Guest Author - Andy Boxall
The BBC or British Broadcasting Corporation, is known and respected throughout the world. They have produced some of the finest TV comedy, commissioned fantastic documentaries including David Attenborough’s acclaimed nature-based series and of course, their news service can be heard or seen almost wherever you may be. But on October 31st 1992, they broadcast a program that would never be repeated and only recently enjoyed a hard-to-find DVD release. A program that whilst not strictly horror, had a nation in uproar in much the same way as The Exorcist did and is still disturbing if viewed today. That program was Ghostwatch.
Riffing on the set up and title of the popular true crime solving TV show Crimewatch, Ghostwatch took four well known TV presenters and gave them the chance to investigate a haunted house. Michael Parkinson and Mike Smith were based in the studio and Sarah Greene (Mike Smith’s real life wife) and Craig Charles live on location. The subject of the show was the Early family, who lived in Foxhill Drive and the haunting they were experiencing. The culprit was a ghost that they had named Pipes.
The haunting centered on Suzanne and her sister Kim, who sometimes had marks and cuts on her body. The crew and camera witnessed poltergeist effects, heard cats wailing and an apparition was seen on camera. Viewers called in and pointed out things that Michael had missed, tape was rewound and further shapes and shadows revealed themselves on film.
As the program continued, the mystery of the house was unraveled. A man who had lived there previously had died shut in the house with 12 cats. With no food, the cats turned on the man’s body for sustenance. Other callers told stories of child molesters who lived in the house and a chilling story concerning a woman who had hung herself there.
Suddenly Suzanne and Kim started speaking in unknown voices and the whole household collapsed into bedlam. Presenter Craig Charles and the crew fled, but Sarah Greene went looking for the missing Suzanne. She entered a small cupboard under the stairs with her handheld camera, the door slammed and the outside broadcast stopped. Back in the studio, real life husband Mike Smith was in despair and the studio was in disarray as an unseen force ransacked it. The closing shot drew in on presenter Parkinson as he too channeled the terrifying spirit of Pipes, eerily reciting a child’s nursery rhyme. The credits rolled and the BBC complaints telephone line started to ring.
Callers rang to confirm what they had seen was true, some rang the police to warn them of impending doom, but most rang to complain about how the BBC had terrified them and their family. A month or so later and reports reached the newspapers of a boy who had killed himself after being terrified by the show. This terrible event rounded off the BBC’s shame of broadcasting Ghostwatch. Although it has never been confirmed, it surely must be the controversy that surrounded it that made the BBC keep it locked away for so long.
Read the conclusion the the legend of Ghostwatch in The Truth About Ghostwatch.
