Digital Gonzo 153: Ghostwatch
To celebrate Halloween this year we’ve gone back to one of the scariest memories for many British thirtysomethings. Screened only once on Halloween in 1992 and billed as a live broadcast from the most haunted house in England. This documentary frightened the nation witless, garnering the BBC 30,000 complaint phone calls. 21 years on after only having seen it once in between the years, sometime around 2002 when it was finally released on DVD, Sharon and I ventured back into Ghostwatch.
Now what I’d suggest if you’ve never seen this is that you make it your Halloween evening viewing. If you can get to one of Britain’s last walk-in DVD stores you might be able to pick it up on disc for under a tenner. Failing that, you can find it on Vimeo in three parts by following the links below.
This show will spoil the whole thing so only listen on if you have no intention of watching or you don’t mind going in knowing everything. It’s also rather disturbing listening for some people, so proceed only if you’re up for some chilling discussion from Sharon and I about the nature of fear and our rocky relationship with it as a civilised species.
Ghostwatch – Part 1 on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/62986600
Ghostwatch – Part 2 on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/62986701
Ghostwatch – Part 3 on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/62986702
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
October 30, 2013
Hey guys.
So I’m 23 year old Australian and this is the first I’ve ever heard of this film. Despite living in a region where spiders have their own HP and MP pools, the whole thing had me shitting bricks. I seldom “enjoy” horror as an experience, but I’m always glad to have watched a good horror film as a fan of foklore.
Let me explain, and please excuse me if I waffle.
Historical forms of folklore are the linking narrative disciplines between modern fantasy and modern horror, despite being displaced in time in comparison. What makes folklore different from either is that, unlike those genres or how we think of them, folklore has no inherent or absolute purpose. Instead, it’s a string of regional superstitions that are sometimes woven into narrative form. These superstitions may not be designed to be frightening, which takes them outside the strict purview of horror, but their reliance on an imposed ignorance of the audience makes for a very close parallel.
If you consider all the “holes” in the tales of King Arthur, you might understand what I’m getting at. Those stories don’t explain why Merlin’s magic works, for instance — it merely does, because Merlin is a wizard. Many contemporary fantasy authors and audiences, regrettably, would find that to be a flaw. Rather than taking pleasure in ignorance of an unreal world and the resultant unpredictability, many audiences for fantasy materials like to organise data in a way that hypothetically makes the contents of those materials predictable. This isn’t necessarily or absolutely the wrong way to consume fantasy or horror fiction, but I don’t feel it is much in the spirit of the “source materials”, such as they are — from East Asian creation myths to Norse beliefs concerning draugr.
What makes horror such an intense viewing experience for me is how it usually does, in fact, adhere to the cardinal rules that characterise folklore. Rather than taking the enlightenment-era view that anything can be explained, it instead opts to prey on our fears and whichever gaps in our knowledge it can count upon. Lots of folklore uses what I like to call “gut logic”. It’s something that doesn’t make literal sense, but has a kind of thematic consistency to it that brings the pieces together. Say you want to place a curse upon someone to make them infertile. The “gut logic” way to do that might be to place a wilted rose under their bed. While I daresay that roses have nothing to do with the practical considerations of human fertility, the meaning of placing a wilted rose under someone’s bed should be very immediately clear.
Watching films such as Ghostwatch and even Alien, I see a very clear kinship between beliefs and stories concerning revenants from the Middle Ages and some modern media. As someone with an intense interest in history, and particularly in folklore, it makes me glad that I can take films such as these as evidence that we still have the knack. All I wish now is that modern fantasy would tap into the same strengths and understanding of people, because something drastic seems to have been lost in translation that horror has retained.
Cheers for the excellent shows, and here’s to many more.
October 30, 2013
You should definitely swing by the forum. An erudite deep-thinking chap like you would fit in supremely well there. Glad i could scare the living crap out of you enough to evoke this textured a response. -Alex
November 1, 2013
Are you aware of
What makes this screening most interesting is that it’s ‘followed by panel and Q&A with Sir Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene, Mike Smith, Craig Charles, writer Stephen Volk and director Lesley Manning, work permitting.’
November 26, 2013
That Die Hard thing…oh my god. Thank god I first saw it in it’s proper form (being a mid 90s born child).