Topic: Ghostwatch

Creepy Things That Seem Real But Aren’t is a series that explores modern urban legends, bringing you a new tale each week.

Ghost Hunters, Most Haunted, Paranormal State, Ghost Adventures… These days, television is full of paranormal programming that purports to track ghostly phenomena, and each and every one of them swears up, down, left, and right that they’re the real deal. But in 1992, these types of shows were far from the norm. So when the BBC decided to air a 90-minute special on Halloween that claimed to be a live, on-air investigation of ongoing poltergeist activity at a house in Northolt, a neighborhood in west London, the public’s reaction was a great deal less jaded than our own would have been—especially given how the tragic events of the night unfolded. The program was called GHOSTWATCH, and it would go down in history as one of the BBC’s biggest mistakes. More »