Ghostwatch, a drama produced for the BBC anthology series Screen One, is a British reality–horror/pseudo-documentary television film, broadcast on BBC1 on Halloween night, 1992. Written by Stephen Volk, and directed by Lesley Manning. Despite having been recorded weeks in advance, the narrative was presented as live television.

 

During and following its first and only UK television broadcast, the show attracted a considerable furore, resulting in an estimated 1,000,000 phone call enquiries to the BBC switchboard on the night of broadcast, comprising a mixture of complaints and praise for the programme's unique presentation, these calls included a call from Michael Parkinson's own concerned mother and a very nervous 15 year old Ross.

Ghostwatch has never been repeated on UK television. 

The story, based on the tale of the Enfield Poltergeist, was put into production months before and was complete fiction. 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 "Doctor Pascoe" had to interact with them.

It earned the dubious honour of being the first TV programme to be cited in the British Medical Journal as having caused Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in children.

As featured in his collection Dark Corners, screenwriter Stephen Volk wrote a short story entitled 31/10, which is effectively a sequel to Ghostwatch. The piece was later selected for "The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2007".

The Apparition Phase

Will Maclean

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1119138/the-apparition-phase/9781786091017.html

No one Gets out Alive

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