Summer Specials 2026: Little Biter
Uncanny
In this episode of Uncanny, host Danny Robbins investigates a series of paranormal occurrences in a Victorian house in Ramsgate. The family
Key takeaways
- Rebecca's sister Charlotte experienced being bitten by a girl holding a bucket and spade.
- An exchange student from Venezuela reported having identical dreams of the biting child.
Main topics
- Paranormal activity in Ramsgate
- Ghostly manifestations of children and animals
Notable quotes
I am on the beach at Ramsgate in Kent... for the last of our 2026 Uncanny Summer Specials.
Conclusion
The episode provides a hauntingly cohesive link between modern paranor
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Welcome to the Haunted Library. Have you come in search of a tale? This podcast invites you to browse the shelves and find stories that will linger long after you've left this place. From gothic masterpieces to pulpy penny dreadfuls, join me, Colin Morgan, with new episodes twice a week. Find The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 3 (0:41) Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside. I am on the beach at Ramsgate in Kent in South East England for the last of our 2026 Uncanny Summer Specials. A brand new full-length Uncanny case set here in this old fishing town, which became one of the most popular holiday destinations in Victorian England. I'm here in the middle of a heatwave. I must confess I feel a little clammy in my red mac. It was a... Poor choice for the beach. But I have some good news, because the case we're here to investigate will provide that most environmentally friendly form of air conditioning, a chill down your spine. It's the story of an ordinary house not too far from this beach with some very unordinary goings-on. So are you ready to dip your toe into an ocean of horror? I'm Danny Robbins, and this is Uncanny. Speaker 4 (1:41) Summer Speaker 3 (2:07) Special Case 3 Speaker 3 (2:15) Hello, hello. Thank you for all of your lovely responses to our first two summer specials recorded live at the Hay and Crosstwires festivals. Right now, though, we have a deliciously dark, brand new, uncanny case to investigate together. So I'm on my way to meet our witness. I'm walking past all the fishing boats here in the harbour. But let me tell you, what we are about to hear is very much enough to put you off your fish supper. Right, we are here now, I think, so let's go in and meet our witness. She's called Rebecca. She has always lived here in Ramsgate, and those fishing boats over there have played a huge role in her life. Speaker 2 (2:58) So my dad has been at sea since he was maybe 15 and he worked on some of the ferries when they used to go from Ramsgate Harbour. My twin brother has also been a fisherman his whole life. We've always had a house that faces the sea. Our whole life centred around it. Speaker 3 (3:12) But Rebecca chose a very different career. She works in a mother and baby assessment unit, working with vulnerable women who have given birth. Speaker 2 (3:20) Some have had really bad home lives, some are children still, some have had problems with drugs. And we try and build them as a parent so that they can leave and go out into the world with their baby. Speaker 3 (3:33) Rebecca's empathy for them perhaps lies in the fact that she was a young mum herself. Speaker 2 (3:37) I have a daughter at 18, and especially being a young age as well, there's a lot more stigma and people are questioning you more, you're parenting more. Speaker 3 (3:46) It all helped to shape the woman that Rebecca is now, and it might be important to our story. But first... we need to leap right back to the beginning, when Rebecca was a child herself, living with her parents and siblings in that house on the cliffs overlooking the sea. Speaker 2 (4:03) So it's a big five-bedroom Victorian house. There's a lot of life in the house. When my dad would work away at sea, my mum would fill the house with exchange students, so it was just lots of chatting and noise. Speaker 3 (4:14) But one day in 1999, things change. It begins when Rebecca's younger sister, Charlotte... comes down to breakfast. Speaker 2 (4:22) She came downstairs and she said to my mum, do I have bite marks on my face? And my mum thought nothing of it and joked with her, said, yeah, why? And my sister went completely white and she looked terrified. And then my mum said, you don't, you don't, what's wrong? And she sobbed and sobbed and cried. And my sister said that she was in bed, she heard the door go and a little girl came into the room. She came to the end of the bed and she had a bucket and spade. And she come alongside my sister and bit her from her hands up to her face. Hold on a Speaker 6 (4:57) second. What? So she sees a girl walk into her bedroom and the girl bites her? Speaker 2 (5:03) Yeah. That's Speaker 3 (5:04) pretty bloody eerie. Speaker 2 (5:05) She was terrified. It really scared her. Speaker 3 (5:09) It must be a dream, right? But it begins to happen frequently. Charlotte complaining that the little girl has come into her room in the night, clutching her seaside bucket and spade and bitten her. Speaker 2 (5:23) There's never any marks on her skin, but she sees the little girl repeatedly. Speaker 3 (5:28) So what do the rest of you think about this? Speaker 2 (5:30) At this point, not a lot. We just think it's a nightmare reoccurring. It's not till later. that this comes up again with other people that we think there's something in this. Speaker 3 (5:41) Other people, because remember, whilst Rebecca's dad is at sea, to keep the family company, her mum has been renting out spare bedrooms in this big old house to exchange students from around the world, blowing into Ramsgate like flotsam on the tide. Speaker 2 (5:57) We had one student from Venezuela, Elizabeth, and she stayed in the house and she had one of the attic bedrooms and she came down for breakfast one morning and she was really upset and my mum asked her what was wrong. And she said, I dreamt last night that I walked through your house. I came down to the middle floor to use the bathroom. And she said, I opened the door and the little girl was on the toilet. So I said, sorry, and I shut it. And then the little girl opened the door and bit all over my hands. Speaker 6 (6:29) That must have made the room go quiet. Speaker 2 (6:33) Yeah, we're all sort of looking at each other thinking, hang on, that's a thing. Speaker 3 (6:40) So what the hell is going on here? Is this both Charlotte and a complete stranger from the other side of the world weirdly having the same dream? Or is this little girl real? Is it a thing? The answer to that may be about to become apparent as Rebecca has her own experience. Her mum has bought a piano that she puts in the back living room. Speaker 2 (7:04) So I walk from the kitchen out into the hallway. And I look into the back room where the piano is and I see a little girl with her hands up on the piano. So I walk into the room and the little girl sprints to the other side of the room. And as I come in, I look around the door, there's no one in there. Speaker 6 (7:25) Could she have got out of the room? Speaker 2 (7:27) No. Speaker 6 (7:27) So where does that little girl go to? Speaker 2 (7:30) No idea. She's disappeared. Speaker 6 (7:32) Do you feel like this is the little girl that your sister saw? Speaker 2 (7:35) Yeah. Speaker 6 (7:35) That that Venezuelan exchange student saw? Speaker 2 (7:38) Yeah, definitely. Speaker 6 (7:39) Who is she, Rebecca? Speaker 2 (7:41) I don't know. But she's young and she's in the house. Speaker 3 (7:46) And she bites people? Speaker 2 (7:48) Yeah. Speaker 3 (7:57) Goodness me, what is going on here to try and make sense of this suspected seaside supernatural situation? Let's bring in some experts here. For Team Skeptic, we have the ever-reliable Dr Kieran O'Keefe. And for Team Believer, another doctor, writer and paranormal historian, Dr Kate Cherill. Kate is a weird one already, isn't it? Let's start at the beginning. Rebecca's sister, Charlotte. We can argue about whether these are dreams or if a little girl is actually coming into her room. But here's a question. If they are dreams, can dreams be paranormal? Speaker 8 (8:33) I personally believe that dreams can absolutely be paranormal. People have this belief that we can have psychic dreams. And we hear so many people have these amazing stories of uniting with deceased loved ones through dreams. But what if... Those dreams were inverted and other spirits could enter and begin communication with the living. It's Speaker 6 (8:54) a really unsettling idea. It takes us into Freddy Krueger realms, the idea of somebody entering your mind as you sleep. That detail about being bitten, that is about as unsettling as it gets. What do you make of that? Speaker 8 (9:07) That is the really freaky element of this. It's being bitten is very visceral. It's very animalistic. And for a child to be biting strangers makes me think that they're going to be either deeply troubled or if we go down a darker route, that it's not a child at all, but something more sinister masquerading as a child. Kieran, Speaker 6 (9:27) I'm Speaker 8 (9:27) going Speaker 6 (9:27) to throw this to you. What is the reality here? Is Charlotte being bitten? Speaker 5 (9:31) No, I think potentially we are dealing with a dream. I think the question is where would that dream come from? Because the biting aspect is particularly weird, you know, unless you consider where they live on the coast. How