"Round and round the garden... like a teddy bear" Shot in the style of a live BBC news special, and starring genuine BBC television presenters, Ghostwatch blew everyone away when it was first shown on British television on Halloween, 1992 so much so that its not been repeated since. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfy9UHAIwgQ The programme involved actual BBC reporters purportedly taking on the live investigation of a London house which was rumoured to be the source of poltergeist activity. Cutting between live feeds from the house and studio talking heads, they uncover the apparent existence of a ghost that the children in the house had nicknamed Pipes, after their mothers explanation for the odd noises they could hear. The apparition becomes more and more prominent as the special continues, manifesting in more and more frightening ways, until the reporters twig whats occurring. Just as a séance can pull a spirit closer to the real world, so the live reporting, being broadcast across the entire country to millions of people, had been acting as a vast séance over hundreds of miles, funnelling power to the entity which then escapes the house via the camera feed, to spread to the whole United Kingdom via the transmitter network: possessing the BBC studios, and legendary television personality Michael Parkinson into the bargain. The programme frightened viewers so much that the BBC received 30,000 calls in a single hour, the documentary/news format leading many people in the audience at home to believe that this wasnt a pre-recorded drama, but a genuine live special in which terrifying, unexplainable things were occurring. It was beautiful, and utterly weird, and a complete one-off. Theres no possibility of ever accomplishing something like this again modern audiences are so used to being swerved and conned by reality TV that they assume most things they see on television are a little bit rigged.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
