We don't want to give anybody sleepless nights...

[khaosworks]

Anybody remember Ghostwatch? Let me tell you my experience with the show.

England, Halloween 1992. I was in my second year of University, in my lodgings in North London, and watching BBC One. That night, Screen One broadcast Ghostwatch, a program that ostensibly was being shown live from a real house that was haunted by a Poltergeist named "Pipes". The house had been wired up with surveillance cameras (including infra-red), a live camera crew was on hand with TV presenter Sarah Greene, and in the studio, respected broadcaster Michael Parkinson was with experts on the paranormal and a studio audience. Mike Smith (Greene's husband) was with taking calls from the public and Craig Charles was interviewing neighbors - all to see if they could actually catch a ghost on film that evening.

Frankly, it should have been obvious from the beginning it was a wind-up. Screen One was BBC One's dramatic programming slot, and the opening credits even had a "Written by" and "Starring" credit. But I honestly don't recall seeing that - I might have turned on the show after the opening credits, or like many, was just taken in by the presence of TV presenters playing themselves and in familiar, expected roles and the format of the show done exactly like a real documentary type program. Remember, this was in the days before Big Brother or Blair Witch. Also, the fact that the haunting was supposed to be in a North London council house... and I was in a North London council house, didn't help.

It started slow, just like any normal, let's-do-this-for-a-lark type BBC phone in show, but the scare started creeping up on you. I remember when it started to hit me - when a flitting image from a camera that flashed on screen went without comment by the presenters until minutes later, when they announced that a caller had told them the image was there, and they "rewound" the tape and showed us the same image all of us at home had seen, but without the ghost! This was a clever and very subtle bit of trickery that hooked me on the reality of the thing - after all, I had seen it - I could swear to it, and it wasn't my imagination because the "caller" had seen it too, so somehow in my head that meant it was real, because if it wasn't, surely the presenters would have been going out of their way to point it out to us. Of course, it never occured to me then that the caller could be part of the set-up, but I like to think I'm more cynical now ten years on.

Also, having been raised on books and magazines about the paranormal, I was also aware of real-life cases of poltergeist activity, and the writing team had done its research, producing phenomena that matched typical haunting incidents, which lent it an additional layer of authenticity. Then as weirder things began to happen "live" on screen, pictures flying onto the floor, a suddenly running tap and the appearance of a teddy bear... first the revelation that it all might have been a hoax perpetrated by the daughters of the house, but after that more weird shit happening... the tension built up and up and by the time "Pipes" invaded the TV studio, Sarah Greene was trapped in the basement, the transmission cut off, and Michael Parkinson was possessed... even though on hindsight it seems ludicrous, I was so drawn in that I was genuinely frightened - not out of my wits, but enough that I kept looking around my empty bedroom for quite some time.

Which goes to show an important lesson - even the hardest skeptic can be fooled, if you do it cleverly enough. My friends know that I am hardly the most gullible of men, but this sucked me in hook, line and sinker. When it was revealed in the end that it was a hoax, the media fallout was incredible, people jamming the phone lines to the BBC, criticizing it for scaring children (and parents, presumably), comparisons to Welles' War of the Worlds, a mother even blaming the subsequent suicide of her son on the program. It has never been repeated.

Now, Ghostwatch has finally been released on DVD (RRP £19.99), after 10 years. It's a interesting little piece - like I said, predating reality TV and other hoaxes like Blair Witch, and a testament to the power of television and film. And I swear, it's still creepy - a lot more so than Blair Witch ever was.

If anyone else remembers this and has his or her own story to tell about the programme, I'd love to hear about it.

Comments

This program rocked.

[radiofreerlyeh.livejournal.com]

I recently purchased this film. During our recently local Sci-Fi con I showed it to a group of rather unsuspecting filmgoers. The result was more than pleasing. More than half my audience was serious creeped out by the presentation. After the showing, about a dozen of us huddled around the monitor we were using and spent the next our slowly dissecting the film imagery. As always, the level of the BBC's craftmanship was suberb. There were images so deeply embedded into the film that the effect would have been almost subliminal. One of the finest TV productions of its type I've ever scene. God bless the BBC and multi-region DVD players.