Review of Ghost Hunters: Stories From The Other Side

Introduction

Ghost stories and the paranormal in general have played a big part in our cultural heritage and across the world to varying degrees. There are various cultures that believe wholeheartedly and accept the concept of spirits of dead folk hanging around for some purpose or trapped beyond two planes of existence. There are also cultures, such as in the United Kingdom, where we don`t believe as a whole but people within are either believers for different reasons or just sceptical about the whole thing or probably don`t care.

Myself, I used to believe in the same way that I believed in UFO`s and MIB. Not really sure why, probably a young kids fascination with the unknown. I used to love stuff like Project UFO and Armchair Thriller with the ghostly nun, and also collected books to read about ghost stories around the country. I still watch films and TV series about the paranormal but more for fictional entertainment than looking to validate my beliefs. My one ghostly experience was on the way back from Cubs way back in 1978 when I had the wits scared out of me by a ghostly owl in a tree. I later realised, many years later actually, that it was almost certainly the glow from a street light behind a tree, but it was dark and I was young and accepted without question that an owl could appear in spirit form. Of course that doesn`t really say much about the local town planners, but that`s another story.

So nearly thirty years after that ghostly brush with street lighting, I end up with nearly three and a half hours of ghost stories from a series that is described as `a collection of haunting ghost stories that will be burned into your memory`. Heady stuff. It also says that this is from the first series of this programme, but a quick glance on wikipedia notes that some of the episodes on this DVD were actually from different series. Don`t know who`s right and don`t care frankly.

The episodes collected together here are:

Legends of the Legionaires
Spirits of the Civil War
The Phantom School Master
Castle Leslie
Ghosthunters at work
Echoes from beyond the grave
The possession
Priest and profession
Spirits of Bodmin Moor
Mysteries at George Inn
Phantom pilot

Video

The picture is OK; it`s 90`s TV so it`s not that bad, but the lack of budget really shows when descriptions of ghostly happenings are accompanied by blurred colourful wonky shots. It would be soooo bad if they used a variety, but like the music it`s clear that they were on a tight budget and you see the same shots several times in the same episode.

Audio

The narration by William Woolard is a little grating, for the second time on a Deltamusic release (which I know isn`t their fault, but still…). It`s a toss up as to whether Woolard or the narration is the most annoying though. I like synthesised music, but this is the most dull and repetitive `eerie` music I can remember hearing. It`s not even as though it changes across the series like a proper soundtrack with a variety of pieces, it`s always the same. It probably doesn`t matter when you`re only planning for a weekly TV series, but bad for a DVD release where you`re probably expecting people to watch more than one episode a week.

Features

Nothing.

Conclusion

Haunting stories that will be burned in your mind forever? Not a ghost of a chance. To be honest I can`t even remember half of them. It`s not that I`m overly sceptical as I`m open to the idea of it but this is so poorly presented that it was a real chore to sit through more than two episodes at a time and on several occasions I turned off part way through. That`s a real shame because I have no doubt that some of the stories are quite interesting, but there is an attempt to portray them in a matter of fact style and it is far too dry. This series documents the cases and tries to ask some questions (for which there are no concrete answers, obviously) but there is never an attempt to recreate the circumstances or the all-night vigil with tape recorders and EMF meters.

Some of the academics that are interviewed have some interesting if slightly dubious theories as to what ghosts are and where they come from. The events themselves seem to be minor occurrences rather than investigations of some of the truly famous ghosts that are said to haunt the UK. Some of the witnesses are a bit bland and yokel, but I`ll admit to nitpicking on this last point. The series also veers off a bit as well by looking into both voodoo and possessions, hardly ghosts by the definition I am most familiar with but then I guess they needed to try and inject a bit of variety.

I`m not overly convinced by this at all.