The Kasturi/Files: Episode 30: A Stopped Ghostwatch is Still Correct Twice a Day

Great googly-moogly, you guys! It’s Day 30 of our October horror movie countdown and only one day left until the Unholiest of Holies: Halloween! And we haven’t even been candy shopping yet. But that’s probably because we’ve been too busy with The Kasturi/Files here at Speculative Chic! Here’s more movie chitchat, plus book recommendations, and some cocktails from Sandra Kasturi and Gemma Files.

Sandra: One of the great unsung mockumentaries, or perhaps hoaxes or faux reality broadcasts, must be Ghostwatch, which aired on the BBC on October 31, 1992 as a “live broadcast.” It featured real British hosts, actors and presenters, playing themselves, lending verisimilitude to an event that kind of replicated (in impact) Orson Welles’s infamous, panic-inducing War of the Worlds broadcast of 1938.

Gemma: One of the most wonderful things about Ghostwatch as an historical event is that it apparently scared people so shitless across the United Kingdom that it actually ended up being responsible for a psychiatric syndrome all of its own: Ghostwatch-induced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. (This according to two doctors who published a report in the British Medical Journal in February of 1994, describing two cases involving ten-year-old boys that they described as “the first reported cases of PTSD caused by a television programme,” before admitting that since the children’s symptoms were rapidly resolved, it would be more accurate to say they “suffered a brief anxiety reaction to the television programme.”) In the wake of a deluge of viewer complaints, the British Broadcasting Standards Commission eventually conducted a judicial review, ruling that the BBC had a duty to do more than simply hint at whatever deception it might be practicing on the audience, since “in Ghostwatch there was a deliberate attempt to cultivate a sense of menace.” Though the film’s producers argued that Ghostwatch had clearly aired in the 9:00 p.m. slot reserved for dramas and did, in fact, have very clearly marked credits, they did later issue an apology to anybody who might have been tricked into thinking ghosts were real.

Sandra: Written by the wonderful Stephen Volk and directed by Lesley Manning, Ghostwatch purports to be a special Halloween event in which a BBC crew reports live on location from the “most haunted house in England.” It’s an absolutely ordinary, standardized “two up, two down” council house on an otherwise ordinary street, but this one has apparently been subject to various kinds of supernatural phenomena: apparitions, objects moving, some nice Shirley Jackson-esque banging, and so on. In the house live a single mother and her two daughters, Kim and Suzanne, one still a young kid, the other an adolescent. It’s such a classic trope — poltergeisty happenings and a teen girl in the house? Perfect!

Gemma: Not to mention that Volk based his story on the tale of the Enfield Poltergeist (1977 to 1979), later reimagined as the second installment of James Wan and Leigh Whannell’s Conjuring series. There’s also a really wonderful miniseries playing out this “true” account, The Enfield Haunting, produced by Sky Living and starring Timothy Spall and Matthew Macfadyen, based on British Society for Psychical Research bigwig Guy Leon Playfair’s book This House is Haunted — but the point is that a lot of watchers probably vaguely remembered hearing about the Enfield case, which no doubt gave the movie’s details a jolt of cultural recognizability that couldn’t help but contribute to audience members’ overall willingness to suspend their disbelief.

Sandra: The presenter of the Ghostwatch “programme,” well-known BBC personality Michael Parkinson, is clearly a skeptic, there to provide a bit of realism on what he thinks is just a fun little Halloween show. In the studio with him is an “expert,” Dr. Lin Pascoe (actress Gillian Bevan), who claims to have been studying the haunting for over a year — she devoutly believes the phenomena are real, and feels sorry for the terrorized family. Presenter/interviewer Sarah Greene is in the house with her crew and the family, while outside we have commentator Craig Charles as comic relief (you might remember him as Lister from Red Dwarf, or perhaps Lloyd on Coronation Street). It all starts in good fun, though the family is clearly in distress. The skeptics watching in the studio and at home — as well as chiming in from New York, in the persona of American professional debunker Dr. Emilio Sylvestri (Colin Stinton) — can easily chalk up everything they see as effects created by publicity-seeking kids enabled by their mum, but only up to a point; once you hear that eerie, waterlogged voice coming out of one of the kids…all bets are off. I mean, yes, there is that moment when it definitely looks like it’s Suzanne, the older girl, deliberately causing all the hoo-hah, but even then, Dr. Pascoe remains a believer: she thinks something else is going on in the house. And as it turns out, she’s the one who is proven (horribly) right.

Craig Charles

Gemma: That voice really is a chilling fucking effect, even when you’re not really sure what the hell it is that’s being said, aside from a tiny bit of nursery rhyme: “Round and round the gaaaarden…wennntttt the teddy beaaaarrr…” One step, two step: it’s something we all remember from childhood, usually climaxed by a tickle under the arm and hug, but here it becomes something quite different indeed — a betrayal of parental authority, a portal into some cold and awful place between worlds. All of which makes a horrible amount of sense, as the rest of Volk’s back story eventually reveals itself in dribs and drabs, fits and starts, between cheerful BBC patter, call-in testimony and the occasional misfired attempt at a long-distance practical joke. (Or is it?)

Sandra: Like Gemma says, Ghostwatch caused a lot of mayhem, both during and after the fact…pregnant women literally going into labor because of being frightened, plus that one troubled young man who committed suicide five days later, whose parents blamed Ghostwatch for making him “hypnotized and obsessed.” According to the TEDx Talk by Stephen Volk himself about the film, meanwhile, which also talks about the retrospective documentary, Ghostwatch: Behind the Curtains (2013), the BBC were horrified by the insane amount of phone calls they got — over 30,000 — and tried to brush the whole thing under the rug, which is really too bad: Ghostwatch remains one of the first horror mockumentaries ever made as well as one of the finest, a particularly sly and sinister entry into the ever-growing category of found footage horror. (The makers of The Blair Witch Project credit it as a direct inspiration, and definitely benefited from the fact that it wasn’t seen very far outside of the United Kingdom.) Even today, it’s all but guaranteed to leave viewers completely chilled by the end.

Gemma: Co-signed. The fact that it reads like a period piece at this point doesn’t hurt, either; one of the main problems with found footage that purports to be historical is that it usually doesn’t look it, something that often undercuts otherwise wonderful movies like Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton’s little-known YellowBrickRoad (2001), which begins with a fake “newsreel” that’s obviously been shot on video and had a scratchy filter applied afterwards. Ghostwatch, on the other hand, was shot exactly the way a BBC live special would have been at the time, so it retains the sort of immediacy it needs in order to hit hard, get out quick and leave a very creepy aftertaste indeed.

Sandra: Hey, I’ve seen YellowBrickRoad!! I thought I was, like, the only one! Thankfully, Ghostwatch has since found a small but devoted following through its post-DVD release audience, perhaps gaining even more followers when it was recently listed on Amazon Prime. It’s simply an intensely clever bit of filmmaking, for all that it might look a bit dated now that it’s over twenty-five years old, and a truly masterful piece of bait and switch: you think you’re getting something goofy and fun, perhaps along the lines of Taika Waititi and Jermaine Clements’s original What We Do in the Shadows (which, despite its occasional gore, isn’t really scary, just hilarious and smart), but what you end up with in Ghostwatch is a narrative that sucks you into complicity with its presenters. After Suzanne’s hoax is revealed, the film briefly allows you to feel superior, because you weren’t really sucked in (were you? were you?), but then reverses yet again by showing firsthand that it was all real, and much, much worse than anyone thought. As clocks stop not just in the haunted house, but in the studio, and all across England, we get to that moment when Dr. Pascoe realizes that what they’ve actually created is a nationwide seance, with every viewer in the country focused in on this one haunted house, lending it their collective energy. . . .

Gemma: Ugh, YES. We’re reduced to kids in the dark, fumbling around like Sarah Greene, whimpering hopelessly like Suzanne. Trapped in the glory hole under the stairs with — something. Someone. “Mister Pipes” is just a cute name for what must really be a repetitive echo of ancient evil, a contaminant that can never be washed away.

Sandra: Mmmm. And that final moment, too, as Michael Parkinson’s surprise at finding someone else’s words on the teleprompter blends into that same awful, creaking whisper, in the now-abandoned studio — it still gives me the absolute creeps. For all that the movie looks a bit grainy, and the production value isn’t great by today’s standards, this somehow renders it even more real and more frightening: ancient shaky-cam, one of the first movies to realize that if you just train a camera at something random and imply a ghost might eventually enter the frame, people will watch for hours.

Gemma: And the hilarious part? If you do watch carefully, the film rewards repeat viewings; an increasingly familiar figure can be found in the background of all sorts of shots, even outside on the street, as Craig Charles runs his patter and the onlookers mug into the lens. That Mister Pipes really does get around, especially now he’s “in the machine.” Take a good, long look at the curtains in the corner of your own bedroom tonight, and see what suggests itself.

Sandra: Eeeee! CUT IT OUT. Now I’m not going to be able to sleep.

Cocktail: Poltergeist South Side

Sandra: I’m kind of making this up a little. This is basically just a South Side Cocktail, but made with Poltergeist Gin. Yes, that’s a thing! Who knew?

• 2 oz Poltergeist Gin
• 1 oz Fresh lemon juice
• 5 Mint leaves
• 1 oz simple syrup
• Garnish: mint sprig or lemon peel twist

Directions: Muddle mint leaves and lemon juice gently in a cocktail shaker. Add other gin and syrup, ice, and shake vigorously. (Er, put the lid on first.) Strain into chilled retro martini glass. Add garnish. It becomes this lovely pale ghostly color!

Book Recommendations

Gemma: Richard and Billy Chizmar’s Widow’s Point is a novella-length enlargement on H.R. Wakefield’s “Ghost Hunt” model, following the video- and audiotaped found footage left behind by a paranormal investigator who agreed to be boarded up in a supposedly haunted lighthouse, then disappeared himself. (You can find it through Amazon, on Kindle, and also as a physical book.) I’d also like to point people towards Stephen Volk’s equally brilliant follow-up to Ghostwatch, the sequel short story “31/10,” which can be found as a free PDF offered on Volk’s own website.

Sandra: Oooh! I didn’t know about that short story! Guess what I’m doing tonight. Or . . . maybe in the daylight hours, when it’s, you know, safer. I feel like the absolutely on-point book rec here would have to be Paul Tremblay’s Head Full of Ghosts, his sly and creepy Shirley Jackson homage, which also concerns two young girls (one possibly possessed) in an ordinary (maybe haunted), and a documentary crew that films the phenomena. I may have recced it before, but it absolutely deserves another mention.

I’d also like to recommend a wonderful British author, since Ghostwatch is a very British movie: Ray Cluley, whose book Probably Monsters is full of strange and eerie stories. And some monsters. Take judiciously at bedtime. And do not call me in the morning unless I am wearing my anti-ghost amulet.

And if you love Stephen Volk, as we do, you should really check out his other work, like The Dark Masters Trilogy, two novellas and a novel, set in different time periods. Dee-lish!

Sandra Kasturi is the publisher of ChiZine Publications, winner of the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and HWA Specialty Press Awards. She is the co-founder of the Toronto SpecFic Colloquium and the Executive Director of the Chiaroscuro Reading Series, and a frequent guest speaker, workshop leader, and panelist at genre conventions. Sandra is also an award-winning poet and writer, with work appearing in various venues, including Amazing Stories, Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales, Prairie Fire, several Tesseracts anthologies, Evolve, Chilling Tales, ARC Magazine, Taddle Creek, Abyss & Apex, Stamps, Vamps & Tramps, and 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin. She recently won the Sunburst Award for her short story, “The Beautiful Gears of Dying,” in the anthology The Sum of Us. Her two poetry collections are: The Animal Bridegroom (with an introduction by Neil Gaiman) and Come Late to the Love of Birds. Sandra is currently working on another poetry collection, Snake Handling for Beginners, a story collection, Mrs. Kong & Other Monsters, and a novel, Wrongness: A False Memoir. She is fond of red lipstick, gin & tonics, and Idris Elba.

Formerly a film critic, journalist, screenwriter and teacher, Gemma Files has been an award-winning horror author since 1999. She has published two collections of short work, two chap-books of speculative poetry, a Weird Western trilogy, a story-cycle and a stand-alone novel (Experimental Film, which won the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel and the 2016 Sunburst award for Best Adult Novel). Most are available from ChiZine Publications. She has two new story collections from Trepidatio (Spectral Evidence and Drawn Up From Deep Places), one upcoming from Cemetery Dance (Dark Is Better), and a new poetry collection from Aqueduct Press (Invocabulary).