I had first heard about GHOSTWATCH in the pages of Bizarre Magazine. It was little more than a blurb and a screen cap of two little girls in their beds. It sounded interesting but as someone living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I had absolutely no way of seeing it. Fast forward to a few weeks ago. Bored, I was surfing around on YouTube. I clicked on a short video purporting to show actual ghosts - it didn't, by the way - and, lo and behold, in the Related Videos section, there was GHOSTWATCH. Not wanting to watch the whole damned thing in ten minute chunks, I downloaded all ten pieces and compiled them into a single video. Now, I knew next to nothing about GHOSTWATCH except that it had apparently caused quite a stir back in 1992. Watching it, I can understand why.
The plot of GHOSTWATCH is rather simple. A television crew is investigating poltergeist activity in Northolt, Greater London. The feed is being monitored back at the BBC studio by the program's host and a paranormal investigator. The occupants of the house - a single mother and her two daughters - relay the series of event that have plagued them since they first moved in. Things have been broken around the house, loud banging can be heard through the walls, physical apparitions have been seen and, most disturbingly, something has been physically assaulting the girls. Some of these events are backed up by the paranormal investigator, a woman who has been leading an independent investigation of the case for quite some time. She even has the tape to prove it. As the television broadcast goes on, the activity begins to ramp up. A phone-in line at the studio begins to receive calls from people who are seeing strange things in the background. Several people are experiencing similar ghostly behavior in their own homes. As the behavior in the home increases, the television crew begins to uncover more information about the entity that has been terrorizing the family, an old man with a bloodied face that one of the little girls likes to call "Mr. Pipes".
Some of the effect of GHOSTWATCH is lessened for me simply because I have no idea who the television personalities are. It was only after watching the program and popping online to track down a more official release that I learned the whole story. All of the television personalities seen on screen were, more or less, playing themselves. Sarah Greene, Craig Charles, Mike Smith and Michael Parkinson were all popular figures on BBC television at the time - might still be but I don't know - which must have lent the show a remarkable air of credibility. It is also presented in the format of an actual television broadcast with no soundtrack or commercial breaks to ruin the illusion. It looks and feels exactly like a studio program because it was made by an actual studio broadcasting team and that goes such a long way here.
I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. I found the performances by the actors and non-actors alike were all quite good and the simple, sparce story line was rather engaging. Much of my enjoyment was in watching the execution of the program and how skillfully writer Stephen Volk moves the whole thing along. This is the kind of story best suited for television, actually. There's a wonderful moment when one of the daughters is found banging against the walls to create the illusion of ghostly activity. Had this been released as a feature film, people would have seen this event as a false release - you know what I mean, the "ahh, it's all over" moment before the shit starts hitting the fan again - but here, in the form of a television broadcast, it feels genuine. You get the sense that this could have all been an elaborate hoax and find yourself a bit let down by the revelation. The medium makes this totally common scene feel strangely different and the way it is handled by Volk and his performers is remarkable. Had this been the end of the show, I would have walked away satisfied. It's how these kinds of show usually end, after all.
But that isn't the case. The activity starts again, this time much worse. By the end of the show, the ghostly activity has spread from the single house to the television studio and beyond. The whole thing disintegrates into madness, never missing a step along the way. GHOSTWATCH ends with a scene that I can say is now one of my favorite scenes in a horror film.
GHOSTWATCH had one hell of an audience but it was apparently too realistic for it's own good. The BBC found themselves flooded with calls and, once it was all said and done, many angry complaints. The people who had tuned in late or had missed the first minute or so would not have known the show was a put-on. Once tuned in, there was simply no way of knowing that the proceedings were faked. We had something like this here in the States back in 1938 when Orson Welles and company performed THE WAR OF THE WORLDS as a Halloween installment on the Mercury Theatre on the Air program. Some people freaked out, completely convinced that we were being invaded by Martians. I personally know over a dozen people who were convinced that THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT was true when it was first released. I would like to think that people nowadays are smart enough to see through the facade of so-called "reality television" but I know that that isn't true.
The Syfy series GHOST HUNTERS has been doing live investigations on Halloween night for the past couple of years and I've sat through large chunks of those shows. The show is set up like GHOSTWATCH, with a phone-in number where people can call in and report on any ghostly behavior they may spot. Dozens of people will call in to say that they have seen a ghostly figure right behind someone as they were walking through a room. Funny, I didn't see anything. Are these people serious or just having a laugh? Sadly, I think it's the former. Take someone who actually believes in this kind of nonsense and feed their idiotic notions and watch their delusions grow. It's the same thing that happened with GHOSTWATCH.
The people that had experiences when watching GHOSTWATCH or were in some small way traumatized by it were probably people with a strong belief in the supernatural. In my experience, people who believe in these kinds of things - hauntings, psychics, God, etc - are far less likely to be critical of supernatural claims and are less able to separate fact from fiction than those of us who think it's all bullshit until proven otherwise. Is there anybody out there who honestly believes the crap they see on GHOST HUNTERS? Raise your hands, please. If your arm is in the air, I have only one question for you:
Do you believe everything you see on television?
If you do, then stay far, far away from GHOSTWATCH. You may never recover.
Highly recommended.
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