Northern Ireland may currently be lacking a functioning devolved government – still suffering arguments about post-Brexit customs borders and having spent the autumn wrangling over postponed elections – but a wholly different cause of dispute arose in the province at Hallowe’en 2022. The cause was the distinguished Queen’s University in Belfast being left out of what purported to be a national survey identifying the top 10 ‘most haunted universities’ within the UK. Maureen Coleman writing in the Belfast Telegraph seized on this omission, declaring that Queen’s University was being ‘snubbed’ in not even receiving a ranking in the survey, which was compiled by the Knowledge Academy, a US-based online training business registered in 2018 (Belfast Telegraph, 21 Oct 2022).
The Knowledge Academy survey derived its respective rankings for identifying the ‘most haunted universities’ from such criteria as the number of haunted listed buildings nearby, the alleged number of paranormal reports within two miles of each campus and – ludicrously – from counting local cemeteries and the number of gravestones within them. The totals were then crunched to distil a final ‘spooky rating’ with each university awarded a score out of 10. The University of Liverpool achieved first place, Bath University came second and York University was third. Absurdly, Liverpool John More University was ranked in fourth overall on account of there being 282,000 gravestones within a two-mile radius, giving it an ‘exceptional’ spooky score of 8.73.
Possibly this spurious survey was meant as a light-hearted Hallowe’en piece. If so, it fell rather flat when these quack statistics were solemnly recited in more than to the and all without a scintilla of critical comment. The only dissenter was the , which saw fit to challenge the nonsensical methodology behind the survey, motivated by a perceived sense of injustice from it ignoring the iconic status given to Queen’s University following the second series of the BBC Radio 4 podcast , broadcast in autumn 2021. The team investigation revealed a terrifying historic haunting focused on Room 6-11 inside the now-demolished Alanbrooke Hall of Residence at Queen’s. Show presenter Danny Robins stated: “When we made that first episode of Uncanny about bedroom 6-11, it was undoubtedly one of the most significant hauntings we have covered.” He explained: “The more we dug, the more we discovered, and the witnesses just kept coming.” Particularly striking was testimony from a former student named Ken, now a geneticist, which was so terrifying it provoked Robins into exclaiming “Bloody hell Ken!” a phrase since incorporated on spin-off mugs, T-shirts and other series merchandise. Other witnesses recalled “strange and terrifying things going on”: lights switching on and off, lifts working by themselves, bizarre poltergeist activity, a sinister black ghostly figure described as “a force of nature”, and one man feeling himself being pushed from a window.
