Matt
Blyth (Dir.), “World’s Scariest Hauntings”, Woodcut Media, UK, 2018-19.
There
are a bunch of these kinds of shows out there in the world and some of them are
truly horrible. Watching several of them in recent weeks I’ve started to
discern that, where the ‘recreations’ of events, by actors dressed shabbily as
ghostly beings, outweighs the discussions of history or potential supernatural
incursions, then the show is particularly on the nose. I’ve chosen this
particular one to feature because the production values are pretty high and
watching it doesn’t incline one’s eyeballs to start bleeding: it’s on the ‘good’
end of the spectrum in terms of production but it’s hardly representative. It also
displays a curious ethos which – quite apart from issues of ghosts and other
phenomena – makes for fairly compelling viewing.
The
formula for these shows is predictable: a location is highlighted; its
background is laid out, with emphasis on evil deeds of days gone by; and reports
of modern-day encounters with supernatural events are discussed. Because this
is television, and the need for ad breaks is a necessary (non-spooky) evil,
actors in ghost-drag pop up repeatedly to bookend chapters and to remind viewers
to keep up. In between there are conversations with people who have ‘seen’ ghostly
manifestations or with those who hope to see something strange. As I said, in
the worst of these shows, the actors take up a large percentage of the run-time,
along with tedious stretches wherein paranormal experts and ‘psychics’, lit by weird
green or white lights, deliver jump scares, or talk to the air in quavering
tones. If the shows were just tours and recreations – a bit of history with a
smattering of dressing up – I would be happy; but it’s these so-called ‘paranormal
experts’ who really give me the irrits.
This
is perhaps the point where I part ways with many folk who enjoy this kind of
programming. I don’t care how people make their livelihoods but, as long as
they do it honestly, that’s fine with me. I have a tripwire sense of when
someone is play-acting in order to convince me of something bogus, and every
time I see one of these ‘experts’ at work, my bullshit senses start to tingle.
In this particular show there are a handful of commentators that show up to
pass judgement on reported events and they exhibit varying levels of smooth
competence in an attempt to reassure people that there are rules which govern
the Afterlife and to imply that they are past masters in dealing with them. In
fact, they all spout the ‘rules’ that govern Patrick Swayze’s spectral
re-emergence in the movie “Ghost”, adding here and there a bunch of
urban mythology cobbled together from issues of Fortean Times. Let’s
meet them…
The
two most egregious talking heads in “World’s Scariest Hauntings” are
Barri Ghai and Becca Bratek. In every episode they earnestly deliver deadpan
screeds of how ghosts think, feel, act and react, telling us that the dead
struggle to interact with the Real World, that they generate energy in order to
manifest and that they long for times and modes of being which have passed them
by. Every time they show up, I’m left wondering how do they know this
stuff? Scientifically, no-one has ever recorded the ‘energy’ of which they
speak, and yet they gleefully talk about ‘orbs’ as precursor wind-ups to ‘full-body
manifestations’, accumulating power while waiting to pop out and say “boo!”.
They break down encounters into sentient manifestations, or poltergeists, or ‘echoes’,
and each of these categories has a delineated form and function, which these
learned individuals tick off to show us the extent of their wisdom. The
juggling of all this folklore gets presented in a pretty slick fashion, only
undercut by Barri’s inability to properly conjugate the word ‘phenomenon’.
The
essential issue that I have with all of their earnest pontificating is that
there is no way to verify that what they’re spouting is true. How do we
know that ghosts are there? If they are there, how do we know – definitively
- what they are feeling? Or how they would be inclined to react to
someone lobbing questions at them from a darkened room? It’s all their word
against ours and Becca, especially, deals out her lines with an aggressive ‘go
ahead: tell me I’m lying’ attitude. At base, there is no way to shut down these
‘experts’ because there’s no way to definitively quantify the rubbish that they’re
talking about. Other than using Occam’s Razor and a good deal of common sense,
obviously. Until then, the producers aren’t about to let pesky facts get in the
way of a good story.
Another
commentator is Jolene Lockwood. She delivers all of the same slick patter that
her colleagues espouse but in a smug fashion, dropping references to her own
experiences, that makes her delivery seem somewhat indulgent and preening. On
top of everything else, she particularly adheres to a crazy theory that goes by
the name of “stone-taping”. This is a phenomenon (Barri!) whereby it is deemed
possible that sounds and other environmental elements become imprinted on the
fabric of a location – the walls, plasterwork, furnishings, etc. Now, there are
some very interesting studies that have been done on ancient pottery, whereby lasers
have been able to reproduce ancient ambient noise imprinted on wet clay as it
was being formed in much the same fashion that vinyl grooves on records can be
made to elicit sound, but this is not that. This is a clear case where, given a
certain fact, it has been stretched to encompass a range of phenomena (Barri!) that
simply aren’t part of the brief. “Stone-taping” is based upon some fascinating
research, onto which it has eagerly glommed, but it doesn’t work, and cannot
work in the way these ‘experts’ want it to, and it ultimately cheapens the
efforts of the original researchers.
Another
tool that these ghost hunters espouse is a thing called EVP or “Electronic
Voice Phenomena”. This is a process whereby a tape recorder or similar device,
digital or analogue, is used to record ambient noise. This environmental
soundscape is then picked through, augmented, and analysed for snippets of
sound that seem to replicate human speech. In a few cases, the ‘speech’ seems
fairly clear and occasionally pertinent to the situation under which it was
recorded; in other cases, it’s just noise soup. Still, our bevy of experts get
wildly excited. It’s at this point I think of the term ‘pareidolia’ and several
other terms which are used to define the ability of the human mind to find
patterns in random background mess and confer meaning upon these discovered
shapes. This can be done with audio information as well as visual noise and the
minute examination of blurry photographic imagery often elicits the presence of
semi- or quasi-human shapes for our breathless investigators. But do any of
these experts use the term ‘pareidolia’, or ‘apophenia’? Do they discuss Charles
Fort’s infatuation with simulacra? No they don’t, and it’s particularly remiss
of them.
The
fourth talking head that the program presents us with is a soft-spoken chap in
a jumper named Richard McLean Smith who runs a ghost-busting podcast. Of the
quartet, he is the only one who maintains an equivocal stance, allowing for the
possibility that the “ghosts” might not in fact be real. Where his colleagues
say ‘oh, this is obviously a case of blah, blah, blah…’, he usually takes a
less emphatic stance: ‘it’s possible that this is an instance of…’, ‘this
may well be a case of…’, and so on. This unwillingness to pin things
down with certainty is a breath of fresh air in contrast to the others; still,
he’s an advocate of the “stone tape” theory, so there’s that…
Quite
apart from the fact that the lore governing paranormal investigators is mostly
derived from pop culture sources like “Ghost”, it has been allowed to
grow and fester, becoming a body of ‘knowledge’ built upon the most flimsy of premises,
underscored by a fervid willingness to believe and to make bank. It’s a case of
Velikovskian construction which melts whenever too great a focus is brought to
bear upon it. And the fact that all of our commentators are busy making a
living from this pixie dust, lends the entire process a grubby and
self-interested aspect.
I
said at the start that there was a curious ethos surrounding this stuff. It
partakes of this accumulated pop-cultural lore and adds to it a high degree of
salesmanship and self-delusion. It’s fascinating to watch what these experts
come out with – whether it’s trying to convince us that an electronic garble is
someone telling us to “Get Out!” (a la “Amityville Horror”) or that a
lens glitch on an inexpertly utilised camera is anything other than a
unfocussed moth flitting by – and to see how they sell it. In some of these types
of shows the carny atmosphere is quite elevated and you’d be expecting these
guys to have day jobs in used car lots; in others, the patter is smooth as silk
and you’d never feel these guys delving into your pocket for your wallet. In
essence, these operators are all stage magicians, but ones who work in a very
narrow field of genre expectation. In the end it’s all just misdirection and
suggestion. For the roleplayers amongst you, it’s a handy way to research and set
up an occult detection narrative in your games, but don’t, for a second, buy
into what they’re selling.
In
the final analysis, enjoy these offerings for what they are – spooky storytelling;
but take them with a grain of salt. And don’t let them sell you any bridges…!
