10 Crazy Tricks Directors Tried To Pull On Audiences

A drama shot in the style of a live news special, Ghostwatch blew everyone away when it was first shown on British television on Halloween, 1992... so much so that it's not been repeated since.

Written by Lesley Manning and directed by Stephen Volk, the programme saw real life BBC reporters supposedly investigate a poltergeist in a house in London. Cutting between 'live' feeds and studio talking heads, the programme pieced together the history of a ghost nicknamed 'Pipes' (after a mother's explanation for all the odd noises heard at night).

Gradually, the spectre manifested in more and more frightening ways, until the reporters finally figured out what was happening: like some massive, networked séance, the live television report, broadcast to millions across the UK, was boosting the poltergeist’s power until it was capable of escaping the house by means of the camera feed… possessing the BBC studios and broadcasting itself to the entire country.

It sounds like the plot of a Supernatural episode, but the tried and trusted live documentary/news format of the show, combined with the use of non-actors (like legendary broadcaster Michael Parkinson, who gamely played it completely straight) completely freaked out a large proportion of the audience at home. Incredibly, the BBC received 30,000 calls in a single hour, convinced that terrifying, unexplainable things were occurring.

There's no way the trick could ever be repeated these days - modern audiences, made cynical by decades of reality TV, are convinced that everything they see on TV is rigged.

Still… for one evening, a quarter of a century ago, television made people believe in the vengeful afterlife...