Ghostwatch

Criminal

Vox Media Podcast Network

Society & Culture, True Crime

4.7 • 39.4K Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On Halloween night, in 1992, an unusual television special aired on the BBC. Nobody expected what happened next. “The technicians were looking up at the big screen in the lobby, saying to each other, ‘My God, what's going on in Studio One?’” This episode was first released in 2022. Say hello on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, special merch deals, and more. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The program you're about to watch is a unique live investigation of the supernatural.
0:15.0	It contains material which some viewers may find to be disturbing. No creaking gates, no Gothic towers, no shutter windows. Yet for the past
0:25.0	ten months, this house has been the focus of an astonishing barrage of supernatural activity.
0:32.3	On Halloween night in 1992, at 9.25 p.m., an unusual television show aired on the BBC.
0:40.4	So welcome live this Halloween night to the first ever TV Ghost Watch.
0:45.4	We're going to investigate one of the most baffling and fascinating areas of human experience,
0:49.5	the supernatural.
0:50.6	Tonight, television is going ghost hunting in an unprecedented scientific experiment.
0:55.0	We hope to show you for the first time, irrefutable proof that ghosts really do exist.
1:01.0	The host, a long-time BBC talk show host and journalist named Michael Parkinson, told viewers how the live investigation would work.
1:13.1	The BBC's Sarah Green would be spending the night at a house that was said to be haunted
1:17.6	with a small camera crew, reporting live on whatever happened at the house.
1:24.1	During the show, people at home could call a phone number, broadcast on the screen, and share their own experiences with ghosts, and also to comment on whatever they were seeing on the show.
1:36.3	This style of live broadcast was popular at the time. There was a show called Crime Watch that also had a call-in element, and one called
1:45.7	Hospital Watch. This one, on Halloween night, was called Ghost Watch. The host, Michael
1:53.9	Parkinson, introduced a woman in the studio with him as an expert on the paranormal, who would
1:59.5	help explain what was going on during the show.
2:02.6	She said she had been investigating, the haunted house, which was in London, on a street called Foxhill Drive, for months.
2:09.6	We ran a computer program of all the haunted locations in the UK, and then we did a census of all the various investigators,
2:16.6	and they were all
2:17.7	unanimous that Foxel had more tangible phenomena on record than what I was going to
2:23.8	say any place in the world but certainly any place in the UK.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Vox Media Podcast Network, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Vox Media Podcast Network and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.