Ghostwatch is a British supernatural horror pseudo-documentary television film, first broadcast on BBC1 on Halloween night, 1992. Written by Stephen Volk, and directed by Lesley Manning, the drama was produced for the BBC anthology series Screen One by Richard Broke, Ruth Baumgarten and Derek Nelson. Although filmed several months in advance, the narrative was presented as live television. During and following its first and only UK television broadcast, the programme attracted considerable controversy, with the BBC receiving around 30,000 calls from distressed and angry viewers. Its reception has been compared to Orson Welles' 1938 radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds.
Ghostwatch has never been repeated on UK television. It has been repeated internationally, on stations such as the Canadian digital channel Scream for Halloween 2004, and the Belgian channel Canvas in 2008. It became available on the American streaming video service Shudder in 2017, and it was made available on the Internet Archive the same year. There have been three UK home video releases. In 2002, the British Film Institute released a 10th Anniversary edition on VHS and DVD, and 101 Films issued a DVD release in 2011 and a 30th Anniversary Blu-ray release in 2022. In 2016, the BBC Store made the film available as part of the Frightmares collection, marking Halloween.
A retrospective documentary, Ghostwatch: Behind the Curtains, based on the film's lasting impact, was released on DVD in 2013 (having been in production between 2007 and 2012), featuring interviews with many of the original cast and crew. It too was made available as part of the BBC Store Frightmares collection, and shortly after release, the BFI Mediatheque.
Synopsis Ghostwatch is presented as a live broadcast, hosted by Michael Parkinson, in an attempt to present concrete evidence of paranormal phenomena. To achieve this, the programme launches an on-air investigation into a house in the fictional Foxhill Drive, Northolt, Greater London. Pamela Early (Brid Brennan) and her daughters Suzanne (Michelle Wesson) and Kim (Cherise Wesson) are tormented by a poltergeist referred to by Kim as "Pipes", his name originating from knocking noises which Pamela first attributed to the house's plumbing. Pipes routinely possesses and harms Suzanne, and is said to dwell in a room under the house's stairs.
Parkinson is supported by fellow hosts Sarah Greene, who ventures into the house to spend the night with the Earlys, her husband Mike Smith, who oversees staged phone calls from the public who wish to share their own ghost stories, and comedian Craig Charles, who interviews the locals regarding the street's violent history. Greene is accompanied by her camera crew, Chris Miller and Mike Aiton, who are actual BBC technicians. Parkinson is joined in the studio by Dr. Lin Pascoe (Gillian Bevan), a parapsychologist studying the phenomena.
At first, the broadcast seems harmless, but supernatural phenomena begin to occur in the house. Suzanne is exposed falsifying the knocking sounds, convincing Parkinson that the whole affair is a hoax. Suzanne then speaks in an unearthly guttural voice and develops scratches across her face. The public share their ghost stories, numerous callers mention they have seen Pipes lurking in the house on the broadcast footage, and others say paranormal incidents are happening in their own homes.
Pipes' background is slowly pieced together. An interviewed neighbor mentions Mother Seddons, a Victorian baby farmer who murdered children, re-imagined as a bogeyman by the locals. Later, an anonymous call from a probation officer reveals that Raymond Tunstall, a disturbed paedophile who believed he was possessed by Seddons, hanged himself in the room under the stairs, where his body was eaten by his relatives' cats. Pascoe suggests there may be a greater force at play, a possibly ancient evil that possessed Mother Seddons, Tunstall, and countless others.
As events in the house grow increasingly frightening, Suzanne disappears and is heard from behind the locked door. The camera crew forces the door open, only for a mirror to fall and wound Aiton. Abruptly, the footage shows the house has returned to normal. However, Pascoe realises the footage is from earlier in the broadcast, and that Pipes has used the free will to create a nationwide séance circle, invading the public's homes.
The live broadcast resumes as Pamela, Kim, and the injured Aiton are evacuated from the house. Inside, Greene and Miller attempt to rescue Suzanne, but Greene is dragged through the under-stairs door, which slams shut. The programme ends as inexplicable paranormal activity starts happening in the TV studio, causing all on-set save Parkinson to flee. Parkinson wanders about in the darkened studio, beginning to show signs that he has been possessed by Pipes.
Background The story is based on the tale of the Enfield Poltergeist. The presentation contained realistic elements which suggested to a casual viewer that it was an actual documentary. The studio scenes were recorded in Studio D, BBC Elstree Studios, Clarendon Road. The scenes at the house and the street were all shot on location around 5–6 weeks before the recording of the studio scenes. The recorded scenes in the house and street were then played into the studio, where Michael Parkinson, Mike Smith, and the fictional Dr Pascoe had to interact with them.
A phone number was shown on the screen so that viewers could "call in" and discuss ghostly phenomena. The number was the standard BBC call-in number at the time, 081 811 8181 (also used on programmes such as Going Live!), and callers who got through were connected first to a message telling them that the show was fictional, before being given the chance to share their own ghost stories, probably as a way of writing future stories for Ghostwatch. However, the phone number was besieged by countless callers during the showing and many people who telephoned simply got an engaged tone, partially because there were only five telephone operators available. This commonly happened when phoning BBC "call in" shows and inadvertently added to the realism instead of reassuring viewers that it was fiction.
Ghostwatch was originally conceived by writer Stephen Volk as a six-part drama (similar to Edge of Darkness) in which a fictional paranormal investigator and a TV reporter investigate poltergeist activity at a North London housing estate, gradually discovering more elements of the mystery each week. This would have culminated in the final episode in a live TV broadcast from the property, in the vein of Nigel Kneale's The Quatermass Experiment and Quatermass and the Pit, in both of which "all hell breaks loose". However, when producer Ruth Baumgarten doubted the viability of an entire mini-series and recommended instead a 90-minute TV special, Volk suggested that they "do the whole thing like Episode Six", portraying it as an actual "live" broadcast fronted by well-known TV personalities.
The BBC, however, became concerned about the effect the broadcast would have on the public and very nearly pulled the show shortly before broadcast. Ultimately, they insisted on adding opening credits including the writer's name, in addition to a Screen One title sequence.Kim Newman on Ghostwatch at the BFI website.
Supernatural depictions The ghost
The film's fictional villainous spectre, referred to by the children as "Pipes" and credited simply as "Ghost", is depicted as a merging of negative spiritual energies, which parapsychologist Dr Pascoe theorises have been accumulating for years, possibly back to prehistory. Its physical appearance mostly resembles that of deceased child molester Raymond Tunstall, a fictional character who, it is revealed by a phone-in caller, killed himself at the haunted property some time in the 1960s after himself being possessed by the entity. His eyes are missing and his face is badly mauled, owing to Tunstall locking himself up with his multiple pet cats prior to his suicide, and the cats having "got hungry" in the week prior to the discovery of Tunstall's body. The entity also wears a black woman's dress, likely that of "baby farmer" and child killer Mother Seddons.
It is suggested that the character of Suzanne Early may become the next "layer" in the ghost's spiritual make-up, and in the final moments of the film the entity possesses television host Michael Parkinson.
In May 2010, at a public screening of the film at The Invisible Dot in Camden, director Lesley Manning revealed that she provided the voice of Pipes the ghost after the professional voice artist hired for the production could not accurately replicate the style of voice she had intended.
Technology Many methods familiar to modern ghost-hunting shows such as Most Haunted are demonstrated in the show, some of which were either genuine state-of-the-art technology at the time or simulated to give the idea they were real. The house was allegedly equipped with motion detectors, temperature sensors, and covert cameras. The temperature sensors were referred to as being able to check for dramatic changes in temperature that ghost hunters link to real-life ghost sightings. One major feature of the show was a genuine thermographic camera, which, although it did not pick up any ghosts, came in very handy when all the lights failed at the end of the show.
Ghostly depictions The programme makers used many examples of allegedly paranormal phenomena. During the course of the programme there are many references to characters being allegedly possessed by a ghost who, whilst doing so, maniacally recites nursery rhymes. This happens in a tape recording of the eldest daughter Suzanne, later in a 'live' section to the same character and eventually Michael Parkinson himself is seen to be possessed. The show references temperature changes being linked to ghosts and claims to be monitoring the temperature in each room of the house to check for this. Mutilated household objects are shown which were purportedly analysed by the Army and found to have been subjected to rapid temperature change. In both alleged recordings and live segments of the show we see objects moving of their own accordwhich, it is claimed, is a result of poltergeist activityalso, a perfectly round patch of water appears on the living room carpet, and animal scratch marks appear on Suzanne's face. Banging noises are intermittently heard during the climax of the show. At one point the producers play on this by exposing Suzanne as the one causing the banging noises, creating a hoax within a hoax. However, this later occurs when both girls are accounted for.
Near the end of the programme, when a wind whips through the studio, the cups and plates brought in by Dr Pascoe as evidence of the poltergeist activity in the house begin to move on their own, and one cup falls onto the studio floor and smashes into pieces. Although the ghost of the story is only heard to speak through the voices of others we hear the disembodied sounds of cats whenever phenomena are taking place.
Controversy Although Ghostwatch was aired under the Screen One drama banner, its documentary style led many viewers to believe the events were real, causing much controversy after the show's airing. The BBC was besieged with phone calls from irate and frightened viewers, among them Michael Parkinson's alarmed 81-year-old mother. British tabloids and other newspapers criticised the BBC the next day for the disturbing nature of some scenes, such as Greene's final scene where she is locked in an under-stairs cupboard with the howling ghost, and Parkinson's eerie possession scene.