A haunting at the Beeb.
Post People with Rebecca Gooch.
Alec Reid has been keeping a rather unusual diary of late. And its contents have led more than a few Beebsters to wonder whether the old studio spook of the BBC has started rattling its chains again… Alec is producer of a new Radio 4 series on the paranormal and inexplicable called Forbidden Knowledge, and since recording started in Bristol last month he and presenter Bob Couttie have been beset by all manner of mysterious happenings. Alec’s catalogue of calamity ranges from gremlins and repeated, unexplained technical hitches in the studio, to an iron girder collapsing in the BBC canteen just as Bob walked in. Tapes speed up for no apparent reason; an audio assistant’s normally reliable motorbike broke down twice after she edited a poltergeist soundtrack; a digital watch went blank during a photo session; machines seem to break down wherever they are; and strange gaps appear on recordings.
“These events became so frequent that we began keeping a record, and we’ve now worked out that although technical hitches can and do occur all the time, there have been exactly twice the normal number during the time we’ve been recording,” said Alec.
Studio two has the biggest problem. This is in the same building as the spooky studio A dubbing room, where ten years ago producer Ann Owen experienced a series of odd events while working on the similarly spooky, probing TV series Leap In The Dark. After interviewing a woman in Bavaria who was hounded by an electronic poltergeist, Ann returned to studio A to dub on the soundtrack when every piece of electrical equipment in the studio broke down. A while later a huge bookcase which was nailed to the wall mysteriously broke off overnight. While Anne was editing another episode on mysterious drownings, a glass of water suddenly hurled itself at her script. This event was witnessed by the BBC’s assistant press officer, Margaret Hale, who remains open-minded about all things supernatural. “Of course the alleged BBC ghost was at 15 Whiteladies Road in the mid-sixties, but since the duplicating department moved out we haven’t heard much of it since…”
Bristol Evening Post, 24th July 1985.