Ghostwatch seems like an appropriate film for April Fool’s Day. Seven years before The Blair Witch Project marketed itself as an actual piece of found footage, a documentary, the BBC scarred viewers young and old with their television production of Ghostwatch.

Staged like so many other BBC investigative programmes, and despite a brief intro proclaiming it as a film, that countless missed, viewers ended up thinking they were watching an actual event, augmented by a dial-in phone number that documented their own paranormal tales. Those who called in were also advised that the show was a prerecorded film, but no one seemed to care, they all got swept up in the horrors they were seeing on screen.

With the show’s presenters playing versions of themselves including Red Dwarf’s Craig Charles, the film follows an investigative team that is, in their first show, going to investigate a home that seems to be suffering from paranormal activity, much like what was documented in the Enfield poltergeist case from the late 1970s.

It’s focused on Pamela (Brid Brennan) and her daughters, Suzanne (Michelle Wesson) and Kim (Cherise Wesson). Both of the kids have claimed to see someone (something?) called Pipes.

In the studio, the Presenter, Micheal Parkinson coordinates with the on-site investigators while conducting in-studio interviews with paranormal investigators, like Yvonne (Linda Broughton) and American skeptics, like Dr. Sylvestri (Colin Stinton).

While Charles conducts man-on-the-street interviews around the council housing that the events are taking place in, the Reporter, Sarah Greene whose husband, Mike Smith is in charge of the phone-in section of the studio, investigates the house with her camera crew.

From the off, the studio begins getting calls about seeing strange figures on the screen, and the descriptions given match the description that the girls later give to Sarah.

As the evening progresses things get more mysterious in the house, even if things are temporarily debunked, and things escalate terrifyingly not only there, but in the studio, and across the country as calls begin to report strange events happening everywhere.

Perhaps Pipes and his evil will be unleashed on the entire UK!

The creators of the film have cited that there may be a total of thirteen appearances of Pipes throughout the film, if you know where to look for him/it though as it currently stands, there are only about 8 confirmed appearances.

Watching it now, it’s a delight, you can revel in the fact that this film much like Welles’ radio broadcast of War of the Worlds sent countless people into a complete panic. Even though at one point, the Presenter tells viewers to turn the programme off if they are getting too frightened.

For what it is, Ghostwatch stands up pretty well, and while not quite a found footage film, it can definitely enjoy company in the genre. I quite enjoyed this one.