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Spooky Seventies TV (Again)

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Anonymous

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Going back to the subject of a previous thread on fortean related 70's TV , I remember being completely spooked as a kid by a report on Nationwide ( shown at 6.00ish after the news) which was about a tape recording which had been made in a disused aircraft hanger somewhere that had ghostly conversations on it . This was on a primetime news show. Was TV just weirder in the 70's.
Does anyone else remember this , or can anyone tell me anything about the (real life ) case it was based on ?
 
I think this could be it! From The Ghost Handbook by John & Anne Spencer:

Bircham Newton Airfield
(Near Hunstanton, Norfolk)

Built in 1914, this airfield was, for a time, derelict, and recommissioned for the Second World War. The modern training centre on the site has a reputedly haunted squash court where the ghost of a man in RAF uniform has been seen on the walkway overlooking the court. A tape recorder left running overnight recorded the sounds of an active airfield, machinery, aircraft in flight, male and female voices and strange groaning sounds. Equipment failure - reported in many ghost hunts - is frequently the case here, and even affected a BBC Nationwide television crew who stayed there overnight. There are a number of other associated ghost and poltergeist reports from the old airfield.
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Though the book doesn't go into specifics, a quick Google has revealed the ghosts of two fencing RAF officers, and a car-load of ghostly aircrew who crash into a hanger wall and then vanish.

I also found this , which would suggest that there's still some spooky stuff going on over there! Has anyone heard the tape? I looked for a site that might have it as a download, but couldn't find one. Perhaps that's for the best - I'd like to hear it, but not just before I go to bed :eek!!!!:
 
bod said:
Was TV just weirder in the 70's.
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Yes. And Nationwide doubly so. Maybe there was a lack of "local shops for local people" back then; or not enough giant leaks to go around? Who knows, really.

Johnnyboy has beaten me to the links...

Jane.
 
Talking of haunted hangars, the place where I work is next to a local airport which was an RAF bomber station during the war. Our office is opposite what was always known as Hangar 2, now a TNT depot, which had a very sinister reputation. Never heard or saw any odd things emanating from Hanger 2 myself, although some odd sounds have been heard in our offices (which used to be the Ops room during the war).

Carole
 
carole said:
... some odd sounds have been heard in our offices (which used to be the Ops room during the war).
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Sounds creepy Carole! What sort of noises?

I wonder why so many RAF airfields seem to have hauntings in comparison with the other services? I suppose there must be plenty of haunted army barracks and naval bases, but we don't seem to hear about those as much. Maybe it's because so many old WWII airfields have been turned to other uses, so any sightings are far more likely to be reported than at operational bases.

Are there any cases of haunted warships? I would've thought that, for example, HMS Victory and HMS Belfast might have a ghostly matelot or two floating around...

Back to Nationwide, and I seem to recall that they quite often had features on ghosts and ghost hunts, possibly around Halloween (I'm pretty sure there was at least one live investigation around then, with reports throughout the show). I also have vivid memories of a piece on Borley Rectory and Church, where a tape made overnight in the church had various bumps, crashes and a distinct human sigh. This was rather frightening, but at the same time fascinating to me (I'd have been about six years old), and was probably one of the things that started off my interest in this sort of thing.
 
We have an attic over the workshop area (which was the original ops room, the building has been extended since WWII); a couple of times when I was working over on my own, I heard footsteps above. It was definitely not the building 'settling down' for the night or any of the usual noises made within a building, they were definite footsteps. I'm quite certain of this - I'm a Fortean for goodness' sake!. Once or twice, when my office was situated in the older part of the building, I felt someone looking over my shoulder, but this may have been my imagination coloured by hearing the footsteps on an earlier occasion. I now have an office in the new extension and haven't experienced anything unusual.

I left the 'owner of the footsteps' a bottle of beer for the millennium, but he hasn't drunk it yet!

There's a hotel opposite the airport terminal, which used to be the officers' mess and that has a particular room which is supposed to be haunted.

There's also a story about a WWII (Canadian) airman who was having trouble with his plane when coming in to land and deliberately crashed it into an uninhabited area rather than hit part of the nearby town. There's a road near the airport named after him.

Carole
 
Nationwide was weird. For those too young or far away to remember,
it came after the BBC regional news programmes around 6pm and linked
all the regions via a bank of monitors behind the presenter.

We were invited to gasp at the technology involved but it was famously
gremlin-ridden.

Lots of local quirky stories were recycled for the National audience.
These still get covered today but are usually confined to their region of
production.

It was the Nationwide show that made a UK star out of Uri Geller and
it also contained the reports which reawakened interest in the Cottingley
Fairy pictures. Both the sisters gave interviews, which have been pored
over for clues ever since. :)
 
Anonymous said:
Going back to the subject of a previous thread on fortean related 70's TV , I remember being completely spooked as a kid by a report on Nationwide ( shown at 6.00ish after the news) which was about a tape recording which had been made in a disused aircraft hanger somewhere that had ghostly conversations on it . This was on a primetime news show. Was TV just weirder in the 70's.
Does anyone else remember this , or can anyone tell me anything about the (real life ) case it was based on ?
Click to expand...

I'm researching this story very heavily. I can't find a broadcast date except that it was probably late 1971. There was an accompanying radio show, hosted by Jack de Manio and that's proving equally difficult to fathom too!
Nationwide from this era has a very poor survival rate.
 
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