Chris
2017-10-30, 10:13 AM
25 years ago the BBC created a stir by transmitting a drama in the form of a live broadcast about a haunted house - based on the Enfield poltergeist - which some viewers apparently thought was a real live broadcast. The subsequent suicide of a teenage boy was blamed on the programme. The BBC website has an article about the furore here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-41740176
The article says the concept of the programme was years ahead of its time. Presumably that means the concept of drama dressed up to look like a live broadcast. Certainly there wasn't anything new about live broadcasts from haunted houses - Harry Price did one on the radio in 1936, and H. R. Wakefield used the idea for a ghost story, "Ghost Hunt", twelve years later. Wakefield's story can be read here:
http://www.unz.org/Pub/WeirdTales-1948mar-00016
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-41740176
The article says the concept of the programme was years ahead of its time. Presumably that means the concept of drama dressed up to look like a live broadcast. Certainly there wasn't anything new about live broadcasts from haunted houses - Harry Price did one on the radio in 1936, and H. R. Wakefield used the idea for a ghost story, "Ghost Hunt", twelve years later. Wakefield's story can be read here:
http://www.unz.org/Pub/WeirdTales-1948mar-00016