25 years ago this October, the UK’s BBC One network aired what many consider the scariest television show ever broadcast: Ghostwatch. It was ninety minutes long and it was transmitted live on Halloween night, 1992. It only aired once. For over two decades the show has been available only to the producers themselves, certain international television studios and the select few who recorded it — on VHS — the very night it premiered. Never replayed in the UK again, it is now available in the states for the first time and is streaming on Shudder.

“We don’t want to give anybody sleepless nights.” — Michael Parkinson, BBC

To say Ghostwatch was ahead of its time is an understatement. Pre-dating all of today’s ghost-hunting television series and feature films like The Blair Witch Project, REC, V/H/S and every other found-footage Horror feature ever, this mockumentary targeted English audiences much the way Orson Welles and his famous 1938 War of the Worlds radio play feigned a real live alien invasion here in America, only Ghostwatch was to be a live on-air haunting.

Presented as a live documentary and hosted by major news personalities of the day, the Ghostwatch BBC television special promised irrefutable proof that ghosts do exist. Hosted by Michael Parkinson who was essentially the Anderson Cooper of the day, the show had an atmosphere of journalistic professionalism which only served to heighten the scares. Viewers were shown graphic ‘home video’ of a family being terrorized by ghostly malevolence in the form of an evil entity they had named, Pipes. As the show continued, audiences watched in horror as this spirit’s dark power grew ever stronger, eventually murdering members of the crew, infecting the BBC Elstree Studios miles away, and possessing the show’s host.

Over 30,000 people called into the network having been fooled and scared to death by the show’s documentary style production. The British tabloids and other networks condemned BBC for days over the upsetting nature of the broadcast, even claiming it had caused PTSD in some children. Tragically, a teenager even committed suicide the very same week it aired, leaving behind a note which read: “If there are ghosts, I will be with you always as a ghost”.

Beyond its impact on a generation of viewers and future filmmakers, Ghostwatch is a genius piece of television. It uses feature-film plot and pacing techniques to heighten the fear, while manipulating the medium of TV with call-in hotlines, VHS edits and pre-recorded scenes presented as ‘live’ footage. When interviewed years later about the show, host Michael Parkinson said, “It was a simple ghost story. None of us thought we were creating something that would be one of TV’s most remembered programs”.

Simple, horrifying, innovative or all three, you can experience the horror yourself when you turn down the lights and clock in for your own Ghostwatch tonight. Viewer discretion is most definitely advised.