Banned BBC Halloween special that's left viewers haunted for 30 years

It's the spookiest day of the year, and people are remembering one BBC show that scared the living s*** out of everyone who watched it.

Check out a clip from the show here:

Picture this, it's Halloween night in 1992; you do your best to sit down in your low-rise jeans and spend a bit of time around the telly.

It's dark outside when what seems to be a BBC documentary comes on, called Ghostwatch.

At least, you think it's a documentary as presenting legends Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene, Mike Smith, and Craig Charles take you on a tour of a haunted house in west London.

As the special unfolds, we then learn that the two little girls who live there, Kim and Suzanne Early, are being haunted by a ghost called Pipes.

Right, we know that the name Pipes doesn't exactly send shivers down your spine, but neither does Pennywise, and he's still plenty creepy.

BBC

Pipes, we learn, was given that name because the girls' mum had dismissed the hauntings as just noises coming from the pipes.

But as the episode unfolds, we learn that something far more sinister is happening.

Now, given that this was a documentary-style special put on by the BBC, a lot of viewers were left terrified, assuming that Ghostwatch was real.

Like Crimewatch, but with ghosts.

But it turns out that the whole thing was fake as it was actually supposed to be a mockumentary, think The Blair Witch Project. And as you can imagine, a fair few people complained.

The outrage was so big in fact, that it even led to the show never being broadcast again.

However, some viewers took to Twitter today, 30 years after the show aired, to share the very real impact the show had on them.

BBC

One user wrote: "Every British adult remembers where they were on the evening of 31st October 1992. They were ALL watching #Ghostwatch, the BBC docudrama that caused widespread panic and outrage."

While another said: "30 years ago tonight I watched the infamous @BBC production, #Ghostwatch with my mother. I was 8. It traumatised me."

Another was impressed that the cast kept it together for the duration of the broadcast: "Just rewatched #GhostWatch which was broadcast on BBC in 1992 and is filmed as a live broadcast of a haunted house in Northolt. Although technologically-dated I marvel at how well it was put together and how the cast kept straight faces."

And others thought that the show seemed pretty decent though, with one person saying: "I’ve just read about #Ghostwatch the best thing the BBC ever produced."

Clearly, they've never seen just how terrifying Pipes really was.