Ghostwatch (Lesley Manning, 1992)

The devilish prank that terrified a nation

Halloween night, 1992. It had been a cold and dreary day across much of the UK. Clouds had blotted out the sun, with some corners of the country getting waves of mist and drizzle to boot. It was an all-round stereotypically grey and miserable British autumn day.

By the time their kids were done bobbing for apples, out of their costumes, and tucked into bed, folks from Cardiff to Canterbury gratefully flopped on to their sofas, put up their feet, and switched on the telly for a bit of evening entertainment.

With only four channels to choose from at the time, 11 million people (almost 20 percent of the UK population) settled on BBC 1, which was broadcasting a spooky special fronted by legendary TV presenter, Michael Parkinson.

The concept was this: over the course of a live 90-minute broadcast, viewers would be party to an interrogation of the supernatural through a combination of in-studio discussions with expert guests as well as a camera crew on location at an allegedly haunted house.

Skeptics no doubt rolled their eyes as the family living in the house claimed they’d endured prolonged harassment by a malevolent spirit known as Pipes. But as the show wore on, many would change their minds.

In fact, by the time the show ended, Ghostwatch was responsible for prompting mass hysteria the likes of which rivaled Orson Welles’ notorious War of The Worlds radio broadcast, and as a result was banned from being rebroadcast, which only further ensured its infamy.

But of course, none of it was real.

Ghostwatch was a scripted work of fiction, written by Stephen Volk. And although more media-aware viewers would have noticed his credit at the show’s opening, which also denoted it as an episode of anthology series Screen One, many didn’t.

Indeed, to the casual viewer, everything about the broadcast appeared wholly legitimate.

It looked for all the world like a typical BBC live special (in addition to good old Parky, several other recognizable personalities played themselves, and the show ran with the BBC’s usual phone number at the bottom of the screen so that viewers could phone in) but in reality it had all been filmed weeks earlier.

Within this construct of a live television show, Ghostwatch does a remarkably good job of inventively feeding the story of the haunted house at its center, not least answering the central question of who Pipes is and what he wants.

But it was the climax of the show that caused such hysteria. As all hell breaks loose at the house, so too does it in the studio. It is legitimately scary within context. And even more so for those poor unsuspecting audiences who didn’t at all comprehend that what they were watching wasn’t actually real. They’d already been told they were participating in “the world’s biggest séance” so were understandably shook if not outright terrified.

Banned from being rebroadcast on the BBC ever since, Ghostwatch was impossible to watch for many years. Fortunately, today, it is much more accessible.

And it holds up!

It’s definitely an artifact of a specific culture and time, but it’s because of this degree of authenticity that it works (and worked) so well — and for fellow Brits who grew up at least with some awareness of the famous faces involved, it is a particularly fun horror curio.