Ghosts On Normal TV Shows

[MorningAngel]

I was watching Harrow today (An Australian show about a pathologist) and there was a man who claimed to be a ghost. But of course he wasn’t, I knew he wouldn’t be because it’s always a predictable Scoody Doo reveal on normal TV shows with very few exceptions. They never leave it as an unsolved supernatural encounter.

If you’re lucky you’ll get something spooky unresolved at Halloween or Christmas. The best one was in Larkrise to Candlefood one Christmas.

 

[escargot]

This is a great subject. I love seeing ghosts and whatever in non-supernatural programmes.

There are numerous instances in The Sopranos, about the New Jersey Mafia.

The Mob characters are of Italian descent and hold a mixture of Catholic beliefs and superstitions. Some discuss their expectation of an easily-managed term of punishment in Purgatory and at least one appears to visit there.

Mobsters are constantly either committing murder or recalling previous hits. Victims are seen and heard in dreams.
Sometimes they 'haunt' the murderers in various ways, either in nightmares or anaesthetic-dreams as a form of PTSD or by actually appearing.

One gangster is affected enough by another's dream about the afterlife to attend a seance in which he learns to his horror that all the men he's killed are following him around. The same man later has a vision of the Virgin Mary.

The Sopranos really does have everything.

 

[Bigphoot2]

Corrie has had a few encounters with the supernatural
https://www.itv.com/coronationstree...onation-street-is-the-spookiest-place-to-live

 

[Kiwisaint]

..the Bergerac Season Four Christmas special 'Fires In The Fall' is a great example of this.

A very eerie episode encompassing a number of Fortean aspects, with a uncharacteristically ghostly (and unresolved) ending.

Has aged particularly well to.

 

[MorningAngel]

Corrie has had a few encounters with the supernatural
https://www.itv.com/coronationstree...onation-street-is-the-spookiest-place-to-live

I did vaguely remember Ivy’s ghost. I don’t remember a lot of the others. Vera coming for Jack was the best. I wish some haunting would happen with the current Coronation Street story.

 

[Nosmo King]

I did vaguely remember Ivy’s ghost. I don’t remember a lot of the others. Vera coming for Jack was the best. I wish some haunting would happen with the current Coronation Street story.

Im suprised those woods in Emmerdale arent haunted, there must be a dozen bodies buried there

 

[escargot]

Corrie has had a few encounters with the supernatural
https://www.itv.com/coronationstree...onation-street-is-the-spookiest-place-to-live

The Jack Duck-Egg crossing over scene is beautiful.

I'd never been subjected to t'soaps for many years so didn't see it at the time and had to wait for it to come up on YouTube.
There was snivelling.

 

[SimonBurchell]

I vaguely remember a fake-ghost themed episode of Murder She Wrote which ended with a teaser, with Jessic Fletcher seeing a curtian being pulled back by an unseen watcher in an empty building.

 

[escargot]

There were supernatural elements is The Bill too.

 

[SimonBurchell]

Another vague memory, the Wild West series Lonesome Dove featured Danny Glover's character reappearing as a ghost to point someone in the right direction for safety.

 

[Kiwisaint]

..there were also some eerie and supernatural aspects to 'One Foot In The Grave'.

In particular the episode 'Endgame' where Victor buys a haunted caravan, and has a premonition regarding Margaret.

 

[Beresford]

There was an episode of Knots Landing where some of the characters had to spend the night in a haunted house. It was probably the only episode of said programme I ever watched. Odd that I still remember it (vaguely) 30 odd years later.

 

[Kiwisaint]

Home To Roost: High Spirits
Matthew goes ghost hunting - in the spare room. Henry is sceptical until Matthew takes him to an allegedly-haunted railway station.

Not Going Out: The House
Lee invites Lucy's parents and Daisy to join them in an old country house for Christmas. However, there is a spooky presence

 

[TangletwigsDeux]

Last series of Whitechapel.
Brrrr. Darker and darker it got.

 

[Rushfan62]

..there were also some eerie and supernatural aspects to 'One Foot In The Grave'.

In particular the episode 'Endgame' where Victor buys a haunted caravan, and has a premonition regarding Margaret.

And the 2001 comic relief special where Victor is the ghost. A sixth sense inspired effort.

 

[catseye]

Not so much ghostly, but Fortean - I seem to be the only person in the world who remembers an episode of Crown Court (I think it was a Christmas special type) where the judge found gravity to be guilty...

 

[Rushfan62]

Anyone remember the episode of Heartbeat, where a copper (Reg?) Was abducted by aliens

 

[salt-man]

Last series of Whitechapel.
Brrrr. Darker and darker it got.

Such a shame they didn't continue with that - it was really getting interesting

 

[salt-man]

Im going to drop "So Haunt Me".

I've had to remember it, so I don't see why I should suffer alone.

 

[Coastaljames]

The "Fires in the Fall" episode of Bergerac scared the heebies out of me.

 

[TangletwigsDeux]

Oh I remember that now I have a picture to jog grey matter - yes unexpected and scary.
Wasnt there a Hamish MacBeth episode which threw a similar curveball ?

EDIT: Perusing IMDB I think it was the episode "wee Jocks Lament" which also preshadows a certain Keanu Reeves franchise!

 

[catseye]

Im going to drop "So Haunt Me".

I've had to remember it, so I don't see why I should suffer alone.

I sometimes mention 'the Great Mancunian Novel' from this and nobody knows what I'm talking about.

 

[escargot]

Im suprised those woods in Emmerdale arent haunted, there must be a dozen bodies buried there

Don't forget the plane crash! :reap:

Though not an Emmerdale fan I did watch that week's programmes. The crash and aftermath were really well-done, with lots of horror and gore expertly suggested but not shown.

I've mentioned this before -
At one point a man sees a baby's blanket dangling from a tree, then takes a closer look and throws up. You didn't need to be shown what he'd seen.
Like the bloodstained wall in Prime Suspect. Brr.

 

[Kiwisaint]

The "Fires in the Fall" episode of Bergerac scared the heebies out of me.

View attachment 39263

...that episode stayed with me from when I first watched it at 10 years old in 1986/87.

The forlorn, fading autumnal Halloween setting, the tale of greed, untimely deaths, mediumship, spiritualism, charlatanism, arson and a long-held and terrible family secret.

And of course the eerily silent, menacing black cloaked apparition (with the great vague, twist ending that was counter to the series usual structured resolutions).

 

[Coastaljames]

...that episode stayed with me from when I first watched it at 10 years old in 1986/87.

Me too! And I would have been 10 as well.

 

[CarlosTheDJ]

Me too! And I would have been 10 as well.

And me.

 

[catseye]

And me.

God you lot make me feel old.

 

[ghughesarch]

I still have occasional nasty recollections of the poltergeist in "The Waltons"

 

[escargot]

Me too! And I would have been 10 as well.

And me.

God you lot make me feel old.

I'd be about 30 then!

It was a superb episode.
Just as good was A Man Of Sorrows, featuring The Messiah (which I can sing!) and the then-derelict London Docklands, with action scenes in Leadenhall Market. Not supernatural though, just atmospheric and full of locations that were about to be gentrified.

The Jerripedia website ('sharing knowledge about Jersey's people, places and heritage') has this to say about the Bergerac supernatural episodes:
(Ineptly paragraphed by me to break up the dense text)

The 4th season episode What Dreams May Come? was the start of an annual tradition of episodes with stories that bordered on the supernatural, with a surreal atmosphere.

Later episodes with fantasy elements included the bizarre poisoning of freemasons in Poison,

the Christmas episode Fires in the Fall (which features a Bergman-esque representation of Death which appears, to judge from the last line, to have been real in spite of a 'Scooby-Doo' explanation having been offered a scene earlier),

A Man of Sorrows which is the only episode of the sixth series set almost entirely outside Jersey, the only episode at all to lack Charlie Hungerford and - partly because of the heroin nature of the storyline, partly because of the lack of familiar characters - a dark, humourless episode unlike any other in the series),

the densely plotted The Other Woman,

The Dig involving an apparent Viking's curse (apparently inspired by Hammer Horror movies),

and Warriors about a group who believed in the existence of Atlantis.

 

[NomDeGuerre]

Rising Damp's Halloween episode, Things That Go Bump In The Night, features a seance and Rigsby telling his tenants stories of the 'Grey Lady' who supposedly haunts the boarding house.

Also, there's a Christmas special of One Foot In The Grave in which the Meldrews inadvertently purchase a haunted caravan.