The Best of British Cinema: ‘Ghostwatch’ (1992)
The BBC’s brilliant TV experiment continues sending chills down spines
Picture the scene: it is Halloween night, 1992. Rather than seeking thrills with others out in the cold or chasing scares inside with a horror movie marathon, you’re treating it as any other day and watching TV. The BBC’s programming begins, for the most part, like any other day, only today they’re doing a little segment on paranormal investigation with trusted presented Michael Parkinson, mostly as a joke. They’ll be checking in on a supposedly haunted house between each program that night, waiting for something (or, more likely, nothing to happen). You’re as skeptical as the presenters on-screen, cozy in your home… until it seems that this investigation is not only the spooky story of a haunted house shown live, but that it could just be real. Even worse, the ghost(s) seem to be finding ways to meddle with anyone viewing the show, and you could be next.
As one may expect, people were terrified. In fact, the panic caused by Ghostwatch’s telling of the story of the ‘most haunted house in Britain’, occupied at this time by mother Pamela (Brid Brennan) and her two daughters Suzanne and Kim (Michelle and Cherise Wesson, respectively), did the exact opposite of the supposedly warm intentions of its hosts — ‘we don’t want to…
