I can understand why this show scared people when it came out. Filmed like some BBC live documentary, the show looks generally real. There are some places where the editing or camera-work would not have happened that way in a real live show, but I would expect people wouldn't think about that, and obviously kids wouldn't notice.The problem with Ghostwatch is because it wants to be convincingly real, it starts out convincingly slowly. Over the first half hour there are talking-heads style interviews and general chit chat and information stuff that would only interest people who were really interested in seeing a ghost documentary. In fact, I suspect one reason this show was so effective is that the most skeptical people would have tuned out through boredom early on, leaving only believers watching by the end.After the first tedious half hour I decided to fast forward until it looked like something interesting was going on. I wound up moving ahead another half hour.But once you're into the last third of the movie, things get pretty intense. Even if you know it's a mockumentary, the final moments are truly chilling, and I can only imagine how terrifying this was to those who thought it was a real documentary.Keep an eye out for ghostly apparitions. I missed most of them, although there is a youtube video that collects them all.

I was 12 years old, just happened to be at home watching TV on Haloween of 1992, Ghostwatch came on and looked interesting so I continued to watch it, thinking it was an interesting bit of fun with maybe the chance of something happening in the most haunted house in England! Then half way through the reality TV show started to turn into a truly scary experience, with things going wrong and the fact the viewer believed it was recorded live (which was later revealed was not) made it an experience that will most likely never be achieved again! There is a part where viewers rang the show live from their homes and reported all kinds of scary things happening, for example their dogs wont stop barking and a Glass table shattering after being touched etc, this all added to the realism and also made all the viewers paranoid that something was going to happen in their own home! (I was one of them) This show was the most scary thing ever created by any production company in the world, and I understand why it was banned for 10 years (due to a couple of people committing suicide for believing it was real apparently) when I watch it now it seems clear that the children were acting, but at the time it was not so obvious! If you plan on letting your children watch this be careful, because they will get scared and may not sleep for a few nights! A real masterpiece!

As a skeptic of all things faked or imagined, I found 'Ghostwatch (1992)' to be fantastically interesting. The programme's earnestness would have irked me, had the whole thing not been a complete put-on. 'Ghostwatch,' hosted by Michael Parkinson, aired on Halloween 1992, and purported to be a live 90-minute broadcast from a supposedly haunted suburban house. Things start off ordinarily enough, with the presenters seeming to enjoy themselves, but within 90 minutes all hell has broken loose. I suppose I might have been unnerved had I watched the programme back in 1992, especially considering the well-known and respected personalities involved, but in this case I just sat back and enjoyed the theatrics: the equipment malfunctions; the grisly anecdotes of molestation, suicide, and animal decapitation; the fleeting glimpses of a bloodied male figure. Apparently, not everybody was amused. The BBC received a multitude of complaints, and 'Ghostwatch' has even been cited as causing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in several children who were still watching after the 9pm watershed. Also probably, while we're at it, a huge influence on films like 'The Blair Witch Project (1999)' and 'Paranormal Activity (2007).'

The mark of 2/10 represents the score for a program that tried to be a serious investigation into the paranormal. Let's face it, if you were going to try and convince me that this was a serious paranormal investigation, then you don't have Sarah Greene, Mike Smith, Michael Parkinson and Craig Charles as presenters as well as a lot of obvious actors pretending they were scientists or victims of poltergeists. All we needed was Noel Edmonds.Anyone who thought this was real and was genuinely scared by it is beyond help. What scared me was how the BBC could waste licence payers money on such crap!!!