Ep. 30 - Ghostwatch

Kathryn (00:10) Hello! Welcome to I Scream You Scream. My name is Kathryn.

Gina (00:14) I'm Gina.

Kathryn (00:15) This month we are sharing stories about mass hysteria and the flavor of the month is Neapolitan ice cream. So we'll be enjoying a dish of Neapolitan as we tell our stories. Way back in the day, we instated a chain letter curse on everyone and then we totally forgot about it. So we decided to bring that back. The way it goes is if you enjoy our podcast, you are forced to tell at least one friend about it or else you'll be cursed forever. We forget about our curses all the time, so don't worry if you don't, but we'd love for you to prevent any curses upon yourself by telling a friend. Just hit the link, hit the share button. You can do it right now as I'm rambling. And while you're doing that, we're gonna grab a spoon and dig right in.

Gina (00:42) Hell yeah, this ice cream is gonna be very restorative, I think.

Kathryn (01:10) Yeah, I'm excited. Love, I keep forgetting this is the flavor of the month and I'm very excited every time I open my freezer and I'm like, oh yeah, it's not my chiseled slushie anymore.

Gina (01:13) Mm. And it's like hot here today. Like I'm very warm. Yeah, so this is the first time we've done the podcast, because we started it in October, so it's been cold and this is the first hot day.

Kathryn (01:25) Oh, is it? Oh. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I did notice you're wearing short sleeves. Like, ooh, we're getting a little bit of Gina shoulder. The gun show.

Gina (01:35) Mm-hmm. And the girls are out and by the girls I mean my shoulders. Yes.

Kathryn (01:44) Yeah, it's definitely not hot here yet at all. We've got spring is not quite springing. It's slowly crawling out of the depths of hell.

Gina (01:48) Yeah, what's the weather like? Hmm. Just like us.

Kathryn (01:58) Yeah, Persephone is struggling to get back in town a little bit. I'll just put it that way. Yeah, I feel you.

Gina (02:04) Girl, I get it. Hey, Kathryn.

Kathryn (02:10) Yes.

Gina (02:11) What are you doing this weekend?

Kathryn (02:13) I'm so happy you asked. I would love to tell you...

Gina (02:14) So a couple episodes ago, we met our new besties Franky and Christina of Windy City Paranormal Festival fame—which, by the way, still tickets available at the time of this recording. Not sure if they will be by the time this is published. If you're interested in going to that, this is like a little plug. So as an aside, Windy City Paranormal Fest is June 12th through 15th. If you use the code SCREAM, then you get a couple bucks off. So go do that.

Kathryn (02:40) That's not what I'm doing this weekend. That's just how I met them. So the TWATS are—I'm gonna butcher this. It's not that long of an acronym, but I always stumble on it. The Wisconsin Apparition Tracking Society. So Christina and Franky are two members of the TWATS and they invited us on a paranormal investigation.

Gina (03:17) Mm-hmm.

Kathryn (03:28) Along with the hosts of Quite Unusual podcast, so I'll get to meet them too. And I'm very excited. I've never been on a paranormal investigation before and I'm bringing you along with me. I do have your photo ready to go. You will be there. I don't have it—I would show it to you—but you know what you look like and it's not near me. So yeah, I'm excited.

Gina (03:43) Thank you so much. I would just be staring at myself, yeah.

Kathryn (03:55) Okay, it's gonna be like a little flat Stanley situation. Did you ever do flat Stanley? I never did when I was little, but my cousin did when she was little. So I took him on a couple trips with me for her several years ago.

Gina (03:58) No. That's cute. I'm so excited for you. You're gonna have so much fun. And it's with such cool people too. Like you're doing a cool thing with cool people.

Kathryn (04:13) I'm so excited. Yeah, I was so—honestly, we got that email, Phil and I were watching TV in the living room, and all of a sudden I was just like, oh my God. He was like, whoa, what's happening? What's wrong? I was like, I'm going on a paranormal investigation. He was like, who the fuck are you talking to right now? What is going on? Yeah, so I feel like a kid at Christmas. But I also am 0% ready to go. I need to pack.

Gina (04:40) That's going to be so much fun.

Kathryn (04:40) I'm leaving in like a couple hours, so we're gonna see what time I get there. Yeah, I don't know what to expect. I don't know, because they—I mean, they talked us through a little bit of their process, but I mean, I don't really have anything to compare it to other than what I've seen on television. So, I've been on ghost tours and stuff, but I've never done a proper investigation, so I'm very excited.

Gina (05:07) Expect the unexpected. Your greatest export.

Kathryn (05:08) I'm not going to be contributing anything other than vibes.

Kathryn (05:09) So I'm dying to hear this story because I had never heard of it before you brought it up. And I had no idea what to expect. And when you made the social media collateral, I was like, what is this? Like, this is not what I was imagining—some like one of your historical, like, 15-whatever-the-fuck situations. And then that glorious team headshot popped up on our Trello. And I was like...

Gina (05:36) Mm-hmm. Yep. We're going full 90s today, baby. Yeah, so today I am talking about a little movie called Ghostwatch. So fair warning, this episode is going to contain some major, major spoilers. Kathryn and I have already watched it. Kathryn does not know any of the backstory. So if you would like to join her...

Kathryn (05:44) I'm done. New favorite episode. I don't even know what's going on.

Gina (06:06) ...in this experience. You can find Ghostwatch on Shudder if you're in America, or if you're in the UK like me, I watched it on Apple TV. And if you are anywhere else in the world, it's not hard to find—just pop the name Ghostwatch into Google and see what happens. So yeah, if you want to watch it first, go ahead and pause the episode now and then come back when you're ready to hear all of the crazy bullshit that ensues. Light trigger warning for this one: I am going to be mentioning suicide and child abuse. I don't go into detail on any of it, but be warned. So let's get started.

Gina (06:41) As almost always, I'm going to start by painting a little word picture for you, my friend.

Kathryn (06:46) Beautiful, okay.

Gina (06:47) All right, so it's Halloween night, 1992, 9:30-ish at night. You're a kid in the UK, probably riding a high from your millionth Kit Kat of the evening because it's Halloween. And your parents decide that as a little treat, you can stay up late to watch a—quote—live ghost hunt on TV. And it's called Ghostwatch. Such a vibe.

Kathryn (07:14) The nostalgia. Nostalgic Halloween vibes are the best. Ugh. I'm like... goosebumps.

Gina (07:15) Right? Totally, yes. And this Ghostwatch was not some like fringe, low budget cable nonsense. It was airing on the BBC, which is a major network, and it was hosted by none other than Michael Parkinson, who was an extremely well-known TV host. He did talk shows and things like that. So he was a trustworthy person, some might say. The show opens with Parkinson telling viewers that what they're about to see may be disturbing. He says, quote: \"Tonight, television is going ghost hunting in an unprecedented scientific experiment where we hope to show you for the first time irrefutable proof that ghosts really do exist.\" Viewers are told that the paranormal investigation they're about to see is happening in real time.

Kathryn (08:14) I did not put that—the moment you said paranormal investigation, I was like, oh yeah, that is what they were doing. I was like, shoot, I should have been more intentional in my notes. I did not make that connection at all. Well, I will say, I hope mine goes differently.

Gina (08:21) Same. I was like, oh yeah. I didn't put that together. I also hope yours goes differently. I mean, I think it's safe. Anyone who thinks this is gonna end well hasn't been listening to the podcast very long.

Kathryn (08:38) We can edit that out if it's a spoiler, but... Okay, listen, yeah, this is Mass Hysteria Month, I guess. All right, I take it back.

Gina (08:53) So the show goes on to show like all of the tech that they're going to be using during this investigation. And it's impressive, especially for the 90s. They have infrared cameras, heat sensors, they have audio specialists ready to go—the whole nine. It's like a very well put together thing, seemingly. And they also have a host of TV personalities there to help present it. So in the studio, I've already mentioned Michael Parkinson as the host. And with him is Dr. Lin Pascoe...

Gina (09:23) ...a parapsychologist who I loved. She was like my favorite part of the whole movie. And if you're unfamiliar with the term parapsychologist, she was basically presented as a researcher slash scientist who investigates paranormal stuff. That's really all it is. And then on location, we have a few more people. So we've got Sarah Green, who will be spending the night inside a supposedly haunted house. Worth noting...

Kathryn (09:28) Yeah.

Gina (09:49) ...she was a very popular and long-standing children's TV presenter, so another person that viewers, particularly children, knew and also trusted. We also have two guys operating the camera and the sound equipment, and both of those men also worked with Sarah on her children's show, so they were known to audiences as well. The location that they're investigating is a suburban home in northwest London. Nothing flashy, nothing creepy at this point. It just looks like a regular ass British house. And it's home to a single mother named Pam and her two daughters, Suzanne and Kim. I don't know exactly how old Suzanne and Kim were supposed to be. Suzanne kind of seemed like maybe early to mid teens, Kim probably 11-ish.

Kathryn (10:33) Mm-hmm. Yeah, my guess was somewhere between like 9 and 11 and then 13, 14-ish. So same. Yeah, yeah. She wasn't—the older one wasn't like driving and stuff like that. Yeah, not like that type of teenager. She was like a new... yeah, that's my estimate too.

Gina (10:39) Definitely like elementary school and middle school-ish. No, I wouldn't think so. No. Agreed. So according to this family, the three of them, their house is haunted by a ghost called Pipes because one of his calling cards is a banging sound that comes from within the walls. And when the hauntings first started a little bit before the filming began, Pam told the girls it was quote, just the pipes. So the name kind of stuck. Also, the face that you just made was very funny.

Kathryn (11:22) Yeah. I got goosebumps, I got genuinely a shiver down my spine because—well, we'll talk about it. Yeah, it's so creepy.

Gina (11:29) So creepy. So Ghost is called Pipes. Anyway, we first meet Pipes in a way that feels kind of almost stereotypical—like very much your standard haunted house stuff. It cuts to some found footage style—or a found footage style—clip of the two girls sleeping in their bedroom, which they share. And the older daughter, Suzanne, wakes up in the middle of the night and a loud banging noise starts. So it's like, OK, Pipes is here. Suzanne starts screaming for her mom...

Kathryn (11:39) Mm-hmm.

Gina (11:59) ...and says, he's back, he's back, get off of me. But from the viewer's perspective, there's no one there. Then the lamp levitates, a light bulb explodes, and the clip ends. Big scary stuff. It's presented as something that was recorded before the live investigation because Dr. Pascoe had been monitoring the house for a while. She had been working with the family through these things. So then we return to Sarah and the team in the house actually investigating live. And it starts off pretty fucking fun. Like Sarah's in high spirits, so are the girls, they're bobbing for apples, playing board games, just like chillin' on Halloween night vibes. It's a good time. But as the program unfolds, very disturbing things start to happen...

Gina (12:30) They show scratches on Suzanne's face that seem to have appeared there all by themselves. They show a clock that has stopped working inside the home. There's weird stains on the carpet that just come out of nowhere. And at one point, Pam, the mom, tells a very creepy story about being trapped in the cupboard under the stairs, Harry Potter style, with a malignant spiritual entity, AKA Pipes, who was breathing on her face. We have not really talked about what Pipes looks like just yet, and I think we should because it's very creepy. So if you pause the movie at the exact right times, you can spot him in the background...

Kathryn (13:54) I was gonna wait to talk about this, but the first three times he shows up—because I was kind of passively watching, I was doing something else while I was watching it—the first few times he shows up, I did, was like, wait, was there someone there? Was there supposed to be someone there? I thought it was like, you know, a mistake. Like it was just some guy or something like in the investigation that they just caught. And then finally, at one point, I was like, my God, he's there. Like, that's him. I was getting goosebumps like throughout the whole thing. Yes. Yeah.

Gina (14:27) Uh-huh. It's very creepy. It's very well done. And I do have—I have a list of timestamps where you can find him. So if anyone does wanna watch it, I'll put them in the show notes so that you can see where he is.

Kathryn (14:36) Ooh. Yeah, I want those because I'm sure you're making it sound like—I don't know how many there were, but I only caught him a couple of times. I'm sure he was there more times than what I saw.

Gina (14:47) I want to say it's nine times.

Kathryn (14:50) My God, I only caught him, I think, four. It was like the—yeah. Yes. Four, maybe five. There was one point where I was like, I couldn't tell, but I'm sure it probably—because it was so subtle, I'm sure he was there. Very spooky. Yeah. That was my favorite part of how they did it.

Gina (14:52) But it's so subtle, like it's just so—ugh, so creepy. Yeah, it's like a blink and you miss it thing. Super spooky. Yes. So, I mean, once I realized what was happening, that was my—yes, yeah, agreed. So shots of what's happening at the house are kind of interspersed with cuts back to the studio where Parkinson and Dr. Pascoe discuss what's going on. And they don't jump to conclusions about anything. They do present what I would say is a normal amount of skepticism, but it's framed in a way that both directly and indirectly encourages you to believe what you're seeing.

Kathryn (15:14) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Gina (15:42) There's even a subplot, I guess you could call it, where they talk about the first time that Pam and the girls tried to go to the media with their story and people called them liars. And they talk about the psychological impact that that had on them—to be sharing this problem, asking for help and being told that they were bullshitting. And Dr. Pascoe responds to this by reiterating how important it is to believe stories like this. It felt like viewers were made to feel guilty if they didn't believe what they saw. And if there's one thing Brits are really fucking good at, it's feeling guilty about everything. So people ate this shit up. They were like, OK, maybe this is real, you know?

Gina (16:36) Yeah, so naturally, viewers are starting to get very freaked out. And a big part of what made this program so effective and so scary is that it actively invited people to call in and report what they were seeing—both in the footage and of their own ghost experiences. So people did, and they would take some of these calls, like, on the broadcast. Some of the callers were skeptics, sure, but some were completely panicking about the whole thing. In the ones that they aired—which, like, I'm pretty sure those were all staged—but anyway, people said that their kids who were watching the TV were in a literal trance and could not look away from it.

Kathryn (16:40) Thank...

Gina (17:03) And the presenters didn't just play along with it, they started leaning into it. Like Parkinson was the skeptic to Dr. Pascoe's believer vibes. At points, Parkinson would get obviously irritated with what he thought were prank calls, quote unquote, whereas Dr. Pascoe consistently argued that everything these callers were saying about both their own experiences and what was happening in the house was believable in some way. Ghostwatch very, very quickly blurred the lines between fiction and reality in a way that British television had never done before, which caused people to panic. Viewers would eventually learn that this was all one big...

Gina (17:43) ...well, we'll get more into it later. But at the time, they truly believed what they were seeing to be true. Because in 1992, people didn't really have a framework for something like a mockumentary. Scary found footage stuff was not really a big thing yet. There was no internet to fact check things as you were seeing it. So if it looked like the news and sounded like the news and was presented by the people who did the news—it must be the fucking news. It genuinely felt like a science experiment, which made people trust it. And not to spoil the next section too much, but Ghostwatch took that trust and used it like a fucking crowbar on your car windows. Like they just—it was insane. So...

Gina (18:28) Before I keep going, I want to check in with you, Kathryn. As someone who watched this with zero context, zero background, what was that like?

Kathryn (18:32) I so genuinely went into this knowing—again, I said this at the beginning—I knew nothing about this story. But I knew already that it was a movie and not an actual, you know, whatever—that it was like staged or whatever. But I learned that from you. I genuinely the whole time was just honestly in awe with this movie and the—like, if I was just flipping through channels today in 2025 and landed on this, I would 100% think it was real. It really—like, not a single moment in the movie did anyone sound like they were reciting a line or reading a script. Phil and I watch a lot of true crime and all the, you know, documentary...

Gina (19:20) Mm-mm.

Kathryn (19:29) ...movies and shows and stuff. And in those shows and movies, so many of them—it's very clear that they are reading something, a prompt, or, you know, they practiced ahead of time or whatever. And those are allegedly real. I mean, those are real—they're true crime. So like, I would fully 100% think it was real. I was a little scared. I was a little scared watching it. And I knew it was fake. I don't want to go too deep, for anyone who hasn't—I mean, we're giving spoilers, so I guess it doesn't really matter. But the thing that I appreciated most about it, and the thing that I thought was most powerful, was the fact that nothing...

Kathryn (20:15) ...super outrageous happened. The majority of the movie was Pipes—like the sound of Pipes—or, you know, when she got scratches on her face, you didn't see that happen. You know, it was things like that. Stuff that would actually—you know, you don't always catch things on your cameras during a paranormal investigation or whatever.

Gina (20:21) Mm-hmm. You...

Kathryn (20:39) I don't know, just everything they did felt so real. I think they did a great job of tricking people, which I feel bad knowing that there's like hysterics coming. But it was just believable. This is the most like long-winded way of saying it was truly—I would be fooled 100%. I would be fooled today, let alone in 1992, having no context of a mockumentary at all. I would 100% believe it.

Gina (20:48) They did that. It was so believable. Same.

Kathryn (21:09) I would be part of the hysteria, for sure. I would. I'd be like, oh my God. Yeah. And her tone in which she said things was so—I think that was a huge part of that. And their dynamic together, because he was a great skeptic. I mean, you mentioned that already, but they would kind of push back on each other. He would say—this is just an example, I don't know if he ever actually said this—but he'd say something like, it's an old X-number-of-years-old house, the pipe's just clanging or whatever.

Gina (21:31) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kathryn (21:51) And she—but she would return that type of sentiment with, you know, we have to believe them because this is their experience and, you know, they have been having these experiences. It's up to us to determine why. It just was a very believable dynamic between television hosts and scientists. And then there was also that other guy. Are you going to talk about him? The non-paranormal? No, the New York guy.

Gina (22:13) The reporter that was outside the house. How they were like—he and Dr. Pascoe were arguing over—yes.

Kathryn (22:21) He was like a big skeptic. He was not—I would say, it was a good dynamic of, he was all the way to the kind of rude and I didn't like him type skeptic. She was all the way on the other spectrum. And then—what's his name? I'm so sorry, I forget like the host name.

Gina (22:34) Michael Parkinson?

Kathryn (22:46) Yeah, he was a nice middle. He was a good host—just neutral, seeing both sides type of deal. But I think that character was so believable because here he is sitting in his New York, you know, office or whatever, just like—basically the equivalent of \"this is bullshit,\" you know. And she's... I don't know. I just thought everything was just so believable. Yeah.

Gina (23:00) Yeah, like they really—they went down the list of like, if you were watching this for the first time, what might you be skeptical about? And then they tick that off the list and told you why you shouldn't be skeptical about it anymore. Like it just—it... your only real option, especially in 1992, was to believe what you were seeing.

Kathryn (23:05) Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kathryn (23:28) You know what it reminded me of? Did you ever—so the original was a Spanish mockumentary called [REC], but the remake—there was an American remake called Quarantine. Did you ever see that one?

Gina (23:28) Mm-mm.

Kathryn (23:44) It was very similar. It was basically a reporter reporting on something and then shit hits the fan. The thing that I always love about that movie is it's like this outrageous thing. But it's done very slowly. It's done in a way very similar to this. At that point—this was in like the 2000s—there was no... they weren't trying to fool people. This was strictly a movie. People knew about found footage by this point. But it had a very—I don't know. There's just something—when you can do a fake mockumentary so well, there's just something about it. And I think this was just wild. Yeah, this was so good.

Gina (23:56) I completely agree. Yeah. Yeah. So halfway—at the halfway point-ish during the movie—the vibes take a fucking hard left turn and shit really starts to hit the fan.

Gina (24:14) So we learn that Pipes isn't just a ghost. He's the ghost of a guy named Raymond Tunstall, who in the program was a very disturbed and violent pedophile who killed himself in the house before Pam and the girls moved in. And we find out that he was possessed by a 19th century baby farmer who murdered kids. And a baby farmer is a very unfortunate job title, but it's a phrase used in Victorian England to describe someone who took custody of kids in return for payment.

Kathryn (24:44) You...

Gina (24:51) And in the chronology of Ghostwatch, this baby farmer had committed these kid murders on the land that the house now stands on. And Raymond Tunstall, who killed himself there, had gotten possessed by her—purportedly after experiencing a haunting of his own. So it's kind of confusing, but basically we have the ghost of a guy who's possessed by a different ghost. It's like a nesting doll of like fucked up trauma.

Kathryn (25:15) I'm so happy you walked me through that because I missed all of that. I knew... It's so subtle. Yeah, I honestly—I think this was being explained when I went to go get more pizza. Because when I came back I just—again, I was watching it passively—so when I came back they were talking about him being... because like I knew there was a guy that was possessed that was now haunting—I understood that—but I didn't understand why.

Gina (25:18) It's very—and again, it's subtle. Like it takes a second.

Gina (25:45) It's one of those—yeah, like I think Ghostwatch is one of those movies where you can watch it passively and it's still good, but if you pay attention to every single detail, it just gets richer and richer. Like the lore that they build within it is very interesting.

Kathryn (25:53) Yeah. I think you can watch it many times and still enjoy it differently every time. It's one of those movies. Yeah. Yeah.

Gina (26:01) Mm-hmm. Totally. Yes. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. So we find out about this—like who Pipes really is. Meanwhile, things in the house are not fucking going well. The banging noises come back again and again. The lights wind up shutting off completely, leaving the crew to rely only on their infrared for a while. One of the crew members just collapses, seemingly out of nowhere.

Gina (26:34) And Suzanne, the older daughter, appears to become possessed by Pipes. She starts twitching, she's screaming, and she speaks in this voice that is really, really creepy. Like, it sounds like it's—like the voice is trying to claw its way out of her throat, is how it sounds. It's very disturbing. Unsettling as hell. And a reporter on the ground outside the house, who we haven't really talked about yet, he says, this is England's answer to Amityville.

Kathryn (26:40) Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Gina (26:56) Which if you haven't listened to our Amityville episode yet, you absolutely should. But this really is.

Kathryn (26:58) Oh yes. My God. Yes. I got—my jaw dropped when they said it and I was like, shameless plug. I mean, I might just say something myself, but this really was the British Amityville in my opinion, because only this time, you know, it wasn't an author or a lawyer trying to gussy a story up for money. It was the fucking BBC.

Gina (27:26) Which is insane. Nuts. Nutso buttso.

Kathryn (27:28) Yeah, I just keep—like I know that and I keep forgetting that because that's such a huge part of why people believed it. I know you said that, but like—worth reiterating because it's different if it's some low budget, whatever.

Gina (27:35) Mm-hmm. Yeah, like it's hard to describe to anyone who doesn't live here who isn't familiar with the BBC, but it's a massive fucking institution. Like, don't get me wrong—some people absolutely hate the BBC and don't trust them at all—but I would say the national bias leans more towards trusting, particularly in 1992. So it is worth reiterating—you're totally right.

Gina (28:12) So at this point in the broadcast, the real twist comes into play. Dr. Pascoe realizes from the studio that it's not just the house that's haunted—it's the broadcast that's haunted. We find out that by showing this haunting on live TV, the BBC has created a massive accidental seance and everyone watching is a participant. They say that they basically opened a conduit where Pipes isn't just in the house anymore, he is in the signals being sent to your TV.

Gina (28:45) And when that realization happens, in the studio, the lights start flickering, the audio warps, cameras glitch, and in the house, Sarah Green, the one who's been there this whole time, seems to be under some sort of trance and goes into the cupboard under the stairs where the door slams shut behind her. In the final moments of the broadcast, the host, Parkinson, is left alone in a pitch black studio, whispering a nursery rhyme that we heard Pipes say at the beginning of the show. And then the feed just goes dead. That's it. Just silence.

Kathryn (29:15) The thing that like got me—am I allowed to say this? There was something—okay. I don't know, I just, I know you literally just walked through the entire movie, but I'm still like, are we giving spoilers? There is a moment, so there's something with a cat. I don't remember what the cat thing was, but it was like, there's something with this cat that like, some demon...

Gina (29:19) Yeah. Go for it, yeah. Raymond Tunstall, before he died—before he killed himself—had a ton of cats. And when he killed himself, the cats got hungry and ate his face, basically. Mm-hmm.

Kathryn (29:40) Yeah. My God, okay, I missed all of that. Yeah, I did not really—I knew that there was something with the cats. I just accepted it because cats can be creepy. So I was like, sure, we're using cats. That's fine. Just, it's whatever. No notes, it's—I believe you. But toward the end of the movie, when things start going kind of crazy, the cats—you would hear cats basically. And at the very...

Kathryn (30:10) Truly one of the, probably the creepiest moments of the entire movie for me—the one that genuinely kind of scared me, and I knew what they were doing—I was just so impressed by it. After lights go out and as he's whispering that nursery rhyme, you can hear cats in the studio. And then—I literally have goosebumps—because it genuinely scared me. They did something with the audio mixing and I don't know what it is. But at a certain point, as the lights were fading, the sound of the cat shifted from \"you can hear it in the studio\" to like, \"it's now in your living room.\" Like the sound shifts so that you can—it genuinely sounds like there's a cat in your television. And I was blown away by that because I've not ever heard something like that done.

Kathryn (30:45) And I know it exists. I'm not, you know, acting like this is the first audio experience I've ever had, but I'm just like—man. No wonder people were scared. Like, that is—that little detail—that's why this movie was so impressive. There are so many little details like that that they could easily have left out and it would have been fine. It would have been just—I don't want to say just as scary, but it would have gotten the job done. But they didn’t. They took the time to do that. And I just—man. Chef’s kiss.

Gina (31:09) Mm-hmm. Yes. It's insanely well written. Like, mass hysteria and the horrible things that happen because of it aside, it's written incredibly well. Yeah. So I'm going to tell you what happens after this broadcast now.

Kathryn (31:35) So well. Yes. Yeah, I completely agree. Yeah, so—this part I'm like buckling up. This part I do not have experience with. I'm kind of scared of this part. So, all right, I'm ready.

Gina (31:52) Yeah, shortly after the broadcast ended, the film's producer, a woman named Ruth Baumgarten, arrived in the studio to tell everyone that the switchboard had been jammed. Initially, it was kind of like a ha ha, that's funny thing, until she stopped and she reiterated that she was serious. Like, so many people had tried to call during the show that they weren't able to get through. And apparently that...

Gina (32:20) ...was the \"oh shit, we might have fucked up\" moment.

Kathryn (32:24) Before you continue, I do have one clarifying question I meant to ask at the beginning. Did they advertise this as a movie? Okay. Never mind. Sorry. Keep going. Sorry. Okay. Okay.

Gina (32:32) I'll get there. I will definitely get there, baby. Yeah. We're gonna talk about it. Okay, so—they did fuck up. The British public had lost their ever-loving shit, because again—what they didn’t know, what no one for the most part told them—is that this was not real. All of it was filmed weeks earlier. Again, Dr. Pascoe was not a doctor. The haunting was fully scripted. Pipes was played by a guy named Keith Ferrari.

Kathryn (33:00) You—my God, what? Man, nothing is—nothing I was previously afraid of is scary anymore. Keith Ferrari? That is not a real name. Is that his, like, government name or is that a stage name? Holy crap, wow. Keith Ferrari. He sounds like a douche, but I'm sure he's lovely.

Gina (33:12) Yeah, it totally was. I have no idea. The name’s Ferrari. Keith Ferrari. Of the 11 million people who tuned in for the broadcast, the BBC received an estimated 1 million calls that night.

Kathryn (33:32) Wild. Whoa. Whoa.

Gina (33:44) Yeah. And those calls ranged from like “is this real” type shit, to “how dare you air this,” to “should I set my fucking TV on fire.” All that kind of stuff. And when people called, if they managed to get connected, they would hear a short message confirming that it was fictional before getting on the line with someone. But they only had five switchboard operators working that night and they couldn’t keep up with the volume of callers.

Kathryn (34:06) Yeah.

Gina (34:12) So instead of hearing the message saying that it was fake, most of the callers just got a dial tone like you do when a line is busy, which made it even scarier. Like you’ve just watched this kid get possessed by a ghost on live TV. People are collapsing and you’re trying to call the BBC to figure out if it’s real or not. And instead of an answer, you get nothing. It’s like horror movie setup right there. That’s terrifying. And for some people, for many people, that was the moment that it became real.

Gina (34:42) The absence of an answer was confirmation in its own way. It’s like in a newspaper when you say so-and-so declined to comment. That lack of commentary is still commentary—it’s just not verbalized. You know what I mean? And the kicker here is that the BBC knew that this might be an issue ahead of time and they almost decided to pull the movie because of it. But instead, they decided to use a promotional piece in a magazine called the Radio Times to say that it was fake ahead of it airing...

Kathryn (34:50) Mm-hmm.

Gina (35:12) ...and they also added the writer’s name to the opening credits to try and make it obvious that it wasn’t real. But it wasn’t enough because not everyone fucking read the Radio Times and not enough people looked at or understood the credits. And also, you can have a writer on shows that aren’t fake. So yeah.

Kathryn (35:28) Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, and also, like, that was part of why I asked because at the end of the movie, there are credits after the sound manipulation, everything we just described. But at that point, you’re panicked and thinking there’s a demon cat in your fucking living room, you’re not going to be sitting around to see who produced this, you know.

Gina (35:36) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, totally. So people just fell back on their trust in the BBC, their trust in Michael Parkinson, their trust in Sarah Green—who, by the way, Sarah had to appear on a children’s TV show the next morning to make sure that kids knew that she wasn’t dead.

Kathryn (35:53) Mmm. My God, what?

Gina (36:03) That’s how scared people were. The public was furious. Parents were furious. Some of them said that their kids were traumatized. Some adults said that they were traumatized. Three women reportedly went into labor from the stress of watching it. And at least six children were later reported to have developed symptoms consistent with PTSD, which—it was noted in the initial report—it was the first time that we had seen something like that as a result of a TV show or a program.

Kathryn (36:29) You...

Gina (36:31) And in an extremely sad turn, an 18-year-old man killed himself within a week of the broadcast. Reportedly, his family had had some issues with their heating system which caused the pipes to knock—similar to the show. And their son—who was 18 but had the mental age of a 13-year-old—unfortunately drew a link between what was happening in his home and what was happening in the film, which made him extremely distressed.

Gina (37:00) And his suicide note had a line saying, “If there is ghosts, I will now be one.”

Kathryn (37:06) My god.

Gina (37:06) Yeah. The media obviously really fixated on this when it hit the press and it’s still kind of a topic of debate today how much Ghostwatch actually contributed to this. But the family did point to this broadcast as being the primary catalyst. So within days, British tabloids were dragging the fuck out of the BBC for this and tens of thousands of complaints were filed.

Gina (37:31) And these incidents—then the public response to Ghostwatch more broadly—led to a full-on investigation into the BBC’s conduct. Yeah, so the Broadcasting Standards Commission, which was kind of just Britain’s TV police at that point, slapped the BBC with a ruling that said that they had deliberately misled viewers, they should have been clearer that Ghostwatch was fiction...

Gina (37:53) ...and that it had aired too early in the evening to reasonably expect an older and perhaps more skeptical audience, because it aired at 9:25 PM on Halloween night. Like, kids are still awake. They're riding a sugar high.

Kathryn (38:08) I have thoughts but no opinions. Like—I get that. I don't disagree that that's too early, but like—what's that, what's it called? There's a period of time. Shoot, I—huh?

Gina (38:19) Watershed? The watershed?

Kathryn (38:30) Yeah, so that's—not the term I'm—I haven't heard that one—but yes, there's a different one I'm thinking of for the same thing, where it’s like between the hours of five and nine—I’m thinking of whatever the American version is. Like, that’s the whatever hour. Yeah, exactly. But so it's like right on the cusp. Like, I don't disagree, but I don't totally agree because it's Halloween night, like...

Gina (38:44) Yankee Doodle family time.

Kathryn (38:55) That’s right on the border for me, where I'm like, I get it, but it feels like they tried, but didn't succeed.

Gina (38:56) And granted—yeah. And I do want to clarify, like—Halloween in the UK is not nearly as big as it is in the US. Not every kid goes out trick-or-treating. It's not—like, it's just not as big of a thing. But even in Ghostwatch, like, they did show children trick-or-treating and like, Suzanne and Kim celebrating Halloween in their own way. So it's still a thing.

Kathryn (39:10) Okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah, they're like out. Yeah.

Kathryn (39:30) I also will—I can't believe I feel the need to say this—but because nowadays everything happens the Saturday before Halloween here... In the 90s and prior—2000s and prior—we were going ham on Halloween night. Didn’t matter if it was a Tuesday or if we had school in the morning. We were up all night in our princess costumes and eating our buckets of chocolate. There was no, like, pre-scheduled anything. You just hoped your neighbors were ready with the sweets in the middle of the fucking week because here come the little gremlins. Yeah.

Gina (39:56) Yeah. Accidentally teaching ourselves like the fundamentals of economics by trading candy like it was the stock market.

Kathryn (40:04) It was like—honestly, I feel like that’s exactly what it was. And also, Halloween was such a... everything you learn as a child goes out the window. Like you get in cars with your friend’s mom who you’ve never met before to go to the better neighborhood. You're knocking on strangers’ doors. You're eating shit that you don’t know where it came from. Like—chaos. Yep.

Gina (40:08) Mm-hmm.

Gina (40:32) Some of it's just like, shit that the adults baked and it's—well, that's not so much a thing anymore. But when I was a kid, it was like, I had people give me cupcakes and I would just eat them and it could have anything in it.

Kathryn (40:40) No, but back then you could. Yep. Had caramel apples. Man, those were the days. Not to be totally elderly, but 90s Halloween rocked.

Gina (40:47) Yeah. 90s and early 2000s. Halloween rocks. Yeah. Anyway, so they got in super duper trouble. They got in big old trouble for this. And as a rebuttal to the ruling, the producers of Ghostwatch argued that they expected viewers to realize Ghostwatch was fiction because it had aired during what was normally a drama slot. And if they had added more obvious disclaimers, it would have ruined the movie. Which... come on.

Kathryn (41:12) Good times, yeah. Anyway—anyway, back to the tragedy.

Gina (41:18) That’s it. After the ruling, they did wind up issuing an apology, but they definitely could have done more.

Kathryn (41:18) Mm-hmm. It’s one of the—they for sure could. And I also think that I understand why they did the amount that they did. But I also—I’m kind of on the fence with this one. Like, again, I have thoughts but no opinions. I just—because this happened so early and this was the first of its kind, I think part of why I'm struggling to have an opinion is I don't know if they could have foreseen how dramatic this got and how crazy it got. Because this seems like one of those things where when you’re in something and you know what's going on, it's hard to view it as someone who knows nothing. You know what I mean?

Kathryn (42:11) Like I am having a very different experience hearing you tell this story than someone who's not watched this. You know? So I do get that. But I also am like, they could have thrown in like—you know, on a commercial break—thrown in a quick “hey, reminder this is fake” or something. But I don't know.

Gina (42:18) Yeah. And I think—because I was reading, because obviously this wasn't that long ago, so you can still find people online who were like, “Yeah, I was a kid when this aired and I remember blah blah blah.” And a few people said that right before it started, there was something that popped up on the screen saying it was fictional. I don't know if that's true or not, it's just what they said. But what they also said is that a lot of people missed that because they only tuned in like right in time for when it was starting or they flicked it on at 9:30, five minutes after it began. And so a lot of people didn’t see...

Kathryn (42:28) Mm-hmm.

Kathryn (42:50) ...whatever kind of message there would have been. Yeah. Or you're just flipping through channels and you want to see what’s going on on the BBC and you have not heard any of this. You didn’t catch anything.

Gina (43:00) Whatever kind of message there would have been. Yeah.

Kathryn (43:00) This is very much a hindsight-is-20/20 thing for me because I don't know if I would have thought to give—especially if they wanted it to be a hoax. If they wanted it to be like a Halloween prank, they wouldn't have wanted to tell people it's not real, you know?

Gina (43:03) Mm-hmm. They thought people would figure it out. Yeah.

Kathryn (43:19) Yeah. And that's when I feel like they just needed a test audience first. I feel like they needed a fresh set of eyes. Like they needed to run it and just be like, “What do you think of this?” and see how people reacted, you know? Because—yeah, I don’t know.

Gina (43:23) Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe they did. I have no idea.

Gina (43:43) So this winds up turning into like kind of a textbook case of mass hysteria. But this time it was all happening through the TV. And like, to be fair, this was not the first time something like this happened. Ghostwatch gets compared a lot to the War of the Worlds radio broadcast from 1938, where Orson Welles tells everyone that aliens are invading—people panic—the whole thing. But for a lot of people...

Kathryn (43:43) Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, and even that one—sorry, I was just gonna say a lot of people think that they were trying to trick people and they weren’t even trying to trick people. Like he said at the beginning of that, “I’m going to do a dramatic reading of...” you know. But that was the same thing—people are tuning in halfway through and, you know, so that’s another one. That’s why I’m struggling to like...

Gina (44:10) No. Mm-hmm.

Kathryn (44:24) Back in Orson Welles—when that happened—it’s like they thought that they did the best they could, you know, but like...

Gina (44:29) Yeah. And I think part of it was that with the War of the Worlds, the break where you find out that it's not real—it happens from the narrator. Like Orson Welles is the one saying. Whereas Ghostwatch—it does not break. Like it never lets up. The actors do not wink. They do not say that it’s not real. They play it so straight. And it just made it so scary because it’s like the film was the ghost.

Gina (44:55) And humans have this interesting thing where our brains are wired to trust images—especially moving ones, like what’s on TV. Which makes sense, you know, like biologically, I get it. And in 1992, that was even more relevant because there was no Instagram filter culture. There was no Photoshop. There were no deepfakes. If it was on the BBC and looked like a documentary and it had Michael Parkinson and Sarah Green in it—you just believed it. It’s the default factory setting, you know?

Kathryn (44:56) Mmm. Mm.

Kathryn (45:21) Mm-hmm.

Gina (45:21) So in addition to that, there probably was some psychological phenomena going on here. There’s this thing called social contagion, which basically means that panic is infectious. So when you’re watching something scary with other people—as many of them were, like in their homes with their families—without realizing it, you start to mirror the emotions and reactions of the people that you’re with. Which I am so guilty of doing. Scary movies are way scarier when I’m watching it with someone who’s afraid. 100%.

Kathryn (45:47) Yeah. Oh my God, that’s so funny because I like—I was just gonna say the opposite. I feel like I—well, no, if someone’s afraid, that’s—I missed that part of what you said. Yeah, okay. Yes, yes, yes. I'm usually watching with Phil who’s alarmingly not afraid of anything, like to the point where I’m like, “Are you okay?” because you should be a little more scared of what’s happening right now. But yeah, but maybe that’s why, like...

Gina (45:54) Mmm. Mm.

Kathryn (46:14) ...I have a much better experience watching with people because usually Phil’s—so it’s almost like the opposite where like the social contagion is like lifting me out of my fear. Do you know what I mean? So I imagine if I’m watching with someone very afraid I would probably—yeah. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. That’s interesting.

Gina (46:20) Yes, totally, absolutely. Especially if it’s like family members, you know? Like people are sitting in their homes watching this broadcast and the only frame of reference they have for how to react is to be just as scared—if not more—than everyone else in the room. Which creates kind of like this closed circle where it’s not a big group. Like you’re looking at three, maybe four people...

Kathryn (46:44) Mm-hmm. Yeah. And also just the fact that your home is supposed to be where you’re safe. And the whole thing about the broadcast is haunted—that is such a terrifying thing. The fear probably started with—a lot of people have just kind of that disconnect of what’s real and what’s not and just trying to figure out whether or not it is real is a very scary feeling. But then once you realize, “Oh my God, this is probably real...”

Gina (46:54) Yes. Mm-hmm.

Kathryn (47:16) ...and then you realize it’s in your home, potentially—like that’s... and your kids are there. You’re afraid. You’re the parent who’s supposed to be, you know, keeping them safe. And it’s just—yeah, that’s a vicious cycle. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Gina (47:18) And your kids are right there, yeah. Yeah, like you can see how it just got people so worked up. It completely makes sense. Yeah. And actually, reports started coming out from viewers of weird things happening in their homes during the broadcast as well—mainly because they were looking for weird things. So there were reports like objects moving on their own, dogs barking at the screen, kids staring at it unblinking.

Gina (47:55) I’m not saying those people were lying, because that might have been their experience, but materially, these things probably didn’t happen. Your brain just believes something is wrong and so it starts looking for things to find wrong. And things like that only get stronger when there’s an authority figure involved—like someone telling you to believe it. It’s why you’re more likely to believe news from someone in like a white lab coat than you are someone in like a tracksuit.

Gina (48:15) So when a national treasure like Michael Parkinson is the one telling you that a ghost is coming through your TV, it just breaks your fucking brain. Like there’s just not much you can do.

Gina (48:26) This guy who wrote Ghostwatch—he’s a guy named Stephen Volk—he did wind up writing a sequel called 31/10. I don’t think it was ever filmed, but the script was nominated for a few awards. It’s also fictitious, but it revisits what in this timeline is like the sealed-off BBC studio. It gets reopened and he talks to people who were affected by the broadcast. So you can find a PDF of the script online.

Gina (48:54) I’ll link it in the show notes and we can all read it. Yeah, we can all read it together. There’s also a making-of style documentary called Ghostwatch: Behind the Curtains. I didn’t have time to watch it before this episode, but I’m definitely going to. But ultimately and interestingly, Ghostwatch has never aired in the UK again. Ever. But despite this, these days it has a pretty substantial fan base.

Gina (49:18) So do you remember that famous magician guy, Derren Brown, from like the early 2000s that everyone was obsessed with?

Kathryn (49:24) I recognize the name. I don’t know if the person I’m imagining in my head is—give me two seconds because I want to see if I’m thinking of the right person.

Gina (49:32) Actually, you know what? I just realized I was thinking about Criss Angel. Derren Brown is more relevant now than Criss Angel.

Kathryn (49:38) Yeah, no, I do recognize this guy. I don’t recognize his present-day photo, I recognize his back-then photo.

Gina (49:38) That guy. So he cites Ghostwatch as inspiration for his own hoax show that was called Seance. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And within the last few years in particular, Ghostwatch's fan base has grown like a lot. And there’s now this annual tradition where members of the fan base will watch the movie every Halloween at 9:25 PM, the same time that it originally aired, which I am definitely going to do this year.

Kathryn (49:51) We should do that. I was—okay, yeah, we should do that. Oh yeah. So can I ask—because it’s just kind of like, my brain is kind of glitching out hearing all these people who like, fucking hated this thing and then were panicked and now we have like a cult following. Do you know—

Gina (50:13) You...

Kathryn (50:32) ...don’t even want to say how we got here because I understand the process of things becoming popular like this. Anything that's taboo is eventually going to have some sort of weird cult following. But do you know if the people who are into it—do they have personal experiences with it? Or is it just like, me, some random lady who’s just like, “Oh wow, this is a good story and let’s make it a thing.” Maybe both. Could be.

Gina (50:33) I don’t know. It’s a really good question. I mean, what I’m going to say is pure conjecture. I am not sure. But I would imagine it’s a combination of people like us who didn’t see it when it originally aired but are interested in the lore behind it and like the craft that went into making it. I would guess that there’s also a substantial number of them who were kids when it aired, because a lot of the stuff I was reading online—like people who posted that they remember when it came out and stuff—they’re still fans. Like they like it, even if they were scared at the time, it’s become...

Kathryn (50:57) Might not just be one. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Gina (51:24) ...kind of like a haha, remember-that-thing. So, I don’t know, but that’s what I would guess.

Kathryn (51:27) Mm-hmm. Yeah. I also have to—I mean, you have to consider—this is you meaning me, something I didn’t consider, I should say. Of the 11 million people who tuned, only one million were panicked, I guess—which sounds weird to say. That’s still—yeah, that’s still a lot of people, but that’s...

Gina (51:48) Or only one million called, yeah.

Kathryn (51:54) ...roughly give or take 10 million people who were tuning in for enjoyment.

Gina (51:59) And granted, there were—some of the people who called in did know that it was fake, and they were calling to tell them to stop because other people wouldn’t know. Like, there’s this story about—yeah, there was a guy—he was a vicar, and he called in and basically said—I’m paraphrasing here—but he was like, “Yo, this is not fucking true.”

Kathryn (52:07) Interesting. Are you paraphrasing? Cheers!

Gina (52:27) Hehehehe. So he told them to like, cut it out. Like stop the broadcast. But then he also was like, “You are going to accidentally raise demons. So stop doing it.”

Kathryn (52:33) Anyway, sorry, I’ll continue. Yeah. So he was like, “I’m looking out for everyone else. And also you’re going to make my life harder because I’m going to have to go exorcise a bunch of bitches.” Yeah, all right. I get it. That’s fair. You know, he’s probably trying to just take a nice little Halloween break, enjoy the fall foliage. And now he’s like, “Great, I’m going to have everyone coming in.”

Gina (52:47) Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Kathryn (53:04) Wow. Wow, that’s fascinating. I’m not surprised by any of this, but it’s still—the specific stories—I don’t know. It’s just—this month is very heavy around this era, as like a little spoiler to everyone. I think that this was such a specific time period for the way media was consumed. And this is such a good example of that.

Kathryn (53:25) Like, we are very familiar with mockumentaries now—that's a huge part of pop culture. Or reality shows are nothing new. You know the difference between a scripted show and a non-scripted show. But like I said—even today—I would not know. If this aired on my television right now, I would not know that it was fake. I would figure it out...

Kathryn (53:44) The only reason I would know that it wasn’t real is I would immediately Google it as I was watching. That’s—I think what I’m trying to say. Yes.

Gina (54:03) Yes. Yeah. And people would be like live tweeting it and posting about it and shit. And there’s actually—one of the thoughts I had, which I haven’t brought up yet—but I think of this when it comes to British television all the time. It’s much more realistic because they pick realistic people. Like American TV and even news—like even non-fictional stuff—it’s always like...

Kathryn (54:21) Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Gina (54:26) ...a super either like a silver fox or like a Chad type or a blonde bombshell. Like it's just—it’s not believable because nobody looks like that in real life. But in Ghostwatch and in British television more broadly, people look like people for the most part. Don’t get me wrong, like there are definitely some body image issues here as well, but like—it’s different.

Kathryn (54:30) Mm-hmm. It’s different though. It is different. I’ve actually meant to talk to you about this just off camera because—I watched a movie and I don’t want to call out any specific actress, so I’m not going to say the name of the movie...

Kathryn (55:06) ...it was a beautifully made movie. It was a good movie, it was a well-made movie and I hated it. It was like one of those. We’ll talk about it later. So anyway, yeah, I’m not gonna call out any specific actress because it’s not—you know, I’m not dogging anyone for getting any work done. Do whatever you want to do, but...

Kathryn (55:18) ...this character was very much the type of character that would under no circumstances ever have Botox, lip filler and lash extensions. And the actress did. So immediately the whole movie I was like, I can't really fully believe you. Like I couldn’t really fully believe her. Again, I have nothing against like, you know...

Kathryn (55:44) ...the only reason I don’t have any fillers is because it’s not in the budget. Like, live your life. I’m fully on board. I love it for everyone. But there was a moment where I was like, man...

Kathryn (56:03) ...this is kind of tough because it’s so prevalent in Hollywood specifically and—I’m just like—I don’t necessarily have any opinions on it, but it did take me out of the movie 100%. Like I would never in a million years believe—if someone who looks like her was on screen during Ghostwatch, I would 100% know that it was fake immediately. So...

Kathryn (56:21) This is just my anecdote to—like to your point—I’m 100% confident that that had a lot to do with it.

Gina (56:28) Yeah, it’s just interesting. Just differences. Yeah. Well, if you liked this episode, tell your friends or else I’m going to crawl through your TV and possess you.

Kathryn (56:31) Yeah. But yeah. Yes, Gina’s the cat that is gonna come through the speakers and—yeah. Yeah. Thanks for tuning in. We’ve got a couple more. We’re only two weeks in, right? Is that—I don’t know what time is. Three episodes, two weeks. I don’t remember what your third topic is, but...

Gina (56:46) Me fuckin' now. Hell yeah. Three episodes, two weeks, baby. I remember what it is.

Kathryn (57:07) I think this is a month where we kept changing our second topics—like back and forth about—I kept changing both of mine. Anyway, yeah, tell your friends. If you enjoyed this episode, maybe leave us a review. If not, that’s okay. But don’t be scared if you see us crawling out of your television.

Gina (57:09) Mm-hmm. We warned you. We warned you.

Kathryn (57:28) We warned you. Yeah, I mean, I guess you probably should be scared, but like, don’t be surprised, I’ll say. But yeah, until next time, little spoons—keep it cool.

Gina (57:32) Yeah. Keep it creepy.