additional music not mentioned in episode
1
The Hardy Tree: Stagdale EP 1
Frances Castle’s accompanying music for her Stagdale graphic novel.
A TV composer recalls their school recorder practice and hires a new-fangled drum machine to create backing music for a childrens series set in 1973 tangentially involving Nazis, buried treasure and rural angst.
Theres an equally affecting EP 2, where two lives separated by three decades becoming increasingly entwinned. Frances recalls her 70s north London childhood, recalling the nearby 2nd world war anti aircraft battery position, and seeing contemporary bomb shelters being uncovered then filled in on the high street.
2
David Boulter: St Ann’s
Paul Wellers’ Stanley Road is an album with Hauntological themes dealing with love and loss and a dark cloud the sun just about kept at bay.
Likewise David Boulters mostly instrumental album concerns his love and melancholy for his street, in a part of Nottingham which changed rapidly in the 1960s and 70s. The rain was either arriving or leaving, the sun too bright to watch TV so you shut it out, and the new exciting homes were quickly suffering from national decline. What those homes replaced, old terraces with outside loos and ice inside the windows, were still talked about fondly. Your gran lived round the corner, everyone had a job.
All this is nicely captured in thirteen simple elegant tracks, with guitar, bass, recorder and toned down electronics.
3
Black Channels: Two Knocks For Yes
Proper scary. Poltergiests. Oscillators. Spoken word testament to the eerie and frightening.
One of only two releases from this radiophonic group, and anyone who has followed BBCs Uncanny and all that orbits it will be on familiar although not necessarily happy territory.
4
The Sodality of Shadows: Phantom Cities
Beats driven music for what sounds like the TV theme for a security services up against something uncanny drama. This time in the early 90s, in a weirdly derelict docklands. Time travel? Alternate history, in which Callaghan called the election at the right time and easily beat Thatcher? Whichever, it was an early role for Andrew Lincoln and The Sodality of Shadows get to grips with the half realities of any great city. Especially one prone to fog, temporal instability and the questionable relevance of a secret society that meets in Abingdon Grove.
5
Micro Moon: Figure in a Landscape
After the previous recommendations, something to lull you into an uneasy sense of calm. Electro acoustic psychogeography. Landscapes empty of people but not memory.
Bob Fishers The Haunted Generation