And if so, how did it make you feel at the time?

This article about it is absolutely fascinating:

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/tv-radio/2017/10/ghostwatch-halloween-hoax-changed-language-television

Bit of an unexpected disaster for the Beeb that one, although I didn’t know that until after reading that article just now.
I think I’ll do a YouTube search for it.

Edit; yup, it’s on YouTube.

It was laughably bad.

I was stoned and it scared the crap out of me.

I remember it being bad – what surprises me now is that it wasn’t live. I suppose if anything they at least achieved an authentic sensation of the grinding tedium of those live BBC broadcast-athons.

Passing drama off as documentary is all well and good but with the president of ‘War of the Worlds’ passing drama of a as ‘live’ means you’re skating on thin ice.

Rob Farquar’s early films were interesting – they were spoof documentaries and sort of hidden in plain sight. They were listed as documentaries, not really trailed, announced quite casually an most importantly they had acting performances by people who you wouldn’t imagine has a shrewd of acting potential.

He did one called “Sex Lies and Michael Aspel” revealing Michael Aspel as someone who’d had a string of affairs with public figures (everyone from Valeries Singleton to Pamela Anderson) siring dozens of illegitimate children who he’d then pulled strings for to get them careers in TV. There were some great performances but the whole thing held together because they were able to use lots of real footage of his bastard celebrity offspring where Aspel happened to be in the background.

A later one features Dale Winton and Nel Macpherson getting married – Tara Parker-Thompkinson as Winton’s jilted ex lover was properly bloody brilliant.

What was interesting about these is they took people in – lots of people genuinely thought they’d seen documentary – but it wasn’t scandalous. I’ve been chatting to people years after it was aired who really though Aspel fathered all those celebrities but when they realise it was a hoax they just find that funny, they don’t feel cheated.

What in peculiar though is – everything Farquar has done since is straight, factual documentary. (I think)

I remember it well and find it hard to believe that it was twenty five years ago!

It was genuinely awful and I had no idea about the subsequent repercussions until reading the article.

I was 12 and it did shit me up, until I spotted who played the ghost in the credits.

I remember my dad telling me it was bollocks!

I was 13, I remember my dad telling me it was bollocks, and everyone at school saying it was bollocks. I’d pretty much forgotton I ever watched it. Amazing to hear it triggered mental health issues for some.

off my face on drugs and it freaked my then girlfriend and myself quite a bit
during that night, we were staying in nurses quarters of an old hospital which didnt help.
sense kicked in the next morning

Omg I had totally forgotten about that! I was 11 and had no experience of watching anything supernatural and I completely believed it was real. By the end I was in tears and really scared and it was only at the very end in the studio that my mum realised what I was watching and told me it wasn’t real but I was distraught by then. I have never liked supernatural horror since then.

Edit wow just read the article! No idea that there was such a back lash. At least I wasn’t the only one to be sucked in then! I remember Sarah green vividly but can’t remember Craig Charles! Perhaps I hadn’t watched red dwarf at that point.

I don’t remember Craig Charles either at the time.

I watched it. Thinking back I don’t remember being scared of the flashes of the ghost or the ending … But I found the tension and anticipation uneasy. I can’t even stand tension in a soap drama let alone something like ghost watch. Yet gore and the fright itself doesn’t affect me.

I never realised the backlash either. Blimey.

I remember it well and rewatched it a year or two ago. I was completely taken in until right near the very end and then the final studio bit just confirmed it was b0llocks. It was all that was spoken about the next day at school. I also remember the backlash, being a paper boy at the time I used to read most of the front pages.

Pipes… eeeek!!

i was 15 and wasn’t 100% sure if it was real or not, i know i was a bit scared… and there were a few of my mates who also felt the same…

still, that Pipes fella…. *shudders*

They just overestimated the ability of a slice of their audience to put two and two together and make four.

It was pretty revolutionary telly, TBH, in the context of live shows, which are two-a-penny now, the merging of documentary, news and drama. Looks ropey when you view it now, but it genuinely took the BBC somewhere it hadn’t gone before.

It’s hard to believe just how much people took BBC output at face value back then and with an uncritical acceptance of what they were seeing.

Amazing to hear it triggered mental health issues for some.

That’s a bit of a stretch. The subject of someone’s delusional behaviour isn’t necessarily the cause of it.

It was crap then and crap now.

It made me feel like I wasted 5 mins of my life and again replying to this thread.

Why even talk about it years later?

Move forward in life and don’t live in the past.

That’s a bit of a stretch. The subject of someone’s delusional behaviour isn’t necessarily the cause of it.

Precisely.

It’s hard to believe just how much people took BBC output at face value back then and with an uncritical acceptance of what they were seeing.

As opposed to these days when a lot will just believe anything any broadcaster tells them?

I was 18 and doing far too much LSD far too regularly in those days.

Watched it off my face and it freaked me out.

Watched it again the next day without the mid altering drugs and couldn’t believe how bad it was.

Frankenstein – Member
It was crap then and crap now.

It made me feel like I wasted 5 mins of my life and again replying to this thread.

Why even talk about it years later?

Move forward in life and don’t live in the past.
Well, you certainly wasted the time it took me to read your pointless post.

I was 14-ish and it terrified me. Like it says in the article, we didn’t get to watch it til the end so it left everything hanging at the creeping horror/chaos bit, without the shark-jumpy studio bit. I got the DVD a few years back and I still find it really creepy, it’s not because it’s good, it’s because it’s compellingly shambolic and amateurish- Craig Charles and Sarah Green were perfect.

The next day at school, there were 2 groups- kids who weren’t allowed to watch it, and kids who hadn’t slept.