A key Haunted Generation entry, THE GHOST HUNTERS reaches for the tweed jacket and enough clunky equipment to shake a spirit at.
THE GHOST HUNTERS is a fifty-minute BBC documentary described in the Radio Times as thus: "Ghosts abound in Britain. Thousands of people have seen and heard what they believe to be phantom footsteps, abnormal phenomena, and ghosts of all shapes and sizes. In tonight's documentary, Hugh Burnett visits some of the people who have tried to track them down, or heard and seen things they cannot explain. The film ranges from a haunted house, a haunted inn, even a theatre haunted by a butterfly - to Borley Church." The most memorable sequence is kept to last, as a tape recorder is left inside overnight at Borley; it captures a creaking door and an otherworldly, melancholic sigh.
The amount of scientific babble rivals the pseudo-extravagance of American documentaries of the time. We open with Benson Herbert - the father of electrical-based spookiness - investigating a Wiltshire pub, where he surmises that unconscious energy of some people can influence the attachment and movement of ghosts. He is aided by faithful assistants Vicki and Reg, who help set up such nonsensical aids as an anti-fatigue "negative ion pistol," and an infrared device which can "detect a candle a quarter of a mile away." More hardware is on show when John Cutton, a retired Naval commander, plugs in some apparatus which has a "vibrator" and a wind vane to detect draughts of air. This will set off cameras to snap the apparitions, though ultimately this particular ghost hunter believes manifestations are created in the mind anyway.
Chair of the Ghost Club, interviewee Peter Underwood also penned Ghosts of Borley, Borley Postscript and The Borley Rectory Companion.
Burnett tries to remain grounded, but rightfully questions the endlessly archaic theories. Andrew Green - the media labelled "Spectre Inspector" and author of Ghost Hunting: A Practical Guide - states that telepathy and electromagnetic rays can contact events of the past, then draws on a survey that states that 61% of ghost sightings in this country are of living people. This figure comes from The Census for Hallucinations, a survey conducted from 1889 to 1892 that sought to determine the frequency with which people were experiencing auditory or visual illusions. It is interesting that Green is quoting this almost a century on, and even more interesting in how it illustrates the shift in how we now perceive ghosts.