National Séance 2025 - [Ghostwatch: Behind The Partition]

Greetings, Ghostwatchers.

Every so often, something surfaces from the depths of Ghostwatch folklore that refuses to stay buried. That makes you question whether any of this was ever really over.

Back in the spring, I received a standard saved search email through a small UK auction site for a listing that, at face value, didn't seem to align with any of my saved searches... a small batch of BBC Engineering floppies under the disarmingly mundane listing: "Broadcast Ops (Assorted)". The thumbnail showed a handful of 3.5-inch 1.44 Mb disks, their handwritten labels half-faded and curling. In the item description, "Vintage computer disks. Estate clearance. Untested."

As you can see, six 3.5" floppies. Nothing unusual, save for one - a single disk which, despite being partially obscured, I somehow knew was marked GHOSTWATCH.EXE - and in red biro on the reverse side, "DO NOT MOUNT."

At first, I assumed it was another of those clever fan projects or prop replicas. Something from Paul Draper's workshop, perhaps. But the seller's location, Tunstall, Staffordshire, gave me pause for obvious reasons. You see, years ago, the BBC were said to have maintained an auxiliary storage unit there - the sort of place you'd imagine full of corrugated shelving, unlabelled tapes, and stamped paperwork.

And so, I put a 99p bid on the lot and promptly forgot all about it until, less than one week later, an email bearing bad news reached me announcing that I had lost the auction - gazumped with 10 seconds to go by only 5p. Ah well, never mind, t'wasn't meant to be, and all that reassuring bollocks.

Then, less than 24 hours later, I received a personal message from the seller kindly offering me everything for my opening 99p bid (plus postage), after the gazumper backed out for reasons unknown.

The very next day, a stale B&H scented box thumped onto my doorstep. Of the six decrepit disks, most were either corrupted or blank. One, however, was different (guess) - its magnetic film appeared warped, as though heat-damaged. After several cautious attempts, I finally managed to image the data using an external USB floppy drive. The following four files appeared:

• README.TXT
• GHOSTWATCH.EXE
• LOG_24-10-31.TMP
• P1P.SYS

The README header identified it as "BBC Systems Internal / Data Capture Test / 31-10-24" - precisely 32 years after Ghostwatch first aired. And, with that, I finally realised I was reading comparitively recent data from this antiquated 3.5" diskette...

When I first executed the files in a contained sandbox environment, the screen flickered with what appeared to be the BBC1 Virtual Globe ident, then fractured into static - I can only assume to be a Randomly Accessed Memory fragment from our recent BD editing. A faint telephone tone followed, then a burst of distant children's laughter before the program terminated.

Deeper analysis uncovered continuity data, local-press clippings, and a fragmented media container compiling what looked like an unpublished investigative report concerning Foxhill Drive. Upon scanning the damaged data, several references also surfaced to something long rumoured yet never verified: a "Post-Transmission Evaluation Group" - the long-alleged internal broadcast subcommittee formed in the wake of the broadcast to determine whether the events transmitted were, in fact, genuine.

Until now, no physical evidence of its existence have ever been found. After some research (and a few uncharacteristically sleepless nights), I discovered a name buried in BBC FOI rejections from 2024. Using AI to algorithmically fill in the gaps of the lost data blocks, the buried info undeniably confirmed the existence of... the October Children Commission. 

courtesy of Reg Proctor

Officially, O.C.C. never existed. Unofficially, it was an off-books inquiry into the persistence of "paranormal data signatures" linked to the 1992 broadcast of Ghostwatch. The Commission's redacted analysts reportedly accessed the GRD-1 archive using a bespoke, air-gapped system called LAWMAN MOS (no, seriously). Their task was to determine whether the footage had been altered, staged, or - as one memo allegedly puts it - "broadcast without human mediation."

But the most disturbing detail came from a redacted internal record found months later:

"BBC GRD-1 MEDIA DISPOSAL - STATUS: CLEARED [UNVERIFIED] EXTERNAL LOTS NOT TRACKED."

It now seems that the October Children’s investigation was compromised from within.

During the final media disposal phase, one of these infected disks was boxed with other obsolete materials and later sold in bulk through a local auctioneer. That's the same box that appeared on BritBid.

So, while the Commission may have first discovered/implemented the GRD-1 connection, what I had unwittingly purchased was their copy - a digital spore, you might say, that escaped containment.

Most unnervingly, the GHOSTWATCH.EXE file apparently did more than store corrupted fragments and logs. When run, it appeared to open a live session with the now-defunct GRD-1 archive - a restricted, standalone database where Ghostwatch-related materials were supposedly firewalled in the early 1990s.

My instant reaction was one of complete and utter bewilderment. I was able to reach out to two retired Corporation engineers, and they both independently confirmed that the GRD-1 appliance was decommissioned decades ago - its keys, hardware, and modem links all destroyed. Yet, somehow, this single 3.5" disk acted as an authorised client, handshaking with a system that should no longer exist... 

Retired staff-worker, and all-round miracle worker, Reg Proctor explained:

"Technically speaking, the executable behaved like a legacy bootstrap, a compact emulation of the old BBC archive terminal. Hidden sectors on the floppy you found contain a fragment of authentication data. Checksum strings and timing codes precise enough to trick the dormant system into issuing a directory response. This isn't full access, so to speak, more like a ghost echo. Enough to prove the archive had once contained the restricted Ghostwatch files you're after, and enough to reopen long-dormant connections that no one expected still to answer."

Considering how long I have been investigating, documenting, and exploring Ghostwatch, there is material here which is nothing less than astounding. How a single obsolete disk could still locate and interface with a system erased from service remains unexplained. The second of the engineers I spoke with, who wishes to remain anonymous, responded with caution:

"This is uncommon to the point of my never hearing of anything like it before, but I can only surmise that someone connected with this 'Commission' was recently granted access to the research material and somehow their data has lingered beyond the confines of the archive. Without seeing these files myself, I can't rule anything out. What you're describing shouldn't have worked. But it did. I probably shouldn't be mentioning this, but I do recall, just before GRD-1 was quarantined, the system began replicating fragments of itself - writing phantom files under such harmless names as readme.txt, and various .sys files. There may even have been an executable but this is going back a fair few years, I'm afraid, mate. Put it this way: I wouldn't open the thing, no matter how much bloody antivirus I had running in the background!"

Upon reading this, I consequently no longer run the .exe, which is now sealed in an isolated directory. Every few weeks, I check the checksum. It never matches the last one.

However, following extensive consultation with the GHOSTWATCH: On The Night restoration team, we have made the executive decision to reproduce material from the recovered disk in the forthcoming Blu-ray, in what we can only describe as being in the public interest.

The Blu-ray's interactive menu archives are carbon copies of the recovered GRD-1 interface - the aforementioned classified vault through which the viewer must navigate to access the main feature.

Alongside this, the accompanying booklet - October Children - will present facsimile documents taken from the disk's data, including:

• Unpublished extracts from a heavily-edited Foxhill Drive investigation
• Post-broadcast digitised press clippings and continuity records (including the Dr Terror’s Vault of Horror anomaly compiled by Graham LeNeve Painter)
• Detailed correspondence from the so-called October Children Commission
• Personal recollections from the public concerning their memories from the night of transmission 

Taken together, these footnotes lend surprising substance to what many once dismissed as fanciful conjecture - that Ghostwatch may not have been entirely fictional after all.

This year’s National Séance invites viewers to once more synchronise their physical media copies of Ghostwatch, and examine samples of the recovered data which, so far, resists every known decryption method. Though, subtle anomalies suggest the data may still be (a)live, in some sense, through spontaneous byte shifts and timestamp resets.

We believe these are encrypted transmissions from within the original Ghostwatch containment archive. And this Hallowe'en, we're asking for your help.

Beginning 09:28am, 31st October 2025, coinciding with this year’s National Séance, these three encrypted fragments will be made available through the Ghostwatch: Behind the Curtains blog...

We need expert Ghostwatchers - code-breakers, archivists, digital archaeologists, and, failing that, even the slightly curious - to help decrypt what lies within. Share your findings, screenshots, and theories through the usual channels. If you uncover anything resembling coherant data, legible fragments, or corrupted imagery, document everything as soon as possible.

Think of it as an interactive appendix to Behind the Curtains - an archaeological séance convened to determine once and for all if something is buried in those files - and, if the legends are true, whether the GRD-1 system may still be listening...

As always, we'll gather under #NationalSeance, trading notes and technical anomalies. Should your VHS/DVD/BD player desynchronise or your speakers begin to ring out with telephone tones, please remember: don't panic - this kind of thing happens every year. For those brave enough to compile analogue cheese 'n' pickle sandwiches to mark the evening, please provide photographic evidence also for us to add to the salty pile.

Whatever its origin - prototype, prank, or something perniciously persistent - this mysterious disk adds yet another layer to the ever-expanding mythology of Ghostwatch. Despite every format of the programme being destined to decay, somehow, its... voice keeps finding new media through which to be heard.

What remains unclear is whether the infection began with Ghostwatch, the GRD-1 archive… or us.

Maybe the system isn't haunted. Maybe it's just remembering. We shall find out, no doubt.

Just try not to have sleepless Hallowe'en nights...