Ghost in the machine - the reckoning

It was on Saturday 3rd November at 9:30 this year when I once again watched Ghostwatch.
This time I wasn’t watching it on BBC1, but on DVD.
This time I wasn’t watching it having been allowed to stay up later than usual on Halloween by my parents in my family home, but now in my own crib with friends at a Halloween party I was hosting.

***NOTE: The Following Contains absolutely loads of spoilers***

Certain aspects of the ghost investigation show have remained in my memory during all this time. Craig Charles entertaining the local neighbours all hoping to get on TV as part of the outside broadcast. Phone-calls from the public, reputing to be seeing ghostly images from the live feeds filming inside the haunted suburban semi-detached house. Phone-calls from the public describing their own clocks stopping, their glass tables shattering. The eldest daughter caught hoaxing poltergeist activity by the cameras. The live feed suddenly not being “live” at all but instead old footage looping, masking the chaos occurring behind it.

I never did see the end of the show. My mum deciding at the point of the BBC once again transmitting live scenes from the house, with all the carnage it was revealing, was the time I should be sent to bed. Terrified.

The next morning I asked my mum how it ended: “Michael Parkinson standing in the studio and all the TV cameras floating around him. The show was just a scary joke.”

The question was, would it all hold up since we know 12 years later it was simply what we now understand to be a Mock-umentary? Would we be able to see how a nation in 1992 was fooled and scared enough to make an unprecedented number calls of complaint during the broadcast?

(The telephone number shown on screen was intended to be a recorded message explaining the show was pre-recorded and not real, however the lines quickly jammed)

The BBC, after all, banned all repeats of the show for 10 years such was the reaction. So there must have been something in it.

Essentially, would we, sitting huddled round on the L shaped couch and full of New Zealand Beer and Pineapple Lumps, find something in it to be affected by?

The DVD version still maintains the ratio of a TV screen from 1992. It starts immediately with little fanfare and only a token graphic relating to the drama series it is part of. I can see easily how this token would be ignored at the time, subsumed into the grander beginning relating to it being a special live show on Halloween night.

The humorous comments from my guests start almost immediately. Not a great sign for it holding up under scrutiny. The sets look dated (although nostalgia kicks in and we find ourselves softening to it), the current furore and revelations surrounding the BBC and our more sophisticated understanding of this sort of TV (Most Haunted, Ghost Adventures) all lend themselves as easy targets early on.

The plot is thus:
The BBC has decided on 31st October 1992 to broadcast a live investigation into an apparent haunting taking place in a family home. The investigation is supplemented with a strong interactive element where viewers can phone in and discuss the events being shown as well as some expert analysis given by a parapsychologist in a BBC studio and a sceptic, watching from a studio in the US. Sarah Greene presents and interacts on behalf of the audience and studio in the home with the family, Craig Charles is outside on the street of the house, talking to other residents, Mike Smith is taking viewer calls at the banks of telephonists and, anchoring the whole thing, is Michael Parkinson.

This spirit has been, according to the current incumbent family, manifesting itself by banging on the house pipes providing it with the name, Mr. Pipes. There has also been reports of the eldest of the two daughters being particularly susceptible to the happenings, chiefly in sustaining multiple scratch marks on her face and talking in a voice not her own.

As the show goes on, evidence of strange happenings mount up and are summarily dismissed. Not least is this the case when cameras “catch” the eldest daughter hitting the pipes and the audience is led to believe this is the true culprit of the activity.

A narrative slowly emerges from neighbours and callers to the show of the area on which the house is built which has been subject to paranormal and sinister activity for many years, culminating in a possible child abuser killing himself in the 1960s in the basement of the house having been himself claiming possession by an earlier spirit of a Victorian lady and “baby farmer”, leading him to dress as a Victorian lady.

Finally the spirit, seemingly using the conduit of the TV transmissions and energy of the viewers, explodes in an act of malevolence with immediate consequences for Greene and her crew in the house. In the final minutes – me seeing them for the first time – the spirit essentially envelopes the house and enters the studio, leaving Parkinson alone, reading a nursery rhyme off the autocue in a manner to suggest he has been possessed.

Yep, Mike Smith, this is f**king mental.

Elements included to add to the realism are spot on:

• It is shot with shaky-cam and cuts to fixed remote-cams and also a sweeping tilt boom-cam (showing all the cables and background) – very much like Noel Edmonds’ House Party at the time.
• The presenters would be the sort of presenters expected to be doing this kind of harmless TV experiment, Sarah Greene is a safe pair of hands on an outside broadcast.
• For long periods, it is all rather boring and nothing much takes place.
• It is kept very much to the science and technology being used with no room for mediums or psychics channelling and over excited explanations – the pseudo-educational tone much in keeping with a BBC sober pop-experiment.
• “Viewers” calling in on sightings of the ghost on screen and subsequent discussion as to the chances of optical illusions being responsible, gives the idea of comfort to the actual viewers of the drama of there being others out there validating what they are seeing
• There is stuttered confusion and apologies when camera transmissions and VTs predictably fail at one stage.
• Craig Charles (the most natural actor of the presenters, cementing the notion Craig Charles is a constant fictional character of which Craig Charles plays using a very deep method acting technique) quips: “typical BBC” when he loses sound to the studio.
• It emerges much of the back story involves child molestation – the BBC would never be complicit with something of this subject voluntarily.

Elements to add to the horror are cleverly woven:

• The false positives providing “jumps” such as Craig Charles leaping from a cupboard and the cat at the French doors.
• Possessed children, toy bunnies being drowned and frightened adults are always disconcerting…
• ...As is animals acting up – Mr Pipes makes the local cats go mad when he is around (mainly because the man's pet cats were found eating his corpse after his suicide).
• The “ghost” is visible for fractions of a second throughout the show in corners, in reflections and in the crowds almost subliminally (with no TiVO box around, no way to double check).
• The ghost descriptions being noted as either male or female (playing to the idea of the baby farmer inhabiting the spirit of the cross-dressing child abuser).
• The final true positive of the twist of the looping footage masquerading as genuine live feed only to be taken down to see the middle of the horror of what is going on.

However, there are problems / tell-tale signs this is being played for gallows laughs, even if watched with a mind from 1992:

• The show literally throws every cliché at the screen regards supposed recorded poltergeist activity throughout.
• The acting, in places, is a little hammy (particularly with the daughters) and the script is clunky at times and, of course, contains no bad language.
• The interrogation of the daughter by Parkinson when she was found hammering at the plumbing labours the point far too much (in fact Parkinson comes over as a bit of a dick here – which I am surprised at him happily acting as, since this misconception of him could stick).
• The idea the BBC would continue filming when there was clearly distressing scenes going on.
• The way over top finale to the programme (although the build up still packs a gut punch).
• That the show would still end with credits rolling (there is an argument they would do this to calm the viewer?).
• It was shown on Halloween, after all.

There are parts of the show which today have become unintentionally funny:

• Michael Parkinson, the dick, seems at once fully sceptical and then again a firm interested believer during the numerous “analysis” discussion scenes as he sides which each expert and also shows a hard line in parenting skills at one point telling a “caller” they should send their child to bed if they are upset (perhaps in a direct instruction to those watching).
• Mike Smith appearing with more and more sheets of paper as the calls increase.
• Michael – Dicky of Dick Green – Parkinson, when it all kicks off, wandering about in and out of half-shot about the studio, talking to himself like a confused OAP left alone in PC World.
• That Mr. Pipes resides in the home’s glory hole (given the more coarse, vernacular meaning of the term. Hint: NEVER Google image search this term at work) just didn't stop being funny on each time it was referred to at my party, indeed the mother’s description of events and noises she experienced when at said glory hole had all sorts of juvenile sniggering in the room as the humorous highlight of the viewing.

Note the spooky Halloween apples

Some of the quotes of the evening from my gathered party of guests as the show played on:

• “Look! Those apples are levitating!”
• “The smallest daughter is actually played by a midget. He ended up playing the part of Gimli in Lord of the Rings”
• “Glory-hole! Surely they knew what that was describing even in 1992!”
• “Is that BBC van Savile’s sex-dungeon on wheels?”

Viewing it as a ghost story only, it is not too chilling. Typical BBC fanciful faire and a little ridiculous. But adding in the element suggesting it is live, uncontrolled and genuine so convincingly for the audience raises it a level above. The key to proving this is surely if the BBC was to have periodically scrolled “This is a drama” across the screen (as was suggested at the media enquiry afterwards) then, to the effect, scares and meaning, it would have acted as a pin to a balloon.

Ghostwatch remains a hugely clever piece of fright night television but I suspect 2012 TV audiences are too wearisome against this type of hoax drama. Crucially, it is no longer the case of sitting watching alone or with family if you are young enough to be scared by it – the Internet allows a mass audience to discuss and come to wider conclusions as it is happening. The rouse would be up. True, if it was hosted by Derren Brown (no doubt with a less bombastic ending) some may fall for it once again but, by the TV review the next day, it would be hailed as a great piece of TV experimentation using the viewing audience as the guinea pigs (Brown is reported to have been influenced by Ghostwatch for his Séance).

All in all – if this was scheduled today, there would be every chance of the Twitterati calling shenanigans on it half-way through. And #parkyisadick being trending.

Interestingly, the mythology of Ghostwatch remains alive and well. The writer, in 2002, wrote an award winning horror short story sequel to the show (the BBC on the 10th anniversary commissions a return to the studio, which had been sealed off after the original Ghostwatch). Ghostwatch has its own YouTube channel. Each Halloween since 2010 people are encouraged to watch their copies at 9:32, when the show originally aired, and live tweet the event.

Writer, Volk, discusses the phenomena he has found of film students of a certain age writing degree theses about the programme. He sites some interesting aspects which are ripe for study:

• The Freudian aspect of the script noting of the name Mr. Pipes (Pipes meaning "blow job" in French) and his trademark “banging” encounters with all female single parent family in the house – he omits to elaborate on his naming of Pipe's lair.
• The act of the mother leaving her daughters in the home as she answered calls in the BBC van outside – reminiscent of the acts of mother’s when the site was a Victorian baby farm as a sign of the history of the site repeating in front of the viewer’s eyes?

So to answer my question, so far back up at the beginning of this blogette: does the original still have an effect?

Well, certainly the jokes and commentary from the room died to nothing in the final 10 minutes of the show as we sat watching and there was a consensus after that it remained disturbing – even simply on a thematic level.

Oh, and one of my friends – this year dressed as child friendly Fred from Scooby-Doo –was personally and deeply affected by what he saw, stating he would come to next year’s party dressed as: “a glory-hole”. May heaven have mercy on our souls next October.