Ghost hunting. Who does this?
In days of yore, I used to watch a lot of paranormal programming. I don’t know why. To me, making a programme about something where there is no definitive evidence holds the same credibility as including the word ‘delicious’ in a McDonalds commercial.
When I was a kid, there was a show called ‘Shadows’. It was a kids show which featured ghost stories, and it was easily one of the best things on tv at the time. And when you consider most of the other shows contained string operated dolls, stuffed toys and Fred Dinage, that’s saying something.
In those days childrens’ television fostered curiousity, imagination and encouraged a inquiring mind. Those where the days when people thought it might be a good idea to give children these qualities. These days children’s television has been all but abandoned; many political figures made noises — and they were noises- that the programmes may have been unsuitable and could lead children into undisirable mindsets. Replacing it with Midsommer Murders and repeats of John Thaw looking quizically at a crossword.
But Shadows was golden; a totally original concept for children’s television. And it got me interested in the whole panopoly of the paranormal. Except, for some reason, Bigfoot. I could never get interested in that. The idea of a time travelling teleporting beastie covered in hair and wandering around woodland with, it seemed, the sole ambition of spooking out campers, did’t appeal. But most of the rest of it, I was in.
The British show which really caught the public was Most Haunted. Hosted by Yvette Fielding, the show would visit landmark buildings and historic locations with the intention of running about screaming in the dark. Actually, that’s a bit unfair. They didn’t run about that much. Yvette seemed to have a real ‘ordinary person’ vibe about her, and she and her husband Karl, made quite a lot of money from this venture. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. They would take with them a medium or sensitive, who would ‘sense’ the spirits and pass on messages, possibly but not always of more value than someone knocking paint pot. One person they did take with them early on, though not at the beginning was the late Derek Accorah. If there’s one name you don’t associate with the afterlife and sage spiritual wisdom, it’s Derek. The only other Derek I can think of is the magnificent Derek Griffiths; between these two they have captured the entire Derek universe, encapsulating both poles of Derekness and all that lays in between.
Accorah had a spiritual guide called ‘Sam’, who was apparently some sort of slave from the Roman times, who could find nothing better to do with his ethereal state than become a sort of liason for a scouse man with a frankly ridiculous bouffant. At appropriate moments, and there were quite a few of them, Derek would close his eyes and talk to Sam, and Sam would say something like ‘Dark in here, innit?’ or ‘Can you smell onions?’ or some such before Derek would become possessed by a spirit. This spirit would almost always sound like a Cornish pirate, and pass on as much information as a donkey reading a map.
Yvette and the team would then split up to different areas of what ever building they were in, and all would have experiences. These mostly consisted of yelling in empty rooms, claiming someone whispered in their ears or, in some instances, receiving a celestial boot in the arse.
The format wasn’t new. Ghost shows had been on U.S. television for years, and some had made the perilous sojourn to UK screens with a lesser degree of success. There are some gems, such as Ghost Hunters, Scariest Places On Earth (not strictly a Ghost hunting show but…), Ghost Adventures, a Haunting, Paranormal Witness, My Ghost Story and of couse, Celebrity Ghost Stories, where someone who was once in the background on Casualty tells the harrowing tale of when they ordered a coffee from a runner but the coffee never came.
My point is this; Ghost Hunting is cheap to make. There’s very few wrinkles you can add to it. You have an old property, some cameras which have a built in shake effect, audio which may or may not be so low it’ll only bother bees and a host who can look supremely in control right up until the moment the cameras go on. We’ve had haunted houses, dolls, boxes, paintings, relics, helmets, cars, graveyards, churches and in one episode a slice of pudding. We’ve had everything from maniacal 12th century merchants, through Monarchs, Generals, Presidents and Sages to dead before their time celebrities and none of them have said anything that constitutes something worth listening to; although it could be argued a good number of them had the same failing when alive.
But it’s not the hunting which is the thing. It’s the money to be made from stumbling around in the dark trying to avoid treading on Archimedes toe. A plethora of ‘merch’ has appeared. Cups, coasters, shirts, badges, caps and patches are available. Conventions are held when people can get together and discuss not the issue of survival after expiration, but their favourite episode. A whole industry has grown up around this subject, in the same way it has around Bigfoot, UFOs and Secret Underground Bases. People will pay £30 a seat to listen to someone stand up on a stage and talk palpable nonsense, and be happy to do so. Because no one knows for sure the answers, the whole industry is based on supposition.
Don’t get me wrong; when you lose someone you love it’s hard. You want that next conversation, you crave another minute in their company and you would give all you had to see that smile, just once more. But the closest you have is silence and a set of teeth in a glass. There is no proof, and that’s where these programs come in; because they can show you what you want, provide you with some comfort that if Henry VIII is stuck in a netherworld and able to communicate, then maybe Uncle Max or Grandma Elsie is too.
But that doesn’t constitute proof; nor should it. We live short lives. The idea that our lives are somehow a precursor to a better existance is a pleasant one, no matter how illusory or opaque the truth is. But maybe it is better we not know these things? My point is the world is a bad place with these notions; the concept of Heaven and Hell just about keep things in check. For bad things there are good things; it’s a fine balance and hard to accept, but that’s the world we have. And to then have a revelation that somehow, after all this, no matter how we behave to ourselves and the world we live in, that the result will be same for all of us, would remove barriers. It would remove the point in kindness, compassion, decency. Most people hold themselves in check because of these concepts. Without the illusion of a karmic reaction bouncing back on them, those precious traits would be meaningless, as would their opposing quirks. People could act how they wished knowing there was no consequence. And in too many people this would be a licence to be a massive dick.
Compassion, kindness and being a good person takes effort. There’s little or no reward; just the knowledge that perhaps you have made someone or something happier, safer, better. And you don’t do it for reward. You do it because it is kind. If none of it mattered, would you still?
So, perhaps the Ghost Hunter programmes are more than just drivel piped in to our screens on a seemingly endless loop. Perhaps Baggins, Fielding, Braziel, English and Mr D. are doing something more important than staying up all night listening to floorboards. Maybe they are giving us hope there isn’t just eternal blackness at the end of it all, providing an altruistic solace that we will see those close who have passed once again.
And the money for doing that is pretty damn good.
