YMMV / Screen One S 4 E 9 Ghostwatch

• Accidental Innuendo: The phrase 'glory hole', which carried an entirely different connotation in the UK at the time (it referred to a cupboard under the stairs. Make all the Harry Potter jokes you like), is repeated throughout. Please accept this fact and move on. Director Leslie Manning gives a similarly-worded disclaimer at live screenings. Regardless, chortling invariably ensues every time the phrase is spoken.
• Complete Monster: The malevolent spirit nicknamed "Mr. Pipes" is a vile entity, and the two people that make up the ghost were just as vile even before they became one:
  • Mother Seddons was a baby farmer in the Victorian era who would murder the children under her care by drowning. Even more than a century after her death, her legend was used to scare local children. Her violent ghost would continue to haunt the land she once inhabited, including possessing local pedophile Raymond Tunstall to abduct children and mutilate a pregnant dog. Seddons would later drive him to insanity and suicide, making him hang and electrocute himself, then allow his corpse to be eaten by cats. Seddons' influence would continue to be felt after she and Tunstall became the entity "Pipes", harming, threatening, and abducting the Early children. When the show Ghostwatch broadcasts the events, "Pipes" uses the connection as a giant séance to possess the host and wreak havoc on the viewers around the world.
  • Raymond Tunstall was a depraved individual even prior to his possession by Seddons. Described by his own parole officer as someone who "should never even have been let near a community", Tunstall was a violent pedophile who abused and molested many local minors. Hiding out in a relative's basement while on parole, Tunstall was influenced and later possessed by Seddons to abduct children and eventually take his own life. Returning as the entity "Pipes", Tunstall's pedophilic desires were carried over, leading to the frequent harm, possession, molestation, and eventual abduction of the Early family's eldest daughter Suzanne. Using Ghostwatch's broadcast of the events, "Pipes" goes on to influence more chaos, including reports of children acting possessed.
• Cult Classic: Despite gaining a reputation for scaring viewers to the point kids were diagnosed with PTSD, those that did watch the special never forgot it, especially when fans got together online to reminisce. Today the special is seen as something ahead of its time, and people continue to scour the special looking for more Pipes sightings.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Dr Emilio Sylvestri. In the original DVD commentary, the creators note that at film school screenings he always gets an immediate positive response.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Two interesting examples: In the fictional setting, the phone switchboard jams with calls from terrified viewers. This happened in real life as the programme was airing. Secondly, at one point Parkinson chides a distraught mother for allowing her children to watch a TV show after the nine o' clock watershed. The show creators would end up using that very point as part of their defense against subsequent criticism.
  • Pretty much any time the programme would mention the nature audiences had to their airing is this considering how much Ghostwatch lead to people thinking it was legitimate.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Pretty much the whole thing, but particularly Pipes' few onscreen appearances either subliminally, or stalking the cast everywhere they go.
  • The explanation of Pipes's appearance. He's the ghost of a child molester from the 1970s or 80s named Raymond Tunstall, who killed himself in the Earlys' house. He had locked himself in a room with his cats...cats are carnivores...they ate his face.
  • Arguably what made Ghostwatch so terrifying was because it came off as realistic. With having actual celebrities that were known within big BBC shows and programs and a "family" that came off as an actual family gave people a sense of awe and terror. It's arguably why people compare it to the infamous The War of the Worlds radio broadcast that terrified US towns.
  • The ending. Holy crap. Sarah disappears looking for Suzy, the broadcast has spread Pipes ala The Virus to every television in the United Kingdom and by the end, seems to have possessed Parkinson.
• Paranoia Fuel: An especially dark version of this, as viewers who thought it was real would have been led to think they might be letting a malevolent ghost into their home via their TV set.
• Unintentional Period Piece: It has a distinct Nineties feel, aping then-emerging docudramas and making use of technology that was in vogue at the time, such as the light pen and the infrared vision (the latter commonly used on Gulf War reports).
  • Harsher in Hindsight: ...which actually is why, on first broadcast, it was accepted as realistic. Unlike Special Bulletin and other films of a similar kind, it didn't use any noticeable accelerated time, only having the haunting events happen seemingly unrealistically fast. Also, if you stripped out the real credits, the presentation is spot on for the real shows it was copying at the time. Anyone looking at a mid-90's episode of Crimewatch UK then a clip from the middle of Ghostwatch would think they were both genuine shows.
  • Anyone who missed the first minute would be easily fooled into thinking it was a extra-long pilot commissioned for Halloween, having missed the extra long continuity announcement.
• Vindicated by History: When it first aired, it sparked a national panic which resulted in viewers being diagnosed with PTSD and at least one suicide. After the younger audience grew up and recollected the special online, it was reappraised for predating the similarly viral hit The Blair Witch Project by seven years. It later found a new audience after Inside No. 9 did a similar concept for their live Halloween special.
• The Woobie: The Earlys and Sarah Green.

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