The Broken Veil podcast tells us to always expect the unexpected

Good news for anyone who loves being scared out of their wits by the sounds in their headphones: Broken Veil is back. Hosts Will Maclean and Joel Morris won a British Podcast Award for the first series, which told the story of a weird concrete building somewhere in the Essex countryside, a place that seemed to be real (they had friends who had been there on different occasions), but also very much not (they themselves found no physical evidence of it; their friends had extremely odd experiences in there). Gripping and unnerving, Broken Veil made me shudder for a long time after. Even now, in my mind’s eye, I can see a particular corridor, a person walking round a corner, just ahead, and doors that lock themselves. No turning back.

Anyway, despite its success, that first series seemed to break something in the presenters, and they approach the second season with differing attitudes: Maclean wants to dive deeper into the questions raised by series one; Morris can’t face it. He feels both freaked out and cheated by what happened (no spoilers from me; you’ll have to listen), and so they decide that, for their second go, they’ll concentrate on spooky stories that happened to them. That way, they know they’re not being tricked. 

They dig up some unexplained oddities. Maclean has a piece of audio that he made years ago, while in an empty room: a disembodied, threatening voice saying hard-to-make-out words. Morris has a similar story of his brothers making a tape that recorded voices when there should have been none. These separate tales lead them to a figure in an empty passageway at a local radio station; a voice on an indie record that seems to be directed at a particular late-night producer. The eeriness is heightened by the soundwork and use of music; but also, to be clear, by the voice on Maclean’s original tape. It’s horrible, and it definitely seems to be saying: “We are death.” Brrr. 

I have no idea what will happen next – I never know, when it comes to Broken Veil – but these seemingly paranormal fragments gradually add up into something weirder than you’d expect. Maclean and Morris keep us informed about their process all the way through, and they are reasonable, questioning, intelligent men who find themselves baffled. As a side note: they’ve moved the series to Patreon, which means you’ll have to pay to listen. Only £3 a month. It’s money well spent. Think of it as an investment – a test for your nerves.

From BBC World Service, here’s something far sadder and more everyday. World of Secrets: Searching for Soldier Dad is about people whose mothers are Kenyan and whose fathers are British soldiers. Fathers through biology but definitely not through parenting, they disappear back to the UK, seemingly not sparing a thought for the child and mother they left behind. “The oldest child,” says presenter Ivana Davidovic, “is 70, the youngest three years old.” 

These children exist because there’s a huge military facility in Nanyuki, north of Nairobi, known as Batuk: British Army Training Unit Kenya. In the final episode, a brigadier describes Batuk as “a fundamental part of our ability to train our people … the size of the training area we have access to and the demanding conditions. There is nowhere else we can do the type of training we do.” But a recent Kenyan report says that, within the community, Batuk is “increasingly seen as an occupying presence rather than a development partner”. Locals have raised parallels with colonialism.

Davidovic follows a handful of the hundreds of children left without fathers. With the advent of home DNA tests, these men can be accurately traced, and the presenter is there, from testing to legal hearing. She meets some of the children, though they’re not kids any more. Cathy is just finishing college, Peter is a father himself and Yvonne is nearly at the end of her schooling. They’ve all grown up without paternal influence, and Yvonne without her mother, who died young. Yet they still hope for a relationship with their dads. “I am a daddy’s girl,” says Yvonne, sweetly, devastatingly. The really interesting aspect is that, if a child is proven to have a British father, then that child is a British citizen, with all the rights attached, from a UK passport to entitlement to child support. 

DNA testing for ancestry has become a huge business, not only for companies such as 23andMe and Ancestry but also for audio. I’ve lost count of the number of shows that involve tracing birth parents. The Observer’s own excellent Foundling, obviously; but also The Immaculate Deception, about a fertility doctor who used his own sperm to impregnate hundreds of women; and The Gift, which looked at what happens when a DNA test reveals that your father isn’t your father. 

And, yes, DNA can locate fathers who haven’t even done a test. But, after that, you have to physically track them down, and many go to great lengths not to be found. Searching for Soldier Dad has more in common with Broken Veil than I’d thought. Both are trying to pin down ghosts.

Photograph by Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images