Monday 29 November 2010

Tap tap tap tap




One of the girls' drawings of 'Pipes'

An actor was used to play the ghost and could be glimpsed momentarily throughout the programme. Here he is by the curtain.






Following on from the Enfield poltergeist post...

BBC's Ghostwatch (1992)

A mentally disturbed man, possessed by the spirit of a 19th century child killer named Mother Seddons, hanged himself in the under-the-stairs cubby hole in the 1960s, with only his hungry cats for company. Thirty years later, the current occupants of the property, a mother and her two daughters, are plagued by paranormal activity, the daughters claim to see a bald man in a black dress with no eyes. Cue some of the BBCs most high profile presenters of the time - Michael Parkinson, husband and wife pair Mike Smith and Sarah Greene, and, er, Craig Charles - to present a proto-Most Haunted live show on Halloween night to 'prove once and for all the existence of the supernatural'.
Except the programme was not live, but a pre-recorded, albeit convincing, drama in which 'viewers' rang in throughout the show reporting strange phenomena in their own houses or spotting 'Pipes'- the nickname the family had given the ghost - in the footage. The programme ended with the 'ghost' sabotaging the video to make everything look like all was well in the house before destroying the studio, whilst in the house itself chaos reigned' complete with a teenage girl belching out an Exorcist-style voice, and Sarah Greene trapped in the fateful cubby hole with Pipes himself.

Enfield Poltergeist





Between August 1977 and September 1978 a series of events attributed to a poltergeist were investigated at a house in Ponders End, Enfield.
An account was published as 'This House is Haunted' by Guy Lyon Playfair. There's planty of details elsewhere on the internet and an interesting report from BBC's 'Nationwide' on Youtube, but the main fascination in these pics was always the posters on the wall.

Sunday 21 November 2010

Edward Gorey







Images from "Les Passementeries Horribles" (1976) by Edward Gorey