A national seance
October 20, 2017 3:58 PM   Subscribe

“I wanted the whole nation to be terrified,” he continues. “And yet they would be creating the very thing they’re terrified of. What if they wanted to see a ghost to the extent that they actually created it? What if they supernaturally held hands in the dark, millions of people all wanting the same thing to happen at the same time?” - 25 years later the cast and creators tell tell the story of Ghostwatch, the one of the BBC's most spooky and controversial shows. (Previously)
posted by Artw (46 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
Yeah fuck you Artw. You're not tricking me into clicking any link connected with Ghostwatch. You monster.
posted by howfar at 4:02 PM on October 20, 2017 [12 favorites]


Pipes!
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:15 PM on October 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


I just thought you might like a loo... behind the curtain... oh god... oh god... don't look *there*.
posted by Artw at 4:50 PM on October 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


The thing I find fascinating about this was that the creators picked up on the idea that if you say something obviously untrue and make it look 'official', you will fool a significant minority of people whose idea of whether or not something is true is all surface-level. I imagine a lot of those parents who were taken in by Ghostwatch have lost fortunes to scammers. It's a shame they didn't feel like they could make that point forcefully on the Biteback postmortem - that the BBC has no particular regard for the truth (if they did, the producers wouldn't be on Biteback, after all), and you can sneak an awful lot by via an effort to appear true.
posted by Merus at 4:53 PM on October 20, 2017 [8 favorites]


The other thing that jumps out is what seems like a peculiarly British hysteria around children being hypnotised by television. Not merely watching it a lot, but actually sending them into some kind of catatonic state. As far as I know, it was really only Britain that had this reaction to TV.

It reminds me of how multiple personality disorder, for a long time, mostly only occurred in the US. Cases outside the US, even in other developed countries with better healthcare systems, were astonishingly rare.
posted by Merus at 4:55 PM on October 20, 2017 [6 favorites]


How on earth do you write a 5,000 word article about this without a shoutout to Orson Welles?
posted by automatronic at 5:12 PM on October 20, 2017 [6 favorites]


please excuse me while i exhaustively research this topic
posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:39 PM on October 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


That was pretty fascinating; I had never heard it (USian).

After Ghostwatch, Baumgarten received hate mail saying that 200 years earlier, she would have been burned as a witch. She was six months pregnant when she made the show.

Everything old is new again!

It doesn’t go: this is real. It goes: is this real? You ask the same question about the programme that you ask about the paranormal. It just makes you doubt yourself.”

In 1992, the language of television may have been changing but TV was still the other person in the room, intrusive and charismatic.

Well, that's a little purple. I don't remember TV being thought of in that way, at that late date. Poltergeist was already 10 years old. My brother saw that film too young and had trouble sleeping for a year, no joke. And there is a long history of hoax media, satire, etc. that came before this. I don't think there was anything uniquely innocent about this time, just that the broadcast media were narrow channels of content and they bore the brunt of the confusion of the gullible and vulnerable. Today it's too diffuse to accuse any single source of deceit, a concept the article mentions. But it honestly wasn't as though TV enjoyed increased trust. TV "authorities" was a mockery by a long time earlier.

The bottom line is that no one would fall for it. It couldn’t withstand the exposure of social media.

I have to disagree; based on recent US events, a majority would not fall for it, but a stubborn and insistent minority would insist it was real, despite all evidence to the contrary, and accuse the majority of trying to cover up, or of using it to manipulate politics, and all the "exposure" in the world on social media would not budget them, only inflame them. Truth/falsity is no longer a matter of evidence, just opinion.
posted by Miko at 5:46 PM on October 20, 2017 [8 favorites]


Television Hoaxes
posted by Miko at 5:49 PM on October 20, 2017


How on earth do you write a 5,000 word article about this without a shoutout to Orson Welles?

The comparison was made at the time, so I imagine they thought the point had already been made. From the contemporary Express Peter Tory column that appears midway through:
Parkinson, when interviewed afterwards, compared the programme to the famous Orson Welles New York radio broadcast of 1938 which reported live an invasion by Martians. It caused terror for thousands.
posted by zamboni at 6:05 PM on October 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


is this now a creepypasta post
posted by Hermione Granger at 6:07 PM on October 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


Thanks to autocomplete, I just learned that there is a local plumbing business called Mr. Pipes.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:10 PM on October 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


Ghostwatch seems to be on YouTube in its entirety - I think its entirety, anyway. The "previously" contains some other links.
posted by Miko at 6:12 PM on October 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Not for nothin', this was also the timeframe of the child sex abuse hoax/hysteria.
posted by Miko at 6:43 PM on October 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


Be the creepypasta fpp you wish to see in the world, Hermione Granger
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:29 PM on October 20, 2017 [7 favorites]


This, it turns out, is also streamable on AMZ. We are enjoying it a great deal.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 7:31 PM on October 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


It is pretty great.
posted by Miko at 7:41 PM on October 20, 2017


Thanks to autocomplete, I just learned that there is a local plumbing business called Mr. Pipes.

Even ghosts have to pay the bills
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:12 PM on October 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


The other thing that jumps out is what seems like a peculiarly British hysteria around children being hypnotised by television. Not merely watching it a lot, but actually sending them into some kind of catatonic state.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lGUKQqVx75s
Godfrey Reggio
posted by lazycomputerkids at 8:19 PM on October 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


The Bite Back on immediate responses to the show is an excellent chaser.
posted by Miko at 8:24 PM on October 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Watching Ghostwatch on Halloween has been a thing of mine every year since I found out about the show, except a couple where technical difficulties intervened. Love it!
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:34 PM on October 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Ghostwatch might have freaked out a lot of people, but the War of the Worlds panic stories are mainly myth.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 9:54 PM on October 20, 2017 [8 favorites]


It is easy to forget how scary media can be to kids. My cohort was about 9 or 10 when Jaws came out; I remember there were kids afraid to get in a swimming pool for two years after they saw it. Sharks may come out of the drain? I don't even think they needed a scenario like that; water was just terrifying now.
posted by thelonius at 10:35 PM on October 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


I was seven when this was first broadcast and I watched it alone. I had nightmares for weeks about cats in the basement scratching my face off.
posted by knapah at 1:15 AM on October 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


Brexit Methaphor ahoy!

The thing I find fascinating about this was that the creators picked up on the idea that if you say something obviously untrue and make it look 'official', you will fool a significant minority of people whose idea of whether or not something is true is all surface-level.

The War of the Worlds panic legend is mainly an american thing, hardly anyone of the UK has heard about, unless you happen to be into that sort of stuff (I remember reading about it in a book about hoaxes as a kid)... the UK equivalent was the 'Spaghetti Trees' mentioned in the article

Anyway it's this time of year where I really appreciate currently living in a converted Victorian bakery, with creaks, wind howls and lots of odd shadow filled nooks and crannies...
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:31 AM on October 21, 2017


Brexit Metaphor ahoy!

I don't want to tar brexiteers with the same brush, but there's definitely a few of them that thought that you couldn't just paint a big lie on the side of a bus.
posted by Merus at 4:35 AM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


The War of the Worlds panic legend is mainly an american thing, hardly anyone of the UK has heard about, unless you happen to be into that sort of stuff

Eh? Everyone's heard of that.
posted by Artw at 6:18 AM on October 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


It was so good! People got post traumatic stress disorder!! Like, for years after the show!!! My MOTHER, a properly intelligent person, thought what happened on camera was real for a minute or two after the show there!!!! I think I twigged pretty early on that it was a drama, not a realtime documentary, but that's weird to me now because I can't actually watch a horror film these days without being terrified and paralysed.

What it shows most of all is how much we trusted the BBC then. I CANNOT see the effect being replicated now at all.
posted by glasseyes at 6:32 AM on October 21, 2017


Merus, in answer to your speculation about scammers, no, I don't think so. Ghostwatch had all the authority of a much-respected national institution behind it, an institution moreover that had never been known to let us down before.

Up until the days of Thatcher I can think of one instance when the BBC did not seem utterly trustworthy, and that was in Nigeria listening to World Service reports on the Biafran War, when some of the reporting ("Biafran troops 50 miles from Ibadan") was just obviously untrue mistaken. During Thatcher's Day, of course, the difference in reporting between the early morning World Service bulletins and the revised BBC News broadcast after govt. press secretaries had been at it, was one of the indications of what a mutable quality 'impartiality' is, that a naive person might easily have been able to pick up on at that time.
posted by glasseyes at 6:49 AM on October 21, 2017


I have seen clips from this thing somewhere on some long-ago show about the paranormal, and they were presented as something that actually happened. Never knew until now where they were from. So it was kind of like the gift that kept on giving.
posted by lagomorphius at 6:59 AM on October 21, 2017


Miko, now that I've read your comment, I'll say that the context for television was very different in the UK than in the US. The BBC was the voice of the government; it was meant to be improving and educational, even in its entertainments; it was a trusted source of information; it pioneered technical advances. There was no commercial television till 1955, after which the content of the Beeb lightened up a bit in competition. It was funded from the licence fee (still is.) John Reith (1889-1971) was the founder of the BBC. He was its first general manager when it was set up as the British Broadcasting Company in 1922; and he was its first director general when it became a public corporation in 1927. He created both the templates for public service broadcasting in Britain; and for the arms-length public corporations that were to follow, especially after World War Two. Reith fought off the politicians' attempts to influence the BBC, while offering the British people programmes to educate, inform and entertain.

So I would say the context for believing in the BBC in the 70's was very different to that of believing in American TV at any point.

Was that trust betrayed? I don't actually think so because like, why are you going to believe about ghosts in cupboards and pipes when you've got your wits about you and you've had a minute to think? But it was very plausible, it used the whole edifice of authority, trust and respect to tell a traditional ghost story at the traditional time of year using a traditional medium, broadcast television, in an innovative format, mock documentary. Speaking of which, it's certainly not the only convincing mock documentary around, I've known people who believed in Spinal Tap.

ETA! Please forgive the eta. I was sure it was broadcast in the 70's because I'm sure(?) I watched it with my mum when I was at college. Wikipedia says 1992, this seems MUCH TOO LATE for my memories just going by who was alive then, who wasn't born then, who I watched it with. Can anyone chime in on this? Am I having a brain fart?
posted by glasseyes at 7:19 AM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


That's a lot of my commentary posted while wrong eh.
posted by glasseyes at 7:20 AM on October 21, 2017


Yeah 1992 wasn't quite the dark ages they make out in terms of spoof documentaries and public awareness of postnmodern media tricks.
posted by Artw at 8:39 AM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Also worth noting that the tabloids reporting on the traumatic effects of Ghostwatch are themselves well known sources of bullshit.
posted by Artw at 8:42 AM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'll say that the context for television was very different in the UK than in the US.

That does make sense to me, so I suppose the reaction is really particular to the reputation of the BBC - and that makes it a little less applicable to arguments about TV in general and human gullibility. But context does matter and your comment is enlightening. Thanks. In the US we had already any number of hoax/satire/attempt at reality shows -- Geraldo's super-hyoed "Al Capone's Vault" broadcast was 1986 - so it did not take so much to cause massive collective national eye-rolling about shows like this on American TV.

This detail on Wikipedia is interesting:
A phone number was shown on the screen so that viewers could "call in" and discuss ghostly phenomena. The number was the standard BBC call-in number at the time, 081 811 8181 (also used on programmes such as Going Live!), and callers who got through were connected first to a message telling them that the show was fictional, before being given the chance to share their own ghost stories. However, the phone number was besieged by callers during the showing and many people who telephoned simply got an engaged tone. This commonly happened when phoning BBC "call in" shows and inadvertently added to the realism instead of reassuring viewers that it was fiction.

The Wikipedia also mentions the story was partially inspired by reports of the Enfield Poltergeist.
posted by Miko at 9:35 AM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Other thought: Poltergeists were such a huge thing when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s. Not only did they figure prominently in horror films and books, they occupied space in me and my friends' imaginations and we traded stories about them and wondered (in a sort of fun, self-spooking way) occasionally if we would be targeted by one. It's interesting how frightening things come in trends. Nobody cares about poltergeists now - it's all zombies, body horror, etc.
posted by Miko at 9:37 AM on October 21, 2017


It predates Ghostwatch by 5 years but the BBC fairly freaked me out with this Paul Daniels Halloween show finale.
posted by gnuhavenpier at 10:19 AM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


Kudos for the Stone Tape shoutout.
posted by doctornemo at 10:50 AM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


I just watched the first couple of minutes and I don't want to spoil it, but I found it not even slightly convincing. I don't get it.
posted by tel3path at 8:36 AM on October 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


The Biteback programme is an amusing watch, not least because this man was scarier than anything in the original programme.

I particularly liked the fully-grown adult at the beginning complaining because this programme about the vengeful ghost of a suicide smashing up a suburban house and then travelling through the ether to cause chaos in a BBC studio miles away...wasn't sufficiently trailed as to whether it was fact, or it was fiction. Well, who could know.
posted by reynir at 9:31 AM on October 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


Well, who could know.
We just don't have all the facts yet.
posted by thelonius at 10:44 AM on October 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


Yeah 1992 wasn't quite the dark ages they make out in terms of spoof documentaries and public awareness of postnmodern media tricks.

No, it wasn't and it's so strange to me that my memory tabs this as happening 20 years earlier. I know I watched it with my mother, that I enjoyed it, and that my kids weren't there. But I can't imagine where my kids could have been! I certainly could never have sent a 15 year old and a 13 year old to bed at 9pm because the telly was likely to be too frightening for them. Such a mystery. My defining it in the wrong time frame makes everything I said about trust and broadcasting dubious. But the article was excellent and touched on the development of all the media ambiguities that have brought us into the current stew.

As to my timelapse I can only guess time telescopes more and more as you travel through it.
posted by glasseyes at 12:09 PM on October 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


Yup, I get that too.
posted by Artw at 2:03 PM on October 22, 2017




Late to the party, but I watched this as it happened, and it freaked me the fuck out and was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life so far. On re-watch, no longer live, and given age, internet, and the knowledge that it was fiction, it loses a lot of power, but as a 13-year-old up late, at no point did I think this was anything other than live broadcast of actually-occurring events. It had the same trusted presenters, the same tropes and even the same phone-in number as Saturday morning kids' TV. At the time there was a similar show called 'Badgerwatch' that *was* live and real - as far as I was concerned, Ghostwatch was a spin-off of that.

When the daughter of the house started speaking in the fucked-up voice, I wanted to turn the TV off but was too scared to go near it because of those electrical glitches (no remote in our house!). I was now scared shitless and utterly convinced that malevolent ghosts were real, and that everything I thought I knew about science and the world was in question.

That night I couldn't sleep alone, and tossed and turned on a mattress in my brother's room. Next day I went to school a changed young man, ready to re-evaluate the nature of reality with my peers, at which point they made me aware of its fictional qualities. I have no idea what they knew that I did not, but it actually took me a while to believe them, so powerful was the effect.

I'm left with huge respect for how powerful and successful the show was, and some sadness that we no longer are able to create such things.
posted by cogat at 10:05 PM on October 23, 2017


It seems a similar thing was done in 1977 - Alternative 3
posted by gnuhavenpier at 11:39 PM on October 25, 2017


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