Happy Hallo-weiner.

My little sister Ceri is quite obsessed with the paranormal – she’s keen on ghosts, spirits and aliens. She also believes in these three things, based she says, on two ‘experiences’ she had when she was younger. Whenever she starts to talk about these ‘experiences’ and express frustration in my lack of belief in either ghosts, aliens or spirits, I assume what must be a frankly odd facial expression (very wide ‘Gosh’ eyes, slightly pursed ‘hmmm’ lips, and nod sagely, while muttering “It sounds like a very personal experience, hmmm”). Anyway, as part of this and the highly unfortunate scheduling of the modern calendar, I moved into her house just prior to Most Haunted Live Week. I have now logged close to eight hours of watching MHL with her, as they are in the middle of a week-long investigation special, which runs until Midnight on Friday - the commercially dubious Halloween.

MHL revolves around Ex-Blue Peter presenter Yvette Fielding, and her cameraman husband Karl. Ceri hates Karl with a viciousness which is far more interesting and rewarding to observe than anything which happens on screen. Her watching of MHL is punctuated by almost-fit like spasms of screaming “Fucking Karl! I ‘ate ‘im! Hes such a fucking faker!” and her quite wonderful "Karl being fake-scared by spirits" impressions. Yvette and the dreaded Karl are joined by the shows presenter, a round little man named Paul who looks like a builder dressed up in a shiny suit, and is personable and almost sweet; their ‘guest demonologist’ Brian; a sketch artist who draws the spirits in the room (whose name I cant remember), and a very frightening blonde historian lady.. This weeks investigation is taking place in an abandoned mental asylum in North Wales. The building is in a pretty serious state of decay, and looks, from the cutaway shots which pre and succeed each 15 minute live segment, pretty cool and darn scary. It is located in a simply huge village-type- complex area, as at one time the asylum was mostly self sufficient, and its out-buildings included chapels, blacksmiths, mills and barns. MHL goes on for HOURS. The premise behind MHL is to gather a studio audience of goths, chavs and stupid people, who in this case are seated in the asylums former ballroom, with Paul presiding over them, emcee-style, regailing them with snippety bits of history, and a hell of a lot of re-capping “We’ve heard noises, we’ve heard whispering, we’ve heard doors slamming” (he speaks just like that, lots of repetition of three and no adjectives) and a whole lot of build up to the nights experiment. Now, the experiments of the past three nights have included putting what looks like an oversized outdoor heater into a room and blasting out electricity, an experiment with a voodoo doll, and putting Karl (cue Ceri “Oh not fucking Karl!” into an isolation cell to commune with gosh knows what. Anyway, the build up and palaver goes on forever, before the investigation team venture off into that evening’s part of the building to... I don’t even know. Investigate. Which means they run around while we watch on nightvision cameras, while Yvette implores various spirits to
“Make some noise! Throw something! Copy me! Tap twice!” indispersed with moments where she shouts “Shh!! Did you hear that? What was that?” and it inevitably is the noise made by a camera or someone’s feet or a car outside.

So there is a bit of background to this most awful of shows. And here is the good news, I have been dutifully recapping during my hours spent watching this atrocity, and as part of a mighty Halloween blogathon, will aim to put up some highlights/best bits, and of course reveal any personal changes I may have made during this most eye-opening of personal experiences. But for now I leave you with this happy exchange

Ceri :“Arrgghhh!! Not Karl!! He always ruins everything. Nrrrgggh!
Beth : “Yeah. He’s a total berk. Let’s write to Yvette and tell her how unhappy he makes you. Lets kill him!! Let’s break into his house and spook him! Lets...”
Ceri : “Shhh!! Look, we missed a noise… that was… a noise! You’ve got to take this more seriously. OH SHUT UP KARL I HATE YOU!”