Even outside of its original context, this infamous BBC ruse still retains the power to deliver some remarkable chills. A direct descendent of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast and an unarguable precursor to The Blair Witch Project (1999), not to mention the abysmal Halloween: Resurrection (2002), Ghostwatch originally aired on October 31, 1992, and was subsequently suppressed by the BBC. Never aired again and not released on video for nearly a decade, partially due to the mass terror induced by the deceptive fictional broadcast, it's easy to see why audiences tuning in late (and even those who watched from the beginning, for that matter) fell victim to Ghostwatch's seductively frightening allure. From it's opening moments in a typical television studio to the "operators standing by to take your calls" to the convincing remote broadcast from the supposedly haunted house, everything the viewer sees here points to a run-of-the-mill live broadcast in which the participants hope to capture something supernatural on video, but ultimately expect nothing. Skillfully drawing in viewers by using actual on-air BBC personalities, the creators of Ghostwatch lulled audiences into a false sense of security before using that very credibility to chill the panicked viewers to the very core. Terror by means of demonic possession, appearances of a malevolent apparition known as "Mr. Pipes" (keep a sharp eye on the backgrounds) and faux technical difficulties with the broadcast transmission effectively contributed to the air of a typical investigative report gone bad, and a series of staged conversations with fascinated viewers via telephone (viewers who actually called the number displayed were assured that the program was fiction) only seemed to solidify the appearance that this was the genuine article. Viewed after the fact, one might assume that Ghostwatch's effectiveness may be dulled. While this is not an entirely unfounded argument, it's a testament to the remarkable creativity of the BBC that Ghostwatch not only remains an effective ghost story which retains the power to frighten, but also remains a curious time capsule for its skillful updating of War of the Worlds-like terror from radio to television.
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