Gather around the fire, children, because Auntie Holly's going to tell you a story...
I’ve got a truly obscure pick for you today - one that few people outside the UK will ever have heard of, but Brits of a certain age hear the name and look over their shoulders, suddenly wary of the shadows in the corner of the room...
Today’s pick is the heart-stoppingly frightening
Ghostwatch. For Brits of my generation,
Ghostwatch was the defining moment of terror from our childhoods, and I cannot watch it now without my heart pounding and that awful, icy hand of fear gripping my guts…
Ghostwatch - Wikipedia
So what is
Ghostwatch?
Ghostwatch was a fake documentary which was broadcast on BBC 1 at Hallowe’en 1992, and claimed to be broadcast live. The premise was simple: A BBC camera crew would spend the evening in a haunted house and broadcast whatever occurred. “Big deal”, you may think. There are a hundred programmes using the same set-up now, and they are usually silly, sensationalist and offer nothing but a few laughs for the cynical. But the BBC version was different in a few big ways.
First, this was a fake, scripted programme that was presented as a genuine live broadcast from a haunted house. Most people who watched it believed that what they were seeing was happening for real. The script and the performances were subtle, well-crafted and chillingly believable. There was no gory over-the-top horror here; this was more like the genuine terror of seeing a toddler reach for a boiling hot kettle.
Secondly, most programmes of this type are set in ancient mansions, castles, or centuries-old inns with colourful histories of murder and highwaymen.
Ghostwatch was set in a modern, ordinary house in an everyday suburb. Immediately, the audience started to get unsettled. No Hammer horror and cosy scares here - the programme had brought horror to our own homes, where we all secretly know it lives, and the effect was very uncomfortable. The house belonged to a single mother and her two teenage daughters - ordinary people who lived in the same world as us.
Thirdly, the presenters were among the most trusted and “serious” faces on the BBC. Michael Parkinson was the nation’s gentle, quietly humorous wise old uncle, a man who had been a formidable journalist in his day and had progressed, via current affairs programming, to upmarket middle-class chat shows without a trace of elitism. The two younger presenters were Sarah Greene and Mike Smith, a married couple who were the clean, respectable face of children’s and teenagers’ programming throughout my childhood. Serious-minded and never talking down to their young viewers, they led me by the hand through such issues as bullying, puberty, peer pressure, drugs and parental divorce, like the twenty-something children of Mr Rogers or the best church youth group leaders in the world. Remember, too, that this was a time before fake reality TV and a hundred “pranked” shows, when people were much more trusting towards what they saw on TV. Parkinson, Smithy and Greene - you trusted these people more than you trusted your doctor.
The final stroke of genius was the phone number in the corner of the screen which they urged you to call if you saw something odd on-screen or if anything correspondingly odd was happening in your own home. The phone number - 081 811 8181 - was the standard number used for any BBC show that required viewers’ participation, and added to the belief that what you were seeing was real. 081 811 8181 - I can still sing the jingle in my head now.
Then the programme began, with much laughter and suppressed nervousness. Sarah Greene bobbed around the nice suburban house, playing with the girls and interviewing the family in her inimitable "tell Mummy and I’ll make it better" manner. They told her stories of knocking on the walls, of violence and bloody scratches appearing on the young girls’ bodies. They told them with chilling verisimilitude, and the effect was creepier than any horror film could manage. Back in the studio, Michael Parkinson held calm chats with paranormal investigators and listened to their anecdotes with the air of an incredibly polite neighbour listening to your holiday stories. And then a knocking was heard on the walls…
Within an hour the girls were screaming in what all the viewers believed was genuine terror. Ornaments were smashing or being knocked off shelves. Bloody scratches appeared on faces. Sarah Greene went into a room to investigate a noise, the light bulb blew, the door slammed shut behind her and could not be opened. And everyone watching at home (including my very young self) believed that what they were seeing was real. Viewers’ calls came in (faked, as we now know) reporting similar things happening in their own homes, cats going mad and hissing at shadows, etc, etc, leading you (me) to fear that this thing could somehow leak out and infect your home. Watching this at 15, I was utterly paralysed with fear. I was beyond terror, and I slept with the light on for weeks afterwards. Throughout the next couple of years, a creak on the stairs at night would turn me into a whimpering child again.
The public’s response was enormous, primarily outrage. People just did not expect tricks of this kind from the TV in those days, which was largely responsible for the incredible shock and fear which it caused. Programmes had to be broadcast quickly in which BBC executives apologised indirect by explaining the artistic effect they had been aiming for. The newspapers spoke of nothing else, and one poor, intellectually disabled young man actually committed suicide, unable to quite believe that it had been fake.
At school on Monday morning, my friends were all saying that they had “known it was fake all along” and “hadn’t been scared at all.” I said so too, which was the biggest lie I had ever told! At the time, I thought I was the only one of my friends who had been fooled. Now, older and wiser, I look back and realise that most, and probably all, of them had been lying too. It is tempting to say that this was my generation’s equivalent of the notorious
War of the Worlds radio broadcast, except that nowadays we are told that stories of people’s reactions to
The War of the Worlds were exaggerated, created by journalists after the event, and that most people at the time knew they were listening to a play. How much truth there is in this, I couldn’t possibly begin to say. What is certain is that
Ghostwatch fooled millions, and gave them the type of fright known only to the victims of the most horrendous crimes. Which is really what I look for in a good film, you know?
I wish I could give you a link to
Ghostwatch. You deserve to see it; every true horror fan should see it, and few ever will. It appears on Youtube periodically, so keep looking, and don’t miss your chance when it appears.
What I can give you a link to is one of the “BBC executives hastily explaining to an angry nation what they were trying to do” programmes, which will at least let you feel the ripples of the terror and sense how real they were.
Much love to one and all!