Remember Ghostwatch? It was a BBC1 drama that went out on Halloween, 1992, and purported to be a live show, hosted by Michael Parkison, Sarah Greene, Mike Smith and Craig Charles, investigating 'Britain's most haunted house'.
It was originally intended to scare the nation crapless by not revealing it was a drama until the end, but the Beeb didn't have quite enough guts for that and ended up adding warnings in the Radio Times, the standard drama idents, etc, so that it wouldn't get shot down by Parliament, the Daily Mail, etc. Of course, there'd be no chance of it ever even thinking of making Ghostwatch now.
Ghostwatch was pretty terrifying to be honest, despite some duff acting and a slightly unconvincing ending, although Michael Parkinson proved to be surprisingly good as an actor (he talks about the experience in his biog). It was so terrifying, in fact, that
- numerous people complained to the BBC [video] thinking it was real
- 20,000 viewers rang the show's fake phoneline while it was on
- one paranoid schizophrenic viewer committed suicide and
- at least two children ended up with PTSD, the first reported cases of a television programme giving anyone PTSD.
- The Beeb ending up banning repeats of the show for a whole decade.
I heartily recommend it.
I won't spoil it for you, particularly since you can buy it on DVD (or watch in on YouTube) to see for yourself, but one of the highlights of the show was the ghost, 'Pipes'. He was more terrifying than your normal ghost because you never really saw him full on - you only spot him in reflections for fractions of a second and you never know when he's going to appear - so much so, there are at least three appearances I didn't spot despite repeated viewings.
Thankfully, there are helpful people in the world. You can see a guide to Pipes' eight appearances here, and in the embedded YouTube vid below.
Or is there a ninth?
If you end up loving Ghostwatch, BTW, check out 'Ghostwatch: Behind The Curtains' - both the blog and the YouTube channel. They're busy putting a documentary together with the support of Ghostwatch's writer Stephen Volk, who was also responsible for Afterlife. See if you can help.
Related entries
- April 4, 2010: The alternate endings of Paranormal Activity
The alternate endings of Paranormal Activity
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