This episode of Cos-Story includes discussion of death, trauma and horror.
Cos Story Transcript - Ghostwatch
You turn on your television on the evening of the 31st of October 1992. It’s Halloween and you’re in the mood for something spooky. A new one-off show has been advertised, presented as a live broadcast investigating into a haunted house, in Greater London.
The reporters are clearly not taking it seriously, just some silly prank and they add to the fun with tricks of their own. A few jump scares in wardrobes, and a rubber mask later and everyone seems to be at ease with an evening of make-believe ghosts. There’s even an option for viewers to dial in and share their own supernatural happenings as the program cuts back to the studio.
Clips are shown of the residents of the street, talking about the stories of a poltergeist in the area. The switch board in the studio is lighting up with callers wanting to share their own experiences. While it’s clear that many are not taking it seriously, the clips start to take a more frightening turn, unexplained sounds and strange occurrences. Two sisters talk about Pipes, a malevolent force that seems to exist within the walls of the haunted house. Crashing and banging around in the night.
People at home seem to be getting into the spirit of evening. As more of the ghostly tale is revealed to them, the audiences stories become more twisted and more dangerous.
The investigations continue. Stories in the house are overshadowed by the sounds of the Pipes. A mirror crashes, injuring a crew member. Apparitions blink into existence and are gone.
The presenters try to brush it off. It’s hoax. That’s all. But…callers are ringing in. There’s something in their homes. Not something. Someone. A man. Making noises in the Pipes.
The police are called to the scene, the presenters hiding away as the car rockets up to the building. This can’t be real. It cuts back to the studio. And it’s there. The presence. The lights explode and the presenter is left alone, stumbling in the dark, with just the sound of the Pipes.
This programme sparked 30,000 complaints to the BBC in less than an hour. Many of the 11 million of the viewers believed that what they were watching was real, and many of those viewers were children; some of whom suffered PTSD from the experience, and the show ended up with its own entry in the British Medical Journal.
It has not been shown on British Television since.
This is the story of horror mockumentary Ghostwatch and its legacy.
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Cos-Story; Stories of cosplay and pop culture.
Episode 5: Ghostwatch
Written by Stephen Volk and directed by Lesley Manning, Ghostwatch was a one- off drama created as part of anthology series Screen One for the BBC.
It was presented to the viewers as being live television. It was not the first programme to do this or the last, but it’s use of well-known British TV icons and the audience dial in added reality to the idea.
Michael Parkinson presented from a studio at the BBC, while an intrepid crew made up of children’s presenter Sarah Greene, her husband and well known DJ Mike Smith, and Craig Charles, fresh off the back of the successful sci-fi show Red Dwarf. These were all household names in 90s Britain and the viewers were willing to put their trust in them.
Throughout the programme Parkinson would talk with one Doctor Lin Pascoe, a paranormal expert, to get her opinion on the claims, and overall haunting that appeared in the so-called live clips. Presented in his standard interviewing style the viewers were easily taken in without realising the whole thing was scripted and Pascoe was no expert but actor Gillian Bevan.
As a mockumentary drama the whole thing was reminiscent of other famous media hoaxes such as Orson Well’s radio production of War of the Worlds that had people fleeing in fear of the alien aggressors that were coming to Earth. Even though the opening credits clearly stated Stephen Volk as the writer, the façade held up well and the audience across the UK believed that the story was real.
However, the use of children’s TV presenters had parents thinking, that despite the post watershed start of 9pm – the UK time when programming with mature content is allowed to start – that the programme would be fun Halloween viewing for all the family. This could not have been further from the truth.
This “nationwide séance” as the programme called it terrified thousands and induced one pregnant woman into labour through fear.
While this may sound laughable to us now, with nearly three decades of found footage and mockumentary horror across multiple mediums under our belts, this type of programming was not something that would be been found on prime time TV in the 90s. This was not something people were used to.
The story that Ghostwatch was inspired by and to some extent followed, was that of a haunting that had caught the eye of the British press some 15 years prior to this, known as the Enfield Poltergeist. This was a real life incident that occurred in the Greater London area, in which two sisters reported sightings of a ghost moving objects in their home and banging around at night.
While some paranormal experts believed the girls, there were many who saw it as a hoax, staged by the sisters to scare others and hoodwink journalists.
Volk lifted heavily from this event in his creation of Ghostwatch, focusing the story around the sightings of the two sisters, played by real life sisters Michelle and Cherise Wesson. There was even a moment written in of one of the girls “faking” the haunting by banging on the pipes out of frustration at not being believed by the presenting team before the reveal of the ghost itself.
The threads that Volk, Manning and the cast and crew pulled together to create such a realistic programme are still impressive, leaving a legacy in British media and beyond, but their efforts also caused a fall out that no one had expected.
In the months that followed Ghostwatch multiple children were seen by doctors or admitted to hospital all showing symptoms of severe PTSD relating to the programme. The children showed behaviours connected with serious trauma all linking back to the ghosts and moments in the show and had to go through recovery to help them move on from this. Many had not even watched to the end of the programme once their parents realised the nature of what they were watching, but the damage was already done.
The unusual nature of these cases caused for Ghostwatch to be recorded in the British Medical Journal, and lead to more cases of media related PTSD being noticed, particularly in children.
With all the complaints and incidents of trauma that had been connected with Ghostwatch The Broadcasting Standards Agency was ordered by the High Court to investigate into the programme and find out why this had happened at all. It was ruled that the BBC had a responsibility to include more and better warnings about the contents of programmes that included scenes of such a distressing nature and that it should have been shown later in the evening, as despite being after the watershed it was too easy for families to think that it was a child friendly programme. The creators issued an apology shortly after this.
Despite this fallout however, Ghostwatch has left an enduring legacy on the horror genre as a whole, inspiring many “live” hauntings and supernatural programming including the equally controversial and terrifying show Séance by illusionist Derren Brown which aired in 2004.
Brown was quoted as saying “I am very glad that he [Stephen Volk] rates the show I wrote. I am a great fan of his programmes…in which, like Ghostwatch, he asks us to question the things we trust.”
Ghostwatch has now been released on several streaming platforms specialising in horror, such as Shudder, and is available on DVD in the BBC store and as a digital download. This was a programme that left it’s mark on a generation of British TV viewers and brought the horror mockumentary genre into a new light.
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You have been listening to Cos-Story, brought to you by The Cosplay Journal.
Scripted, read and produced by Holly Swinyard
Information for this episode came from the BBC, SyFy, The Independent and The British Medical Journal
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