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Ghostwatch: The 1992 paranormal investigation that just had to be true, because it was on the BBC

A quarter of a century ago, the bbc made television history – and received record levels of complaints – with its ‘ghostwatch’ programme on halloween. the memory of it still gives david barnett the shivers, article bookmarked.

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The involvement of such well-established presenters as Mike Smith, Michael Parkinson and Sarah Greene made the drama even more credible to the viewers

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Halloween night, 1992. It was a Saturday, and I was somewhere near Weston-super-Mare, I think, in a quiet, out-of-season bed and breakfast. I was 22; there was some event on the Sunday I had to be up early for; I can’t remember what now. But I do remember sitting in a small room that wasn’t my own, far from home, not sure what to do with myself. So I watched Ghostwatch .

Halloween wasn’t the big deal then that it is today. A smattering of small children half-heartedly trick or treating; maybe a fancy dress party somewhere, if you were lucky a nice, classic horror film on TV very late on. So Ghostwatch piqued the interest; it was a live television event of the sort we didn’t get very often back then.

Or so it appeared. It was an intriguing premise. Veteran broadcaster Michael Parkinson would anchor a studio discussion about the supernatural while an outside broadcast from a purportedly haunted house on a council estate in Northolt, north-west London, would be fronted by Craig Charles and Sarah Greene, with Greene’s husband Mike Smith also performing presenter duties at the BBC.

It was novel and entertaining. A procession of experts either talking up or debunking the paranormal joined Parky in the studio. Charles and Greene interviewed people on the street of this estate, kids messing about in the background. There were veiled words about unusual, unsettling happenings in one particular house lived in by a very ordinary family. As the show progressed, people would phone in with their own brushes with the supernatural, including the occasional drunk ringing up for larks.

For the first half of the 90-minute show, I think I was utterly convinced. Then it took a more sinister turn, as the small girls in the family spoke of a malevolent entity they called Pipes (because their mother explained the mysterious banging noises away as merely the rattling of the central heating system) they believed haunted their house. Then it spiralled into full-on horror which accelerated towards a truly apocalyptic finale.

Throughout the second half I swung the other way and realised it was a scripted show. But I kept having moments of doubt, sitting there in that B&B room, with its unfamiliar creaks and shadowy corners, and at one point near the end – when a visibly distressed Mike Smith starts to panic about losing contact with his wife at the outside broadcast, where things have gone tremendously wrong – I began to have my doubts again.

“That’s wonderful!” says Stephen Volk with a rich laugh. It’s precisely the reaction he was hoping for. Volk was the screenwriter of Ghostwatch , which wasn’t true at all. It wasn’t even a live broadcast; the outdoor scenes had been filmed over the summer, the production team judiciously scattering pumpkins and Halloween decorations around. But it was never Volk’s intention to fool or prank people; it was a piece of scripted drama made to look like a live broadcast.

Volk had already earned his chops as a screenwriter before Ghostwatch , most famously with a screenwriting credit for Ken Russell’s 1986 film Gothic , based on the infamous night when Mary Shelley created Frankenstein. He had been in discussions with BBC producer Ruth Baumgarten about an idea he wanted to bring to the broadcaster.

“Initially, I envisaged Ghostwatch as a full series about a television crew and a psychic investigator in a haunted house,” says Volk. “The idea fell on deaf ears at the BBC but Ruth persisted and eventually came up with the idea of using it in the one-off drama slot.”

Volk set to reworking the concept, and hit upon the idea of presenting it as though it was a live broadcast. It was a format that, while familiar today, wasn’t hugely common even in the early 1990s; there were factual programmes such as Panorama , light entertainment shows ( Ghostwatch was preceded in the schedules that night by The Generation Game and Noel’s House Party that Halloween night), and dramas. The live, telethon broadcast was usually reserved for charity events such as Children in Need .

“I suppose we’d recognise the format today as the sort of programme that’s on early evening, like The One Show ,” says Volk. “Throughout the writing drafts I’d thrown in names of real-life presenters, mainly for my own amusement, but when we got the final cast, with Michael Parkinson, and Sarah Greene, I was really, really pleased.”

It was those familiar faces that gave the show its verisimilitude. Surely, we thought, deep down, if no less an august personage than Parky is fronting this, how can it be anything but genuine?

The reaction to Ghostwatch perhaps seems odd to young people today, paints us that watched it as credulous and gullible. But it was a simpler, spoiler-free world. There had been little pre-publicity, no scenes from the show trailered. The absence of the internet meant there was no pre-show discussion, there were no big newspaper features beforehand on what a hoot it was to make. With no social media, there were no tweetathons from fellow viewers decrying the whole thing as just a drama to take comfort in. We were in our living rooms, or hotel rooms, and we were on our own with this thing.

“It was a very different type of writing that I was used to,” says Volk. “I had to create a structure that wasn’t usual, had to have the first 45 minutes with not a lot happening, and a lot of exposition from people being interviewed, because that’s how these sort of shows work in real life.”

That said, he says Ghostwatch was “an established type of horror story”. “It’s basically the idea of ‘the wish that goes wrong’,” he says. “People watch a show like that and they really want to see a ghost, even though they know they aren’t going to. And then, suddenly, they do.”

It’s also an examination of human nature, especially our hubris about our contemporary, tech-driven society, says Volk: “It’s about how clever we think we are, but how we set ourselves up for a fall.”

In a prime example of life imitating art, Ghostwatch also begat an entire genre, most often exemplified by the long-running TV show Most Haunted , in which camera crews, presenters and psychic researchers do indeed investigate supposedly haunted houses.

Unlike Ghostwatch , though, nothing every really happens in those shows. And when Ghostwatch really let loose, it did so in a big way. The gradual realisation in the studio that something had gone wrong in the outside broadcast was cemented by the show’s big pay-off; we, as viewers, had unwittingly become part of a massive televisual seance that had taken the horror off our TV screens and invited it directly into our homes. The final shot of Parky, in a darkening studio, reading haltingly from a prompter that was now inexplicably showing the words of a children’s nursery rhyme, faded into black, and left those who were unsure of what they had just seen staring at their silent TVs.

Volk had attended a party on the night of the broadcast to watch it with friends, cast and crew. After the show had aired, producer Baumgarten turned up. “We’ve jammed the switchboard at the BBC,” she said.

Volk remembers, “I laughed, then I looked at her. She was actually white-faced. ‘No,’ she said. ‘The switchboard is actually jammed. With complaints’.”

Ghostwatch had the dubious accolade of being the BBC’s most complained-about show – estimates range from 20,000 to 50,000 complaints. It was also one of the most-watched programmes, with more than 11 million people tuning in. The tabloids had a field day in the following week, and then things took a darker turn. A young man with learning difficulties, Martin Denham, took his own life five days after the programme and his parents blamed Ghostwatch . A couple of years later, a report in the British Medical Journal claimed two cases of actual post-traumatic stress disorder in children who had watched the show.

There were, of course, measures in place for anyone who felt perturbed by Ghostwatch during its broadcast. The BBC phones were actually being staffed by members of the Society for Psychical Research, including Maurice Grosse, the man who investigated the notorious Enfield Poltergeist haunting in the 1970s. They were instructed, straight away, to tell people that what they were viewing was a drama, was not real, and to offer whatever advice they could to those who were ringing with their own paranormal experiences.

The sense of unease was compounded after the show had ended, when the continuity announcer, as if not quite believing what he had just seen himself, quietly announced that Match of the Day was to follow, and said nothing about what had gone before.

“I think the BBC should have come clean at the end,” says Volk. “There could have been a message saying that it was all a drama. There could even have been a 15-minute show talking about how it was made, or some of the issues raised in it.”

One thing Volk is clear about is that Ghostwatch was never intended as a hoax, or a prank. He says, “We never used the word hoax, and it was quite a shock to see the word used in the press in the aftermath. It was never intended as a prank, but as a piece of drama. The producer didn’t want to put out advance screenings or previews because that would have brought the artifice tumbling down. The fact was, it was drama but it was plausible drama, and people believed it.”

The majority of the complaints, such as those aired on the BBC’s feedback show Points of View , centred on the fact that people didn’t expect the BBC to broadcast something like that, something that was ambiguous and downright scary. The BBC didn’t fool you, not like Orson Welles did with his 1940 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds which sent America into a panic. Well, there was the 1957 Panorama April Fool about spaghetti trees, but that didn’t give anyone nightmares.

“In a way,” says Volk, “that was sort of one of the things we were trying to raise, one of the questions we wanted to get the audience to think about. What do you trust? Do you believe something because you’re seeing it on TV, because experts are talking about it?”

The BBC has never broadcast Ghostwatch again, and indeed disowned it for a good decade after it was put out. Eventually the British Film Institute released it on DVD, and occasionally organise screenings of the show. Sometimes Volk will go along, and watch the reactions of those in the audience, who know from the off that it’s a drama but who still make all the right noises in all the right places.

Ghostwatch is just one point on Volk’s screenwriting career – indeed, he’s teamed up with Ghostwatch director Lesley Manning again for his next movie, Extrasensory , which looks at the idea of Russian ESP experiments – but in writing it he’s certainly booked his place in television history.

“I am very proud of it,” he says. “A writer like me wants to create something memorable, and with Ghostwatch I did, even if it does have the ghost of Orson Welles hovering in the background…”

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Ghostwatch At 30: The Brilliant BBC Halloween Stunt That Terrified The Nation

Ghostwatch 30th anniversary

I was still dressed as a mummy when I sat down to watch TV after trick-or-treating on Halloween night in 1992. I was a skinny lad, so binding my limbs tightly in bandages made me look more like a weird spindly white insect than King Tut. Self-conscious of this, I wore my Adidas bench coat over the costume, which completely ruined the effect.

I couldn't tell you what my costume was 12 months earlier or the following year, but Halloween of '92 remains so clear in my mind because that was the night of " Ghostwatch ." I loved anything related to the supernatural, so I just couldn't wait: The BBC was conducting a live paranormal investigation into poltergeist activity! It was a big event heavily publicized in the run-up to Halloween, and 11 million viewers tuned in that night. The next day the whole country was talking about it.

"Ghostwatch" wasn't a real live ghost hunt, but rather a supernatural drama film produced under the BBC's Screen One banner months in advance. Unfortunately, many people didn't see that memo and either missed or ignored the writer and cast credits at the start of the program, taking it as a real-life incident. During the transmission, the BBC's phone lines were inundated with calls from alarmed viewers.

It was the UK's "War of the Worlds" moment and the outrage was predictably stoked by the tabloids. There were rumors that people had even died from fright (we'll touch on that later), adding to the film's terrifying reputation. I was scared s***less, but absolutely loved it; those of us who recorded it on VHS pored over our tapes, trying to spot all the fleeting glimpses of Pipes, the malevolent ghost in the story. The BBC backed away from "Ghostwatch" in the aftermath, which only added to its enduring mystique.

So what happens in Ghostwatch again?

It is Halloween night and the BBC is conducting a special live investigation into disturbances in an ordinary home in Northolt, Greater London, where single mother Pamela Early (Brid Brennan) and her two daughters have endured 10 months of poltergeist activity. The malign entity apparently manifests itself as a ghost that the children call "Pipes," who lives in the glory hole under the stairs. No sniggering, please; back then in Britain, a "glory hole" was just a cupboard where you put your junk. Again, no sniggering, please.

In the studio, venerable presenter Michael Parkinson (playing himself) asks expert advice from parapsychologist Dr. Lin Pascoe (Gillian Bevan), while Mike Smith (also himself) mans the public phone-in. Out on location, reporter Sarah Greene (herself) is in the house with the family and a camera team, who rig the joint with CCTV cameras and the latest tech to try catching definitive proof of ghostly activity. 

Meanwhile, Craig Charles (himself) interviews bystanders and uncovers some disturbing urban legends that go back decades. Throughout the broadcast, we learn of the area's sinister history, including animal mutilation, a Victorian child murderer called Mother Seddons, and Raymond Tunstall, a pedophile who took his own life in the Early household back in the '60s and was partially eaten by pet cats trapped in the house with him after he died.

When things start going bump in the night on cue, the case is initially dismissed as a hoax when one of the girls is caught faking spooky noises. But things take a turn for the worst when she starts speaking in a demonic voice and scratches appear on her face. The paranormal events escalate with terrifying force, and it becomes apparent that the live broadcast has inadvertently become a nationwide seance.

The casting of Ghostwatch was a masterstroke

The sheer effectiveness of the casting was crucial in lulling the unsuspecting public into a false sense of security. "Ghostwatch" was hosted by familiar, trustworthy faces that we all grew up with on TV, cozy personalities usually associated with family-friendly shows, each of them playing themselves.

First up is veteran presenter Michael Parkinson, affectionately known to the nation as "Parky," overseeing proceedings as the host. Even at the beginning, when he warns viewers that the program contains scenes that some might find disturbing, his avuncular presence makes us feel like we were in safe hands. Also in the studio was Mike Smith on the phone-in, a familiar face and voice on BBC TV and radio in the '80s, whose plain appearance belied a somewhat prickly persona.

Out on location, Craig Charles is out on the street interviewing people. As the star of "Red Dwarf," the hippest show on the BBC at the time, he is cheerful and jokey, giving it the full cheeky Liverpudlian charmer act. Lastly, giving the best performance in the film is Sarah Greene with the family. She was best known for children's shows like "Blue Peter" and " Going Live ," and has such a warm, comforting presence that we genuinely fear for her when things get really scary in the house. Greene and Smith were married, and their relationship added extra stakes that pay off so strongly in the film's nightmarish conclusion.

They all gave game versions of themselves, but they are let down a little by Gillian Bevan's apprehensive performance as the parapsychologist. Especially viewing at a distance of decades, she is so wooden, unconvincing, and not helped by the writing at all, which has her responding to most questions with a vague "I don't know."

Does Ghostwatch still hold up?

 "Ghostwatch" might look rather dated to the modern eye, especially in the scenes set in the studio, but that blandness was key to what director Lesley Manning wanted to achieve. As film critic Kim Newman noted (via the documentary "Behind the Curtains"):

"There are many, many households where the default setting is the television being on, and so therefore no one actually watches it... Of course, 'Ghostwatch' depends on that in order to sneak past, depends on it looking, at least at the beginning, like the kind of programming that is just wallpaper."

That approach caught the viewing public off guard on the night and it loses some of its fright factor when you know it isn't the real deal. One thing that remains is this: "Ghostwatch" is still a really chilling ghost story.

The slow-burn build-up creates a sense of mounting dread, and the urban legends provide a disturbing background for the action. Then there is the sheer normality of the setting. As Parky says at the beginning, "no creaking gates, no gothic towers, no shuttered windows." The family lives in an ordinary semi-detached house, much like my family's and just about everybody else I knew, too. It felt all too real.

I'm always struck by the mundane setting's claustrophobic effect. When we're watching Sarah Greene running around the house on CCTV, we see how small the space is. There is nowhere to go, which also has a scarier connotation: She is never far away from where the ghost could appear next.

Pipes is still terrifying, precisely because we almost never see him. Made up to look like someone mauled by hungry cats, we get only the briefest glimpses, leading up to the horrifying scenario when Greene disappears into the Glory Hole with him, never to be seen again.

Why was Ghostwatch so groundbreaking for its time?

So how did stuffy old "Auntie Beeb" end up screening a fake live broadcast that terrified the nation and tapped into found footage tropes years before " The Blair Witch Project " popularized the genre?

The publicly funded broadcast company has been in the doldrums for quite a few years now, but the BBC has a long history of quality drama. From "The Quatermass Experiment" to "I, Claudius," "Pennies From Heaven" to "Boys From the Blackstuff," the Beeb often commissioned groundbreaking, challenging, award-winning programming for grown-ups, with platforms like "Play for Today" providing a showcase for writers like Dennis Potter and directors such as Alan Clarke, Mike Leigh, and Ken Loach. Most devastatingly, there was " Threads ," an incredibly harrowing documentary-style imagining of a nuclear strike on the UK.

True to this tradition, "Ghostwatch" showed that the BBC's appetite for pushing the boundaries was still alive and well in the early '90s. Screenwriter Stephen Volk, partially inspired by the Enfield Poltergeist case in the '70s, initially conceived the show as a six-parter culminating in a live broadcast from a haunted flat in London. Together with his producer Ruth Baumgarten, they decided to focus on the live aspect, presenting the drama as something happening in real-time, something completely unprecedented on UK television at the time.

Following the live TV format, the standard BBC call-in number popped up from time to time, supposedly for viewers to share their tales of the supernatural during the event. Callers would be reassured that "Ghostwatch" was fiction, but there was a problem. With only a handful of people manning the phones, the lines quickly became swamped as things got creepy, which only added to the realism.

The aftermath

The BBC's switchboards reportedly received one million calls during the broadcast of "Ghostwatch." Not all of them were from angry or scared viewers; some called in to praise the innovative presentation of the story.

In the media s***storm that followed, the tabloids added fuel to the fire with headlines like "Viewers Blast BBC's 'sick' ghost hoax" (The Sun) and "This TV programme killed our dear son" (The Mail on Sunday). Among stories of kids suffering PTSD-like symptoms and pregnant women scared into early labor, there was the tragic case of 18-year-old Martin Denham, a young man with learning difficulties who died by suicide five days after the film aired. His parents blamed his obsession with "Ghostwatch" for his death.

The Broadcasting Standards Commission initially rejected the complaint, along with 34 others, but subsequent intervention by the High Court required that the BSC look into the matter. Their findings stated (via BBC ):

"[The BBC] had a duty to do more than simply hint at the deception it was practising on the audience... [there was] a deliberate attempt to cultivate a sense of menace."

The coroner's verdict on Denham's death didn't mention the film, but the producers were forced into issuing an apology and admitting that if they'd known how badly some audience members would react, they would have made its fictional nature clearer.

The BBC disowned "Ghostwatch" as a result of the backlash and has never screened it again. Remarkably, for a TV film so innovative with record-breaking viewing figures, it didn't receive a single BAFTA nomination. There is a suggestion that the BBC itself squashed any chances of it getting nominated (via "Behind the Curtains").

The afterlife of Ghostwatch

For years "Ghostwatch" was a hard-to-find cult item with fans tracking down bootleg tapes and VHS recordings from the night. Parkinson was outspoken about the BBC's disownment of the film (via "Behind the Curtains"):

"It displayed the BBC at its corporate worst. Instead of being proud of a drama that had, I think, still holds the record today for viewing figures, 11 million... it's an extraordinary figure, even in those days... I mean, they'd die for it today, wouldn't they?"

"Ghostwatch" gradually became recognized as a bonafide horror classic when the BFI belatedly released it on DVD in 2002, and it has become a solid alternative viewing choice around Halloween. For its 18th anniversary, a "National Seance" invited viewers to participate by playing their personal copies at exactly 9.25 P.M., the time of the original broadcast, and share their thoughts on Twitter.

"Ghostwatch" was one of the last great shared viewing experiences before the onset of cable, satellite TV, internet, and streaming services atomized people's watching habits, and it's hard to imagine how such a stunt could be pulled off now. It also inhabits a strange space in the canon of found footage horror. It wasn't the first — that honor attributed to the grisly " Cannibal Holocaust " — and neither was it strictly found footage, as it was mocked up as a live broadcast. Yet many of the tropes we now recognize in the genre took flight in that hoax Halloween event perpetrated by the BBC.

There is a new flurry of interest in "Ghostwatch" accompanying its 30th anniversary, with a glossy new Collector's Edition Blu-ray to commemorate the landmark. Hopefully, it will help a new generation discover the film, and also cower under their bedsheets for fear of Mr. Pipes standing in the corner of their bedroom.

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Ghostwatch

Where to watch

1992 Directed by Lesley Manning

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

For Halloween 1992, the BBC decides to broadcast an investigation into the supernatural, hosted by TV chat-show legend Michael Parkinson. Parky (assisted by Mike Smith, Sarah Greene & Craig Charles) and a camera crew attempt to discover the truth behind the most haunted house in Britain. This ground-breaking live television experiment does not go as planned, however.

Michael Parkinson Sarah Greene Craig Charles Mike Smith Gillian Bevan Brid Brennan Michelle Wesson Cherise Wesson Colin Stinton Mike Aiton Chris Miller Ruth Sheen Linda Broughton Katherine Stark Derek Smee Keith Ferrari Roger Tebb Diana Blackburn Brendan O'Hea Mark Drewary Mark Lewis

Director Director

Lesley Manning

Producers Producers

Ruth Baumgarten Derek Nelson

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

Richard Broke

Writer Writer

Stephen Volk

Editor Editor

Chris Swanton

Visual Effects Visual Effects

Dave Jervis Steve Bowman

Composer Composer

Philip Appleby

Costume Design Costume Design

Jackie Vernon

Alternative Titles

Ghost Watch, 灵异守夜, 고스트워치

Horror TV Movie

Horror, the undead and monster classics Terrifying, haunted, and supernatural horror Spooky, scary comedy Gothic and eerie haunting horror Creepy, chilling, and terrifying horror Gory, gruesome, and slasher horror Show All…

Releases by Date

31 oct 1992, releases by country.

91 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

DirkH

Review by DirkH ★★★★½ 17

1992. I would give several essential parts of my body to get the opportunity to travel back to that year. Not so I can be 17 again, but so my 17 year old self could have the chance to watch Ghostwatch live.

In what is perhaps one of the best TV pranks ever, the usually rather reserved BBC decides to produce an absolutely terrifying fake live television event investigating a haunted house. Having British TV icon Parky host the proceedings is one of many flashes of brilliance, giving it a sense of realism and importance. Surely good old Parky wouldn't want us 'to have sleepless nights'.

The true star here and the main reason this works so well is writer…

Laurie Orla

Review by Laurie Orla ★★★½ 1

The ominous cupboard under the stairs being called 'the glory hole' never gets old.

Josh Lewis

Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★ 1

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

A really clever and creepy fake reality TV/documentary ghost story that is so aesthetically indistinguishable from a dry British broadcasting news program that it famously tricked millions of BBC viewers into thinking they were watching this live on Halloween night 1992. Not just one of the great pieces of prank art since Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast (or maybe that silent era train), but also a genuinely terrifying piece of filmmaking in and of itself. Lots of chaotic tracking shots and precise cutting and slow-build of eerie soundscape, background scares, gruesome local history detail, etc that is made all the more shocking by how perfectly it replicates the mundane form/energy of the medium it's imitating. Was impressed by…

nathaxnne [hiatus <3]

Review by nathaxnne [hiatus <3] ★★★★½ 30

Invariably I end up watching Ghostwatch initially awake and then slowly sliding into a space between consciousness and dreams, having to piece together what is happening in between gaps or stopping and rewinding. Oddly for something which was a television broadcast, this seems like the appropriate way to watch Ghostwatch, at least in the middle of the night which is when it is watched. Ghostwatch uses the comforting set-up of the tv set center and the investigated home periphery to lull the home viewer, whose own home is the one being entered by the spectral forces from without (or from within?), into a routine of manufactured reality, manufactured through familiarity and repetition, which, when it starts to break down and…

♦️•Lily•💋

Review by ♦️•Lily•💋 ★★★★½ 1

People with a time machine: -“I am your granddaughter/son” -“Really?”

Me with a time machine: I’m going to go back in time to October 31st 1992 to watch the original broadcast of Ghostwatch 

SilentDawn

Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 9

Film #1 of my October horror marathon.

Scary shit. Really effective as a replication of live broadcasting. The on-air phone calls provide a layer of campfire storytelling and it ultimately works to put the haunting into context for our characters. Those final moments are as disturbing as ever. There's a reason this devious prank caused such an uproar - terrifying images!

nick

Review by nick ★★★★½ 7

It's safe to call Ghostwatch one of the most genuinely terrifying horror movies ever in history. Despite being a somehow forgotten TV movie, Ghostwatch manages to become a pioneer in horror both in terms of style and creativity, at least subconsciously. Just imagine a truly disturbing Blair Witch Project and Ringu hybrid, and you get Ghostwatch.

Ghostwatch dipped its toes into the found footage genre way before it became the thing, and demonstrated the deadly effects of media on ghosts and demons way before Ringu even came into being. Aside from its historical significance, Ghostwatch is still highly memorable thanks to its highly atmospheric, eerie and realistic portrait of a live ghost hunting show gone wrong. Everything works wonderfully in…

adambolt

Review by adambolt ★★

watched this at the British Film Institute while in London, the largest archive of film and television in the UK with literally thousands of things to watch, and a guy came in next to us and watched one episode of the Mr Bean cartoon and left

reibureibu

Review by reibureibu 10

Brilliant in how it uses its utterly banal production to establish its authenticity as assumptive and one of the least 'movie'-looking movies I've seen in adopting a non-aesthetic aesthetics to disguise its intent, something that simultaneously renders it impermanent and existing only during its initial broadcast on October 31st, 1992. All future viewings are still "Ghostwatch", of course, but a version inherent with excessive context by nature of simply living in a later history. The only possible way one could come close to accurately re-capturing the experience is to covertly flip to this on the TV as 'news' to a young child and tell them that this is just what British people are like.

CinemaVoid 🏴‍☠️

Review by CinemaVoid 🏴‍☠️ ★★★★

Spiritual successor of 1938’s War of the Worlds , Ghostwatch had British Karens screaming won’t somebody think of the children back in 1992. Orson Wells would be proud.

Scumbalina

Review by Scumbalina ★★★★ 10

As I've mentioned, I have a major soft spot for found footage/mockumentary horror, so if you were to ask me WHY I waited so long to watch this one, I really couldn't tell you. It feels so essential and alive. I can't explain it but something happens to me when I watch these things. A good found footage movie is about the only thing that can scare me. It's probably because I recorded something not-human speaking on my video camera when I was a kid. I watched that over and over again obsessing over the voice. I'll never forget what it said, what it sounded like and how close it was to me when it said it. A male voice when it was just my Mom and I living in the house. The less I see the more scared I become and the more I'm reminded of my own experience.

Tony the Terror

Review by Tony the Terror ★★★★½ 11

I discovered this last year around the Halloween season and absolutely loved it so after reading  Bob's review , I had to revisit and it’s still just as great! 

I love a well done mockumentary and this one comes off as pretty damn believable. It’s not hard to see how 1992 audiences fell for it seeing as how they mostly just had a newspaper TV guide to tell them what was on TV at the time! I can just imagine the rotary phones ringing off the hook with people trying to find out what the hell was happening down at the BBC.

I noticed more of the subtle “Pipes” (the ghost) appearances in the background this time so that’s certainly something to remember if you’re watching or rewatching it. Great Halloween times right here!

Bananameter: 🍌 glory hole 🍌

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Ghostwatch: The BBC Halloween Hoax That Traumatized Viewers

By jake rossen | oct 11, 2020, 3:00 pm edt.

Michael Parkinson, Mike Smith, and Sarah Greene in Ghostwatch (1992).

After more than 20,000 phone calls, one induced labor, and thousands of angry letters, the UK's Broadcasting Standards Council convened for a hearing. On June 27, 1995, they ruled that the producers of Ghostwatch , a BBC program that aired on Halloween night less than three years earlier, had deliberately set out to “cultivate a sense of menace.”

Put another way: The BBC had been found to be complicit in scaring 11 million people senseless.

Airing from Northolt, North London, Ghostwatch alleged to report on the paranormal experiences of the Early family, which had been besieged by the actions of a ghostly apparition they called “Pipes.” Four recognized BBC presenters appeared on the show, which took on the appearance of a straightforward documentary and offered only subtle clues that it was an elaborate hoax. For a significant portion of viewers, it appeared as though they were witnessing documented evidence of a malevolent spirit.

Viewers grew so disturbed by the content that the network became embroiled in a controversy over what audiences felt was a ruse perpetrated by a trustworthy news source; cases of post-traumatic stress disorder in children were even reported in the British Medical Journal . What the BBC had intended to be nothing more alarming than an effective horror movie had petrified a country—and would eventually lead to accusations that it was responsible for someone’s death.

There is something of a myth surrounding Orson Welles’s infamous “War of the Worlds” broadcast of October 30, 1938. As the decades have passed, accounts of how Welles used the H.G. Wells story to fool a nation into believing aliens had invaded have become embellished. Listeners had supposedly become so infused with terror that they leapt from windows and suffered nervous breakdowns. Major cities had streets crowded with people craning their necks and looking for signs of a violent galactic attack.

While it’s true a number of people may have been disturbed by the “accounts” of military forces being overwhelmed by aliens, it’s unlikely to have been as widespread as later accounts would have it. Newspapers eager to browbeat the competing medium of radio exaggerated the show’s effect, then quickly dropped the matter; it’s not likely all that many people were even listening in the first place, with the program going up against a popular comedy show airing at the same time.

A scene from Ghostwatch (1992).

As perpetrators of hoaxes go, only Stephen Volk seems to have lived up to the standard Welles is thought to have set. A screenwriter, Volk pitched the BBC on a six-part series in 1988 about a roving paranormal investigation crew that climaxes in a live tour of a supposedly haunted house.

The BBC, however, wasn’t that enthused about devoting that much time to the idea. Instead, the pitch was condensed down to the last episode—a kind of “mockumentary” take on a paranormal occurrence that the channel could air as a Halloween special.

For Volk, it represented an opportunity to explore what he felt was the relative comfort of a television broadcast. Audiences went to horror films, he believed, knowing what to expect, consenting to being scared. But television was more intimate and less predictable. Viewers who tuned in anticipating a spoof or anticlimactic, tongue-in-cheek exploration would be in for a surprise—and not a pleasant one.

To add to the program’s credibility, Volk and director Lesley Manning structured it so two BBC presenters—Sarah Greene and Craig Charles—would be installed at the Early house, while highly regarded broadcaster Michael Parkinson would anchor from a studio . (Both Charles and Greene frequently popped up on BBC children’s programming, which would prove to be a lure when it came to an adolescent audience.)

Actors portrayed members of the Early family: single mother Pam and daughters Suzanne and Kim all reported instances of strange activity in their home, including rattling, mysterious cat noises, and smashed dishes. Suzanne would sport odd scratches on her face, which she claimed to be the work of Pipes, the ghost who refused to leave their home.

(In a testament to Volk’s commitment, he petitioned the BBC to allow him to try and insert a high-pitched warble on the soundtrack that would be audible to animals near televisions, hoping their bizarre behavior would unsettle viewers more. It proved to be technically impossible to do.)

Various ideas were batted around to reinforce the disclaimer, but few made it to the air. Mike Smith, Greene’s real-life husband and an on-air BBC correspondent who appeared on the special, once told the Radio Times that he suspected things might go south. “We had a meeting with the BBC days before transmission,” he said. “And we told them that this was going to cause a fuss. They told us not to worry because it was being billed as a drama in the Radio Times complete with a cast list. But we felt that wasn't enough."

By the time Ghostwatch premiered at 9:25 p.m. on October 31, 1992, the special had already been filmed, showing Parkinson reacting to segments and taking calls—all staged—that invited the audience to discuss their experiences with paranormal activity. In the interests of fairness, he also included an interview with a (fake) skeptic dismissing the Earlys’ claims.

Only highly observant viewers would have done the same. While the show began with a title card indicating it was written “by” Volk, the graphic was onscreen for only a split second; the presence of established and familiar faces to BBC viewers added to the verisimilitude. So did the program’s slow burn. At 90 minutes, it took its time, showing only fleeting glimpses into the Early family’s experiences that were left purposely ambiguous.

ghostwatch bbc halloween 1992

In the show’s second half, things took a turn. A viewer called in to tell them that someone had once committed suicide in the home; a mutilated dog corpse was said to be recently found nearby; the Early children were depicted as increasingly upset over the home’s disturbances. Around an hour in, Parkinson even advised viewers they’d be pre-empting scheduled programming to remain with Greene due to the "extraordinary" events taking place: Suzanne speaking in a baritone voice, and unseen cats mewling behind the walls.

Ultimately, Greene disappeared in the crawl space under the home’s stairs while a paranormal expert proclaimed that the television audience had unwittingly participated in a mass séance that had further emboldened Pipes. At the end of the show, Parkinson was seen being apparently possessed by the ghost’s spirit.

The finale laid it on a little thick, but not everyone made it that far in. By the time Ghostwatch signed off, a not-insignificant portion of the show’s 11 million viewers were either convinced ghosts were real, extremely upset at the BBC for traumatizing their children, or both.

The broadcaster had just five operators standing by its phones [ PDF ] once the show went off air, a number that was quickly overcome by the thousands of calls that flooded in. One woman reportedly went into labor due to the stress caused by watching the program; another reported her husband had soiled himself. Within hours, the BBC aired a brief segment that reminded viewers the show was fictional. It was a little too late.

Public discourse—including on the BBC’s own viewer feedback show, Bite Back —criticized the station for using its reputation to fool viewers into thinking harm had come to both the Earlys and to their hosts. Parapsychologist Susan Blackmore later said that “It treated the audience unfairly. It can be exciting to play on the edge of fantasy and reality, or stretch the accepted norms of television conventions, but this was neither true to its format nor fun. It was horrid to watch the distress of the girls, real or faked. I found it over-long and occasionally disgusting … The lack of adequate warnings was irresponsible.”

Michelle Wesson in Ghostwatch (1992).

Greene quickly appeared on children’s shows to reassure younger viewers she had not been abducted or murdered by Pipes. Volk and Manning offered their own apologies, feeling that the BBC considered them pariahs. They had simply wanted to pay homage to Welles, never imagining the program could have the kind of effect it did.

In a report published in the British Medical Journal 18 months later, doctors in Coventry reported cases they classified as “post-traumatic stress disorder” from consumption of media—in this case, Ghostwatch . Two 10-year-old boys were suffering from panic attacks and sleep disturbances as a result of the broadcast. When the piece appeared, the Journal received correspondence from other doctors relating similar cases.

If not for his reported learning disabilities, 18-year-old Martin Denham might have been more psychologically equipped to deal with some transient nerves from the show. When he became distraught in the days following the broadcast, he began to grow concerned he might make contact with ghosts and committed suicide. His parents, Percy and April, blamed Ghostwatch , leading the Broadcasting Standards Council to rule that the show had been improperly labeled, with too few warnings that it was a fictitious premise.

Later, the handheld-camera, raw-footage approach would unnerve cinema audiences that flocked to films like The Blair Witch Project and the Paranormal Activity series. While those films rarely resulted in any claims more serious than motion sickness, Ghostwatch successfully married the BBC’s credibility with an effective ghost story to create an experience that’s unlikely to ever be duplicated.

Not that the network wants to try. Since its original airing, the program has never again been broadcast in its entirety in the UK. (Though it is available to stream via Shudder .)

Ghostwatch (1992 TV Movie)

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DoomRocket

The BBC’s Ghostwatch: Still warping our perceptions, three decades later

Aug 23, 2023 | ANTI-MONITOR | 0 comments

ghostwatch bbc halloween 1992

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS.

by Jarrod Jones . I watch ghost stories because, as a skeptic, I secretly want to believe. Well, not really. But, like most people, I enjoy the sensation of being successfully duped. The better-made supernatural horror movies will suspend my personal disbeliefs concerning poltergeists and other so-called phenomena for the length of a feature film; for a time, I can shut off my pedant’s brain, get lost in the dark, and marvel at how white my knuckles have gone. 

The thing is, I go into a horror movie with at least an awareness of what to expect; if it is made well, I’ll experience a fright or two. My heart might jump a couple of times. The point is: I signed up for this , so when I’m scared, fair’s fair. I can only imagine the furor kicked up by unsuspecting viewers in the United Kingdom following the BBC’s 1992 Halloween broadcast of Ghostwatch . Most families thought they were spending an evening watching a spooky drama on the telly. What they got instead was more on par with Orson Welles’ paradigm-shifting CBS radio recreation of The War of the Worlds . (Incidentally, also a Halloween broadcast.)

ghostwatch bbc halloween 1992

You’ve heard stories about how millions of people in the United States worked themselves into a paranoid froth during Welles’ reading of HG Wells’ 1898 science-fiction novel. Despite his effectiveness in mocking up what a Martian invasion would actually sound like on 1938 radio, don’t believe them. The reactions to Ghostwatch , on the other hand, were very real, with the BBC reporting over 20,000 people jamming up its call centers that night in an attempt to understand the veracity of what they were watching. Were the horrors unfolding in real time… actually happening? “People felt The BBC was something they could trust,” Stephen Volk, the creator of Ghostwatch , said in 2017. “The programme [sic] had destroyed that trust.” 

What they were watching was possibly the most inventive piece of horror ever produced for television. Ghostwatch , written by Volk and directed by Lesley Manning, was presented as a live investigation into “the most haunted house in the UK,” with “live” segments shot inside a home located in the fictional and purportedly doomed Greater London area called Foxhill Drive, with the parapsychiatrist Dr. Lin Pascoe (Gillian Bevan) watching from the safety of the network’s famous Studio One. We’re watching the lives of Pamela Early (Brid Brennan) and her daughters Suzanne (Michelle Wesson) and Kim (Cherise Wesson) fall apart at the whims of a demonic spirit the young girls refer to as “Mr. Pipes.” For skeptics like me, their predicament is ridiculous. Yet, the way Ghostwatch is made, I still buy it, even though history and sense tell me it’s not real.

To sell the gravity of a BBC production, Manning employed all the cutting-edge technology she had in her possession: infrared cameras, cold sensors, and an early version of a digital stylus were put to use. They’re around not just for legitimacy but to play around with the viewer’s sense of reality. One moment caught on camera in the sisters’ shared bedroom seems to show the outline of a man standing by their window. Dr. Pascoe uses the stylus to outline what she thinks could be seen as a human shape, but neither she nor her host believes anything is there. The thing is,  we see it , or him, standing there, with the maximum clarity the grainy video will allow. This creates a sensation that Manning and Volk are breaking the fourth wall, so we might begin to suspect that what’s haunting the Early family might have infiltrated our homes, too.

ghostwatch bbc halloween 1992

Perhaps most controversially, Ghostwatch employed actual BBC talent to host the 91-minute program: the “live” segments shot at Foxhill featured Sarah Greene, a known TV personality seen on, among other things, a real documentary series named Hospital Watch ; the studio segments were presented by venerated talk show host Michael Parkinson , whose seasoned manner gives the show serious bona fides as well as as a feeling of safety — after all, nothing could possibly go wrong with Sir Michael on the screen… right?  

“No creaking gates, no Gothic towers, no shutter windows,” Parkinson says at the top of the hour. “Tonight, television is going ghost-hunting in an unprecedented scientific experiment.” Parkinson’s steady hand guides us through everything in Ghostwatch : he navigates the foolishness of Craig Charles (in life an English comedian, here operating as a newscaster under the same name), who fields reactions from the Early’s wary neighbors; when Sarah begins to see strange things in the house, Parkinson brings us back into the bright lights of the studio to talk with a cynical scientist who’s out to disprove the concept of ghosts. 

ghostwatch bbc halloween 1992

It’s after Pascoe begins to grow frightfully concerned about the footage beamed into the studio that Parkinson lets his mask of professional competency slip. When he snaps at Pascoe about what’s going on in the Early home (“You’re the expert!”), it’s difficult not to feel like what we’re watching has seriously shifted its axis. What happens next is something you should experience for yourself; luckily, Ghostwatch dropped on Blu-ray this month.   

I hope you give it a spin.  Ghostwatch  is like witnessing a puzzle being put together, shifting its final image as it goes, forcing you to reevaluate where the pieces should land, wondering if a solution is even possible. As more information about the history of the Early House takes shape, the more we understand this spectral monster called Pipes — just when you think you’ve got an idea of what you’re looking at — everything changes. The uncertainty is stifling. It’s terrifying. I don’t believe in ghosts. But when I put on  Ghostwatch , for its 90-minute runtime and possibly a few moments beyond that, I’m changed. I’m a believer. 

9.5 out of 10

Ghostwatch is available on Blu-ray now. For purchasing information, click this.

Directed by Lesley Manning. Written and created by Stephen Volk. Edited by Chris Swanton. Starring Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene, Mike Smith, Craig Charles, Gillian Bevan, Keith Ferrari, Brid Brennan, Michelle Wesson, and Cherise Wesson. Produced by Richard Broke, Ruth Baumgarten, and Derek Nelson.

Not rated. Contains a fearsome amount of uncertainty and some lore-specific unpleasantness. 

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ghostwatch bbc halloween 1992

What was Ghostwatch? 1992 BBC Halloween mockumentary hosted by Michael Parkinson and Sarah Greene

  • Joanne Kavanagh
  • Published : 10:25, 30 Oct 2017

ON HALLOWEEN 1992 the nation was given the fright of its life when horror mockumentary Ghostwatch was shown.

But what exactly happened that night ? Was it real? And can you watch it again? Here's what we know...

 Ghostwatch was famous 1992 Halloween mockumentary

What was Ghostwatch?

Ghostwatch was a British reality/horror/mockumentary television film.

It was first broadcast on BBC1 on Halloween night, 1992.

It was presented by Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene and Mike Smith

Despite having been recorded weeks in advance, it was shown as though it was live television, causing a nation to be scared to their wits.

 The show was hosted by Michael Parkinson

What happened on Ghostwatch?

The TV movie was a horror mockumentary, presented in the style of a live news report.

Over the course of an hour and a half viewers watched a horror story unfold in a documentary style.

It involved BBC reporters, including Sarah Greene, performing a live, on-air investigation of a house in Northolt, Greater London, where poltergeist activity was taking place.

The show was hosted by Michael Parkinson from a BBC studio, where he talked to "experts" and  kept going "live" to the house.

Through revealing footage and interviews with neighbours and the family living there, the show revealed the existence of a malevolent ghost nicknamed Pipes (the children in the house had asked their mother about noises heard, and she said it was the pipes, hence the name).

As the programme proceeded, viewers learned that Pipes was the spirit of a psychologically disturbed man called Raymond Tunstall.

 Sarah Greene was presenting "live" from the haunted house

In the course of the programme Pipes made various manifestations, even possessing one of the young girls who lived in the house.

Over 90 minutes, Pipes became more bold and terrifying, until, at the end, the frightened reporters realise that the programme itself has been acting as a sort of "national séance" through which Pipes was gaining horrific power.

Finally, the spirit unleashed its power to the fullest extent, dragging presenter Sarah Greene out of sight behind a door and then escaping to unleash poltergeist activity throughout the country.

He then took control of the BBC studios and transmitter network, using the Ghostwatch studio as a focal point and possessing Michael Parkinson in the process.

 There was a fake phone number for viewers to call

What was the controversy surrounding Ghostwatch?

Although under the BBC drama banner, its documentary and "live TV" style, led many viewers to believe the events were real, causing viewers to be terrified.

During and following its first and only UK TV broadcast, the show attracted a considerable furore, resulting in an estimated 30,000 calls to the BBC switchboard in a single hour.

The show even had a number for viewers to call if they were experiencing anything supernatural in their homes - viewers believed this to be a real phone line, but upon calling it, they were told by a recorded message that the show was fictional.

But to make it look "real" Mike Smith was seen answering "calls from viewers" who also were experiencing ghosts in their houses - these weren't real.

The BBC was besieged with phone calls from irate and frightened viewers.

The show was criticised in the press for the disturbing nature of some scenes, such as Sarah Greene's final scene where she is locked in an under-stairs cupboard with the howling ghost, and Michael Parkisnon's eerie possession scene.

 Michael become "possessed" by Pipes the ghost at the end

Did someone die after watching Ghostwatch?

Ghostwatch did more than just frighten viewers - it was also blamed for several cases of post-traumatic stress disorder in children - and for one young man’s tragic death.

Martin Denham, an eighteen-year-old factory worker with learning difficulties, committed suicide five days after Ghostwatch aired in 1992.

His mother and stepfather said Denham had been “hypnotised and obsessed” with the programme, and convinced there were ghosts within their own family home.

Tragically, the young man left a note that read: “If there are ghosts I will be... with you always as a ghost”.

Arguing that Ghostwatch had caused their son’s death, Denham’s family complained to the Broadcasting Standards Commission.

In their ruling, the BSC found that “the BBC had a duty to do more than simply hint at the deception it was practising on the audience.

"In Ghostwatch there was a deliberate attempt to cultivate a sense of menace.”

 The show was banned from ever being shown on the BBC again

They found that Ghostwatch was excessively distressing and graphic, and stated that “the presence in the programme of presenters familiar from children’s programs... took some parents off-guard in deciding whether their children could continue to view.”

Indeed, a 1994 report in the British Medical Journal detailed several cases of children suffering from post-traumatic stress in the wake of the program.

“None of us thought we were creating something that would be one of TV’s most remembered programs,” said Parkinson in an interview more than 20 years after Ghostwatch aired.

“It was a simple ghost story based on a fairly ordinary premise that there’s a show on television and things start to go wrong. It was only when I saw it back that I realised it had a certain kind of power.”

 The show attracted 30,000 complaints in an hour as people thought it was real

Can I watch Ghostwatch?

The fallout from Ghostwatch was swift: The BBC apologised and has never aired it again on UK television, and it remained officially unreleased until an eventual DVD release in 2002.

Since then, its underground cult status has grown, with fans holding special Ghostwatch screenings each Halloween.

Now, a US horror, thriller and supernatural streaming service called Shudder has acquired the rights to Ghostwatch - meaning a whole new generation of horror fans will be able to see what the fuss is about for themselves.

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  • TV explainers

The Live Halloween Special That Terrified an Entire Nation

When the BBC aired Ghostwatch in 1992, thousands were traumatized by what they thought was a real haunting.

The Big Picture

  • Ghostwatch , a 1992 BBC TV special, fooled viewers into thinking it was real due to its commitment to realism and terrifying premise.
  • The show featured real TV personalities playing fictional versions of themselves, adding to the believability of the ghost investigation.
  • Ghostwatch's mix of big scares and subtle moments, along with its realistic production values, made it a groundbreaking and traumatizing horror classic.

Ghostwatch was a 90-minute TV special presented as a piece of live television that aired on the BBC on Halloween night in 1992, and despite the fact that there were some pre-credits, many viewers were fooled into believing it was real. The premise saw a ghost investigation spiral out of control with increasingly terrifying results. No one could have prepared for the impact it would go on to have on British audiences, least of all writer Stephen Volk . When he first concocted the idea for Ghostwatch , it was intended to be a six-part series.

However, it was reworked as a one-off special filmed weeks in advance of its airing. After it aired in 1992, it never aired again on British television, though in 2017 it was made available on horror streaming service Shudder and, as a result, a lot of international audiences saw the mockumentary for the first time. In the immediate aftermath of its first airing, a massive amount of controversy surrounded it. The movie’s unrivaled commitment to realism made it an utterly terrifying experience that still holds up after all these years.

What Happened in 'Ghostwatch'?

Ghostwatch-4

At the forefront of the ghost investigation are some very recognizable faces. Real-life TV personalities Michael Parkinson , Sarah Greene , Craig Charles , and Mike Smith play fictionalized versions of themselves, which duped audiences immediately. Parkinson and Smith are in a studio, whereas Greene and Charles are at a Greater London house actively investigating supposed paranormal activity terrorizing the Early family: mother Pamela ( Brid Brennan ), and two daughters, Suzanne ( Michelle Wesson ) and Kim ( Cherise Wesson ). Greene — best known for presenting children’s television — and Charles — best known for his comedic role in Red Dwarf — are initially skeptical of the Early family’s stories and play mischievous pranks on each other before the investigation properly starts.

10-Paranormal-TV-Shows-to-Watch-That-Will-Creep-You-Out

15 Best Paranormal TV Shows to Watch That Will Creep You Out

Charles, in particular, provides a lot of comic relief in the early stages. In the studio in a talk show format, Parkinson interviews various experts (all of whom were actors) who either defend the possibility of a haunting at the Early residence or make attempts to dismiss the family’s claims. Parkinson gives a seamless performance as the show’s main host, a role which British audiences had seen him in for over 20 years at the time. Another crucial aspect to the format were the phone calls the studio took. Viewers from around the country were invited to call in to report any activity in their own homes, but in actuality the number they called went to a message that reassured them the show was not real. However, because of the amount of callers, few got through to the message. This caused further panic among audiences. Some of the “calls” went through to Parkinson in the studio, and reported terrifying events happening all over the country. To further elevate the movie’s plausibility, some calls are instantly dismissed as pranks or exaggerations by those in the studio.

What Inspired 'Ghostwatch'?

Ghostwatch-1992

Though Ghostwatch was entirely fictional, Volk did take inspiration from the well-known Enfield poltergeist , a story that also served as inspiration for James Wan ’s horror hit The Conjuring 2 . The connections between the Enfield case and the Early family in Ghostwatch are fairly clear-cut with the family’s living situations, descriptions of poltergeist activities, and the suggestion of a hoax when the Early sisters are caught faking a paranormal event. While the movie is tame for a while, it springs into action once the terrifying backstories come to light. The dark, twisted stories of Raymond Tunstall and Mother Seddons elevate the movie to new heights of horror. We hear how Tunstall was the former inhabiter of the property, and how he molested and abused children before committing suicide, all while under the possession of Mother Seddons. Tunstall’s spirit, who terrorizes the Early family, is referred to as "Pipes," due to Pamela’s explanation to her daughters that the strange noises are just the pipes.

What Made 'Ghostwatch' So Terrifying?

Ghostwatch-Pipes

Director Lesley Manning does a stupendous job at mixing big scares with subtle ones. Pipes’ appearance is that of a bulky, bald man with blood stains across his face, though Manning never shows him clearly. He appears sporadically throughout the movie, often obscured or in the background in heart-stopping, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shots. The end of the movie reveals a nationwide séance has been unwittingly created by the show’s broadcast, and has given Pipes the power to let himself into any home across the country. In the movie’s disturbing final scene, host Parkinson appears to get possessed by Pipes moments before the camera cuts to black.

The scenes at the Early household were shot on videotape, giving a realistic homemade aesthetic to the footage. The home is also set up with a variety of cameras, which pick up a lot of what the human eye may miss. In one instance, a piece of footage showing a figure behind a curtain is rewound three times, yet on each occasion the image shown to audiences is slightly different. The way Manning’s direction toys with audience’s minds is really chilling, and when ghostly activity is picked up, it is always indistinct before the chaos unfolds in the final third. When the movie plummets into hysteria and shows possible demonic possession and the presumed deaths of the hosts, audiences were already so wrapped up in what they were watching that it all felt too real. The production values of Ghostwatch went on to inspire those of subsequent ghost-hunting reality TV shows such as Most Haunted and Ghost Adventures . While those programs are for entertainment purposes, they follow the format birthed by Ghostwatch . It has also been cited as a huge source of inspiration for found-footage masterpiece The Blair Witch Project , Inside No. 9 ’s live Halloween Special “Dead Line,” and Rob Savage ’s screen life horror Host .

More than 30 years later, it is easy to see why so many believed everything they were seeing was genuine. There were thousands of calls from petrified viewers and the movie was met with a huge amount of controversy for its disturbing content. The irony is that this was never Volk’s intention when he first pitched the idea — it was billed as a fictional horror TV special, but those thousands of viewers who missed the advertisements and opening credits believed what they were seeing. It has even been listed as the cause of PTSD in some children who saw the movie when it was broadcast, despite it airing after the 9 p.m. watershed. In retrospect, it is a huge credit to the movie’s realism that it fooled so many people. The presence of Greene, who primarily presented children’s television programs, was also deceiving for young audiences. While rightly controversial, Ghostwatch remains a groundbreaking, believable, and traumatizing horror classic.

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For Halloween 1992, the BBC decides to broadcast an investigation into the supernatural, hosted by TV chat-show legend Michael Parkinson. Parky (assisted by Mike Smith, Sarah Greene & Craig Charles) and a camera crew attempt to discover the truth behind the most haunted house in Britain. This ground-breaking live television experiment does not go as planned, however.

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  • FILM & TV

Ghostwatch : The BBC Halloween Hoax That Terrified England

The horror special was so disturbing it was banned for 10 years.

ghostwatch bbc

  • Photo Credit: BBC

Most readers are familiar with the big hoaxes of pop culture history. There is, of course, Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds , a program that—so the story goes—duped and terrified countless listeners. Even The Blair Witch Project stirred up plenty of "is it real?" controversy during its theatrical release in 1999. 

Far fewer people, however, may know of Ghostwatch , one of the most terrifying and successful faux-documentary horror programs in recent memory—if "successful" is the right word for a show that gave children PTSD, was banned in England for "cultivat[ing] a sense of menace", and, according to one family, even led to a suicide.

Broadcast on Halloween night in 1992 on BBC1, Ghostwatch was given all the trappings of a genuine news show. The cast included familiar TV personalities, "live" on-the-street interviews with trick-or-treating youngsters, and a phone-in panel complete with a telephone number that the viewing public could "call" to discuss paranormal phenomena. 

ghostwatch bbc

Well-known BBC journalist Michael Parkinson, who hosted Ghostwatch.

The 90-minute program was presented as live television on Halloween night; in fact, it had been shot weeks ago. Its premise was simple: A BBC news team travels to the town of Northolt to conduct an on-air investigation into a reportedly haunted residence. There, they learn of a sinister spirit nicknamed Pipes. Pipes is actually the disgruntled ghost of Raymond Tunstall, a troubled man who—according to one phone-in caller—killed himself on the property decades ago and was himself haunted by the spirit of a 19th century child killer named Mother Seddons. 

Related: 6 Scary Documentaries That Will Make Your Heart Pound

As the program progresses, the paranormal activity gets more intense. To their horror, the newscasters realize that by taping the proceedings they have inadvertently created a nationwide séance. The malevolent spirit feeds off this energy, growing in power. In Ghostwatch 's terrifying final act, one host is dragged screaming behind a door, another is possessed, and Pipes infiltrates the transmitter network of BBC studios. 

ghostwatch

Craig Charles played himself, as an interviewer/presenter. 

Somewhere around 11 million viewers tuned in to Ghostwatch on Halloween night. Many were traumatized. Viewers flooded the BBC with angry phone calls, while British news outlets chastised the broadcaster for its disturbing program and the way in which they presented it. 

Then, in the week after Ghostwatch aired, an 18-year-old named Martin Denham hanged himself. His stepfather said that he had watched the show and was obsessed with it, convinced that there was a ghost living in the pipes of their Nottingham home. He left behind a note, saying that if there were actually ghosts like those depicted in Ghostwatch , he’d be back to see his parents.

Just over a year after the show was broadcast, doctors began coming forward with cases of children suffering from PTSD as a result of seeing Ghostwatch . Three years after the show first aired, the Broadcasting Standards Council of the UK convened a hearing and concluded that the show had set out to intentionally "cultivate a sense of menace." Ghostwatch was never shown on the BBC again, and was basically unavailable to watch anywhere legally until 2002. Not that that stopped some from watching the show—or talking about it. 

ghostwatch bbc

A scene from the program's paranormal investigation. 

Indeed, Ghostwatch 's banning, combined with the public outcry it caused and Martin Denham's suicide, sealed the fate of the program. It was now a real-life horror story whispered about on playgrounds, a phantom bootleg copy seen by a friend of a friend of a friend. When the British Film Institute released Ghostwatch on DVD in 2002, after years during which it was unavailable to watch legally, Denham's parents spoke out against the decision, claiming that the show caused their son's death. Despite their disapproval, Ghostwatch was released.

Related: The True Conjuring: 5 Paranormal Cases Investigated by Ed And Lorraine Warren

Fast-forward to the present day, and Ghostwatch is now available on the horror-themed streaming service Shudder. Surprisingly, it still holds up as an effective piece of found footage horror. Even knowing the program's staged nature, there is a reality to Ghostwatch , a matter-of-factness that makes its escalating scenes of spookiness feel all too real. Perhaps this is, in part, because the haunting featured on the program is based on the case of the Enfield Poltergeist , a real-life paranormal event from 1977 that also served as inspiration for the 2016 horror hit The Conjuring 2 . No doubt director James Wan was familiar with the infamous BBC special.

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That may certainly be a part of it, but a huge portion of the power of Ghostwatch comes from its credibility. In a world glutted with found footage horror flicks, too few of them have the feel of real artifacts, even when we know that they're manufactured. Ghostwatch has that feeling in spades, and no doubt influenced other films that have tried similar shenanigans over the years, such as 2013's low-budget WNUF Halloween Special , which takes its "taped off of actual TV" premise to such lengths that it actually includes ginned-up regional commercials as part of its running time.

Related: 10 Underrated Horror Movies That You Need to See, According to Reddit

It is rare to watch something that haunted viewers so completely as Ghostwatch did in 1992. When we do, we are often disappointed. Not so here, where, even stripped of its legendary status and simply viewed as a piece of horror filmmaking, Ghostwatch stands as an underseen classic of the found footage genre.

Featured still from "Ghostwatch" via BBC 

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shudder march 2024

Shudder March 2024 Lineup Includes Ghostwatch and Satanic Hispanics

By Neil Bolt

The Shudder March 2024 lineup includes the classic BBC broadcast Ghostwatch, and premieres of You’ll Never Find Me and Satanic Hispanics.

A new episode of The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs sees the horror host present a special on The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live .

Other titles coming in March include Grabbers, The Strangers, Southern Comfort, and Alice, Sweet Alice.

You can view the full Shudder March 2024 lineup below.

Shudder March 2024 Lineup

The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs: The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live LIVE on Shudder March 1; Streaming on Shudder March 3 . Available in US and CA Joe Bob dives deep into the epic love story of two people changed by a changed world in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.

At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul

A gravedigger prowls the city in search of a female to bear him a son.

The Strange World of Coffin Joe

Three episodes: A dollmaker whose dolls are eerily human, a tale of necrophilia, and a doctor who proves love is dead.

This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse

After the events of the previous film, Coffin Joe continues to seek a maiden to give him a son. With the help of servant Bruno, he kidnaps six girls from a village. Which one of them will pass his trials of fear?

Dream Demon

A young woman about to be married begins having terrifying dreams about demons. When she awakes, however, the demons are real and begin to commit gruesome murders.

The Strangers

A young couple staying in an isolated vacation home are terrorized by three unknown assailants.

In a “live” broadcast on Halloween night, a BBC team investigate a reported poltergeist in an ordinary London home.

Give Me Pity!

Sissy St. Clare graces the small screen for her first-ever television special, an evening full of music, laughter, glamour and entertainment. But Sissy’s live event quickly begins to curdle into a psychedelic nightmare.

When bloodsucking aliens invade an island off the coast of Ireland, the heroes discover that getting drunk is the only way to survive.

Alice, Sweet Alice

In 1961, a divorced Catholic couple’s life is turned upside-down when one of their two adolescent daughters is suspected of her younger sister’s brutal murder during her First Holy Communion and a series of subsequent stabbings.

Day of the Beast

Bent on committing as many sins as possible to avert the birth of the beast, a Catholic priest teams up with a Black Metal aficionado and an Italian connoisseur of the occult. Now he must become an unrelenting sinner. Is there still hope?

Perdita Durango

A psychotic criminal couple kidnaps a random teenage couple. The woman rapes the male captive and lets him watch his lover being raped by the man. Then they plan to sacrifice the couple.

Butcher Baker Nightmare Maker

An orphaned teenager finds himself being dominated by his aunt who’s hell-bent on keeping him with her…at all costs.

SATANIC HISPANICS

Directed by Mike Mendez, Alejandro Brugués, Gigi Saul Guerrero and Demian Rugna, Eduardo Sanchez

Available in the US

This horror anthology assembles a Murderers’ Row of talent. Mike Mendez (Big Ass Spider), Alejandro Brugués (Juan of the Dead), Gigi Saul Guerrero (Culture Shock), Eduardo Sanchez (The Blair Witch Project), and Demian Rugna (When Evil Lurks, Terrified) unite in the first all-Latino horror anthology.

First Contact

Two estranged siblings go to their late scientist father’s farmhouse to make sense of his incomplete work. They soon discover an evil entity, buried in time and space for millions of years, has been released and begun wreaking havoc.

An old Gothic cathedral built over a mass grave develops strange powers that trap a number of people inside with ghosts from a 12th Century massacre seeking to resurrect an ancient demon from the bowels of the Earth.

A lonely kindergarten teacher discovers a secret well in the basement of her house, and soon finds herself being followed by a murderous Satanic cult.

Southern Comfort

During a routine exercise, a team of National Guards are threatened by angry and violent locals.

YOU’LL NEVER FIND ME

Directed by Josiah Allen and Indiana Bell

Available in US, CA, UK

An isolated man living at the back of a desolate caravan park is visited by a desperate young woman seeking shelter from a violent storm. As the savage storm worsens, these solitary souls begin to feel threatened – but who should really be afraid?

The Shudder March 2024 lineup begins next week on March 1, 2024.

Neil Bolt

Neil became a horror fan from just a nightmare-inducing glimpse of the Ghoulies VHS cover and a book on how to draw ghosts. It escalated from there and now that's almost all he writes and talks about.

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ghostwatch bbc halloween 1992

IMAGES

  1. Ghostwatch (TV Movie 1992)

    ghostwatch bbc halloween 1992

  2. Ghostwatch (1992)

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  3. Ghostwatch BBC Halloween 1992 in 2022

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  4. Ghostwatch At 30: The Brilliant BBC Halloween Stunt That Terrified The

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  5. GHOSTWATCH : 1992 BBC HALLOWEEN SPECIAL TRAILER

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  6. 30 years ago, the BBC horror special Ghostwatch scared the pants off 11

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COMMENTS

  1. Ghostwatch

    Ghostwatch is a British mockumentary supernatural horror TV movie, first broadcast on BBC1 on Halloween night, 1992. Written by Stephen Volk, and directed by Lesley Manning, the drama was produced for the BBC anthology series Screen One by Richard Broke, Ruth Baumgarten and Derek Nelson. Despite having been recorded weeks in advance, the narrative was presented as live television [citation ...

  2. Halloween

    Ghostwatch BBC Halloween 1992Ghostwatch, the BBCs most controversial show ever. Sarah Greene, Michael Parkinson, Mike Smith and Craig Charles, presenters o...

  3. Ghostwatch (TV Movie 1992)

    Ghostwatch: Directed by Lesley Manning. With Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene, Mike Smith, Craig Charles. In a "live" broadcast on Halloween night, a BBC team investigate a reported poltergeist in an ordinary London home.

  4. Ghostwatch : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

    It's still considered controversial, and IS STILL banned in several European countries. Whether you are new to "Ghostwatch", or have seen it many times, it is still a fun rollercoaster ride of emotions. So, pop some popcorn, grab a beverage, bring on the Good & Plenty's & Twizzlers, and just sit back & enjoy the ride.

  5. Ghostwatch: The BBC spoof that duped a nation

    It's Halloween night in 1992, and families across the UK are excitedly huddled around the television. ... But tonight's big draw is the BBC's heavily-promoted Ghostwatch, a supposedly "live ...

  6. Ghostwatch: The BBC spoof that duped a nation

    It's Halloween night in 1992, and families across the UK are excitedly huddled around the television. ... But tonight's big draw is the BBC's heavily-promoted Ghostwatch, a supposedly "live ...

  7. Ghostwatch streaming: where to watch movie online?

    Synopsis. For Halloween 1992, the BBC decides to broadcast an investigation into the supernatural, hosted by TV chat-show legend Michael Parkinson. Parky (assisted by Mike Smith, Sarah Greene & Craig Charles) and a camera crew attempt to discover the truth behind the most haunted house in Britain. This ground-breaking live television experiment ...

  8. Ghostwatch, the 1992 show that scared 11 million BBC viewers witless

    A quarter of a century ago, the BBC made television history - and received record levels of complaints - with its 'Ghostwatch' programme on Halloween. The memory of it still gives David ...

  9. Ghostwatch At 30: The Brilliant BBC Halloween Stunt That ...

    Ghostwatch At 30: The Brilliant BBC Halloween Stunt That Terrified The Nation. BBC. By Lee Adams / Oct. 31, 2022 9:00 am EST. I was still dressed as a mummy when I sat down to watch TV after trick ...

  10. ‎Ghostwatch (1992) directed by Lesley Manning

    For Halloween 1992, the BBC decides to broadcast an investigation into the supernatural, hosted by TV chat-show legend Michael Parkinson. Parky (assisted by Mike Smith, Sarah Greene & Craig Charles) and a camera crew attempt to discover the truth behind the most haunted house in Britain. This ground-breaking live television experiment does not go as planned, however.

  11. Halloween Review Special

    The Realm of Horror presents a special review for Halloween. GHOSTWATCH, the contrversial BBC drama from 1992.Buy GHOSTWATCH at Amazon.co.uk... https://amzn....

  12. Ghostwatch: The BBC Halloween Hoax That Traumatized Viewers

    On June 27, 1995, they ruled that the producers of Ghostwatch, a BBC program that aired on Halloween night less than three years earlier, had deliberately set out to "cultivate a sense of menace."

  13. Ghostwatch (TV Movie 1992)

    Halloween 1992 and the BBC aired Ghostwatch as part of its Screen 1 Drama series. It was all told a horror mockumentary based around the Enfield Poltergeist investigation of 1977/8. Famed for family friendly fodder programming, the reaction to Ghostwatch shook the BBC to its core and the TV institution banned it for 10 years and has never shown ...

  14. Ghostwatch (1992): The Halloween Special That Fooled The ...

    Ghostwatch, BBC. On the 31st October, 1992, families across the UK settled in for an evening of television with the BBC. Saturday night television was still at its peak, regularly bringing in ...

  15. The BBC's Ghostwatch: Still warping our perceptions, three decades

    In 1992, The BBC aired Ghostwatch, possibly the most inventive piece of horror ever produced for television. In 1992, The BBC aired Ghostwatch, possibly the most inventive piece of horror ever produced for television. ... I can only imagine the furor kicked up by unsuspecting viewers in the United Kingdom following the BBC's 1992 Halloween ...

  16. What was Ghostwatch? 1992 BBC Halloween mockumentary hosted by Michael

    ON HALLOWEEN 1992 the nation was given the fright of its life when horror mockumentary Ghostwatch was shown.But what exactly happened that night? Was Jump directly to the content

  17. The Live Halloween Special That Terrified an Entire Nation

    Ghostwatch was a 90-minute TV special presented as a piece of live television that aired on the BBC on Halloween night in 1992, and despite the fact that there were some pre-credits, many viewers ...

  18. Where to stream Ghostwatch (1992) online? Comparing 50+ Streaming

    About Ghostwatch. For Halloween 1992, the BBC decides to broadcast an investigation into the supernatural, hosted by TV chat-show legend Michael Parkinson. Parky (assisted by Mike Smith, Sarah Greene & Craig Charles) and a camera crew attempt to discover the truth behind the most haunted house in Britain. This ground-breaking live television ...

  19. The Greatest Halloween Hoax Of All Time

    On Halloween night 1992, the BBC did something it's never repeated on TV since! It caused deaths, PTSD and a generation of people who shudder at the name "Mr...

  20. Ghostwatch

    Synopsis. For Halloween 1992, the BBC decides to broadcast an investigation into the supernatural, hosted by TV chat-show legend Michael Parkinson. Parky (assisted by Mike Smith, Sarah Greene & Craig Charles) and a camera crew attempt to discover the truth behind the most haunted house in Britain. This ground-breaking live television experiment ...

  21. Ghostwatch: The BBC Halloween Hoax That Terrified England

    Broadcast on Halloween night in 1992 on BBC1, Ghostwatch was given all the trappings of a genuine news show. The cast included familiar TV personalities, "live" on-the-street interviews with trick-or-treating youngsters, and a phone-in panel complete with a telephone number that the viewing public could "call" to discuss paranormal phenomena.

  22. GHOSTWATCH BBC HALLOWEEN 1992

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  23. Shudder March 2024 Lineup Includes Ghostwatch and Satanic Hispanics

    The Shudder March 2024 lineup includes the classic BBC broadcast Ghostwatch, ... In a "live" broadcast on Halloween night, a BBC team investigate a reported poltergeist in an ordinary London home.