October 31st, 7 PM.
Well before audiences were accustomed to found-footage movies—thanks in large part to The Blair Witch Project giving away the game—Ghostwatch set the template for how to catch viewers completely unawares, and it worked smashingly. Featuring real BBC personalities and reporters investigating “the most haunted house in Britain,” Ghostwatch adopted the format of a genuine live broadcast, War of the Worlds-style—taking place in more or less real time, expert parapsychologists on hand to unpack the goings on, and operators standing by to take your calls. But what starts out as a cheeky Halloween edition of the similarly titled Crimewatch goes terribly wrong, leaving shocked BBC viewers wondering what to believe.
The program concerns the haunting of the Early family (based loosely on the Enfield Poltergeist, which was also the basis for The Conjuring 2), whose two young girls and their mother claim they are being harassed by a presence they call “Pipes.” A camera crew descends on the home to document what, if anything, will happen. Over the course of the evening, they get their answer, and as the communication starts to break down between studio and reporters on the scene, it becomes increasingly difficult for the buttoned-up hosts to make sense of what they are witness and keep their wits about them. What came after has become the stuff of legend: reports of widespread panic in the wake of the broadcast led to the film being buried in the years after, helping the TV movie gain a sizable cult following as an ahead-of-its-time psychological experiment. Now it’s considered a right proper Halloween night classic.
