Ghostwatch: The Night That Terrified Britain | Preview (5)

On Halloween 1992, millions tuned in for a live ghost hunt. They had no idea it was fake. This is the story of the most terrifying night in British television.

At 9.25pm on 31 October 1992, families across Britain settled in for what appeared to be a genuine live investigation into a haunted suburban home. Fronted by trusted national treasures Michael Parkinson and Sarah Greene, with Red Dwarf’s star Craig Charles reporting from the street, and a real phone-in number flashing on screen, it had every hallmark of serious, sober BBC television.

But there was one detail millions of viewers missed: the whole thing was fiction, scripted and filmed months earlier.

As the programme unfolded, the scares crept in and then escalated – a malevolent presence known as 'Pipes' glimpsed in the corner of a child's bedroom, callers flooding the studio claiming they could see it too, a young girl seemingly possessed, and finally Sarah Greene vanishing into darkness while Parkinson was left babbling a nursery rhyme, apparently possessed live on air.

Convinced they were witnessing the supernatural in real time, viewers – many of them children watching with their parents – were left genuinely terrified.

The backlash was immediate and ferocious: a jammed BBC switchboard, an estimated 50,000 complaints, a weeks-long tabloid frenzy, and, in 1994, the British Medical Journal citing it as the first television programme to cause PTSD in children. The BBC effectively disowned it, refusing to repeat or release it for a decade.

Yet the show that was buried has become a cult landmark, recognised as a startlingly innovative blueprint for the found-footage horror that followed, from The Blair Witch Project to Paranormal Activity.

Through its creator Stephen Volk, star Craig Charles, and viewers who watched as terrified children – some revisiting the programme for the very first time – this is the definitive story of Ghostwatch and its enduring legacy.

Ghostwatch: The Night That Terrified Britain airs Saturday 31st October on 5.