Review: "World's Scariest Hauntings"

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…!