Samhain Project 2: BBC's Ghost Watch

 

Halloween night in 1992, the BBC broadcast something that was a fairly new form of entertainment.  

The "mockumentary".  It had been done in comedy, but in a dramatic context, it was relatively untried.

Only this one had sharp edges, as well.  Horror buffs know of this, but it's not everyday chatter outside of that enclosed world.  A cast of what were familiar television personalities to the British broadcast an evening's "entertainment" called "Ghost Watch".  A crew, with a paranormal psychologist-backing (whose presence was observing the events in studio) selected a "known" haunted house and a BBC crew spent the evening there with a tortured family.

Intertwined are phone calls from the viewing public sharing their own ghost stories, and as the night progresses,  surprising background information on the house in question, and its diabolical paranormal resident. 

It all starts out light enough until the entity (known as "Pipes" due to his penchant for banging on the plumbing) starts to make its presence known to the family, and then England at large, and these sequences grow to become vaguely disturbing. 

The last turn Ghost Watch takes is dark indeed.  Preceding Blair Witch, viewers may not have been ready for the combination of horror and cinema verite. Some viewers thought , much like in the case of Orson Welles radio play on Halloween Night of 1938, that it was real and happening in the moment.  Phone calls overwhelmed BBC-1.  There was a suicide linked to the program after its airing.  This, with other viewer complaints led to the BBC burying it for years.  America had no shot until Shudder served it up in 2017.

Does it hold up upon viewing 30 years later?  Yes and no.  Much like Blair Witch, the "blink and you'll miss it" stuff  so sneakily hidden you hear about upon reading the retrospective information is truly chilling, but if you miss it, there's no effect.   But I can damn sure see how someone in 1992, knowing whether it was fiction or not, could be pretty damned spooked by the program, during the final half hour especially.  

Ghost Watch is a pretty interesting moment in horror history, and it more than holds its own in entertainment value, even some 30 years later.  Engrossing, and eventually shocking until it goes over the top at the very end.  I recommend it, but don't expect to have to change your underwear afterwards, like the poor sod who sued BBC for a new pair of trousers reportedly after its airing.