It is the year 1992, at 9:25 PM GMT on Halloween eve when an innocuous bit of reality TV goes out on the BBC looking at the spooky goings on at a purportedly haunted house in Northolt, London.  As the night wears on, the events get stranger and stranger and they begin to spill out all over the country.  It is the first National Seance.

Simon, a big fan, and Eugene, who has never seen it before, discuss Ghostwatch.

Synopsis:

Ghostwatch was a live broadcast on Halloween 1992, airing at 9:25PM on BBC 1, featuring veteran television presenters Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene, and Mike Smith.  Oh, and also Craig Charles was along for the ride.

This documentary program is framed around live haunted house sitting by presenter Sarah Greene.  The house, located on Foxhill Rd has been the scene of a months-long investigation by psychic investigators.  For the live broadcast, the BBC have equipped the house with remote cameras, motion sensors, temperature detectors and has a hand-held broadcast camera that can also function as a thermographic camera.

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The inhabitants of the house, divorcee Pamela Early, and her two children Suzanne and Kim, have been experiencing many strange things.  Thumping in the night, dishes broken, mysterious “presences” in the rooms, and, most disturbingly, strange scratches that appear on Suzanne.

Sarah, her cameraman, and soundman will spend the night in the house hoping to capture ghostly phenomena on video.

In the studio, Michale Parkinson hosts the program, along with Mike Smith who is in the telephone call in center taking calls from the British public on their hostly experiences.

Joining Parkinson on commentary is Dr. Lin Pascoe, psychic researcher who has been working on the case and also written a book on the subject, Angels of the Odd.  Remote from New York is Alan Demescu from CSICOP, an organization that investigates claims of the paranormal from a skeptical perspective.

Little happens for the first scheduled portion of the program, with mostly background, interviews with neighbors and phone-in callers taking up the time; however, an unusual pattern develops. Many of the callers identified a mysterious figure in some of the footage.  Footage that even Dr. Pascoe doesn’t see anything in and dismisses as the human mind seeking patterns.

Strange things begin happening, and when strong thumping begins, the ever-watching of the eye catches the culprit.  Suzanne has slipped off and is making the noises because that’s what you wanted to hear, she says!

The fraud exposed on national television, it looks as it there is little more to say, except that both Mrs. Early and Dr. Pascoe are adamant that this cannot be all there is.  The things they’ve seen cannot be explained by Suzanne faking things all along.

All across Britain, callers are contacting the program with bizarre stories of things that are happening right now.  Their clocks, like those in the house, have all stopped at 9:30.  Things are breaking, cats are screaming, blood is appearing on walls.  It seems mass hysteria is setting in.

As things continue to get worse in the house, with unseen cats screaming, more thumps and things breaking, and Suzanne falling into some form of stupor, her face and hands covered by scratches, the program stays on the air, interrupting the next scheduled program.

Electronics start to go haywire in the house, leading to a breakdown in communities with the studio shortly after the open up the boarded-up glory hole is opened and it appears that the soundman is injured, but soon the feed, if not the sound, returns and things look back to normal in the house.

A caller calls in, he was a social worker in the 1960s and he knows the tragic untold story of a secret “renter” who lived in the house.  A disturbed child molester that should have never been let loose.  He had delusions of a woman haunting him, and in the end, he hung himself with the owners were away on holiday.  Twelve days later they returned to find his body, eaten by the household cats that were trapped inside with him.  His injuries much like those described by the callers that saw the mysterious figure in the videotape.

At this point they realize that the video they are watching from the house is a recording from earlier in the evening, and when they recover the  feed, the ambulances and police are on the scene, with the soundman being taken away.  The family are mostly out of the house, but not Suzanne, Sarah nor the cameraman.

Things really start to fall apart, as electronics in the studio being to fail.  Dr. Dr. Pascoe realizes that the entire audience of the program, 11 million people, are acting as a sort of country-wide, massive seance, and the apparition is no longer confined to the house.

In the house, using the thermographic camera, the cannot find Suzanne, but they hear her screaming from the glory hole, and as Sarah tries to get in, the door opens, she crawls in and door slams behind her.  The transmission is lost as the studio is a disaster, being evacuated and in complete darkness.

A befuddled Michael Parkinson wanders in the darkness and then, seemingly passed, begins reciting a nursery rhyme as the program goes to black.

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