Karl Beattie interview

Did you have trouble with the Midsummer Murders, because that was supposedly a 'summery' show and the weather in the UK was awful?
Well, I've gotta say that we were pretty lucky with most of them. We shot eight, and five of them were pretty good. We had decent weather even if it wasn't Summer Summer. It was still quite warm and okay. It was in only three of them that we had that torrential downpour. I think with that show, I dunno, it's English summer, isn't it? With the rain and stuff. There's something quite funny about doing an investigation with an umbrella!

How did you prepare for that particular show, for the shows in general, and for the live shows?
I've go to say that when we first started to do this sort of programme it was always difficult to prepare, because you're very nervous because every location is very different. Even if it's another castle or another manor house it's still different... the activity is different once you're inside it. You never know what you're gonna get, so it's always nerve-racking. The only way that I usually prepare is to be as calm as I can, which never works, because when you're producing and directing it, just before a show is the most manic part. I actually think that that helps me more because I haven't got too much time to think about what may happen, because I'm running around making sure the scripts are okay, making sure the location agreements are there, making sure that the location is right, making sure that the pre-shot stuff it fine... so it's very busy just before each shoot. But generally on the night before I just try to relax, be on my own, as much as I can be, and then just before I go to bed I watch a horror film.

Really?
Yeah.

How do you think that helps?
I think because it puts you into that kind of mindset of what you're going to do. And for me, watching a horror film is the start of the shoot. For me, that's the night before. Because as soon as I've watched a horror film I get myself prepared for what may happen. I normally watch one or two horror films. I used to watch either The Wolfman or Island of Terror with Peter Cushing.

Ah right, so you're watching, classic horror films, not like, Hostel?
Nah, I don't particularly like the sort of, 'slasher' films. I like really good, old-fashioned films. I love Hammer films. I'm a massive Peter Cushing fan.

Have you been to any of those locations?
We haven't, no. We looked at a few, but the trouble is because Hammer films have used them, they charge just ridiculous amounts of money, and that's the sad thing, that our budget won't allow us to go to that amount of money for a location. It's a shame, because not all of them are haunted, but some of them actually are haunted. There are some great stories from some of the Hammer crew, of some of the shoots they've been on, things they've seen, and it's a great thing to be able to have a horror film in a place that is also haunted. And you have these stories from some of the crew, and one of them was from Peter Cushing himself.

Sounds like you've got a show there, definitely.
Aw, definitely yeah. The trouble is it's the money to get those locations. And your budget's going down all the time, it's always the hardest thing. And it's hard to qualify it, especially as there's so many other haunted places in the UK as well.

Are you ever worried about running out of locations? It must be getting on for 110 shows you've done now, maybe more?
Well, we were looking at this before. With all the lives and everything, and with series 10, which we're about to start, we'll have done our 200th show, or investigation I should say, in the next series. There are a lot, but, when we first started in our research, there were over 10,000 registered locations in the UK alone. So maybe by series 320 we're going to start to worry!

And of course you've done a few in Europe as well.
Yeah, which is something we want to do more of. One of the great things when we went to Holland is we were talking to some people in villages, and one of them said that ghosts aren't a Dutch thing, they're an English thing which is really weird, cos it's not in their psyche to believe in ghosts. There are a few of them, but they mainly think it's something that's not there.

Yeah, I think I remember reading about this: that it's pretty culturally specific who does or doesn't believe in ghosts, but it's strange that poltergeist activity is pretty much across the board, in pretty much every culture on Earth.
Absolutely. Yeah, strange phenomena... I think it's down to what you believe is causing the phenomena. Some people just believe it's some magnetic force we don't understand, or believe it's things from the other side.

Have your beliefs changed since you've been doing this show?
Yes, I would say they have. I would say that the show in its essence has changed, because when we started we were trying to find out if there was such a thing as ghosts. And I know, certainly for myself, I can categorically say there are such things as ghosts, and I think when you look at the amount of people who have seen them you have to say there are ghosts. I think now what we're trying to do is find out what a ghost actually is: whether it's the manifestation of your imagination; whether it is the different states your body can actually be in, which is the hypnogogic and hypnopompic states, which are your sleeping states, just before you go to sleep, or just when you wake up; whether it's some hallucination that happens; whether it's magnetic forces we don't understand that's creating these things; low level sound fluctuations; or indeed, whether it is the spirit of a dead person that's creating it. So now what we're trying to find out is what a ghost is.

Yeah, it sounds like you've given yourself a lot more options than you had before.
Absolutely. That's the great thing about working with somebody like Kieran, and also David, because David's looking for other explanations as well. Not everything he sees is he running around saying that it's a ghost or dead person, which is why it's great to have someone like David on board. And Kieran, again, he's a sceptic in the true sense of the word, you know, he's not a cynic; he's a sceptic and he's open-minded to the suggestion of paranormal activity. He needs proof. And what he's taught us - and although we get scared, and I think most people would get scared in a dark room at 3 o'clock in the morning, which they know is supposed to be incredibly haunted, you have to get scared, but what Kieran helps us do is after the fact, work out what it is we were scared of, and if we did really see something. And if we did, what was it? Was it a flashlight from outside? We'll always go back there and try to recreate what we thought we saw by a natural source. We're looking further into the natural sources of things, as a lot of people would, than a haunted room, and that everything is a ghost.

What's the closest you think you've come to having some proof?
I know, for myself, there's a few things that have happened to the crew. There's one thing that's happened to Yvette, which is that she's had some laughter in her ear, which was at The Golden Fleece in York.

Was that when you had someone with you from Radio 1?
We had Bob Mills. He was absolutely crapping himself, and the funny thing was that afterwards on his radio show he said, 'Oh, I wasn't really, I was joking', and then we heard it, Yvette actually phoned him up, and he put her on air, and she said, 'You were! You were crapping yourself! We've got extra footage that hasn't been seen, and you were absolutely crapping yourself.' And he went, 'Yeah, you're right. I was really crapping myself.' The laughter in Yvette's ear has been analysed by Kieran and the investigators that he has, and he can't work out where it came from; and because it was on Yvette's mike, it can only have been her, or someone next to her. Now, no one was next to her, and because all our voices have been analysed, and the pattern of our voices has been registered, if it was one of us the voice pattern would be the same. But it was a pattern that was none of our voices. So that's one that scientifically is really interesting.

But there's things that have happened with Stuart and myself: doors have shut when we've been nowhere near them, a chair moved at Michelham Priory that we caught on camera, and we were sort of 20 foot away from this chair, and it actually moved over a wood floor onto a carpet. There's lots of things like that that you look at and think, 'What can cause that? Is it a spirit or a dead person moving it, or is it a magnetic force moving it?' We don't know, but certainly for me and Stuart there's things that make the possibility of ghosts, paranormal and dead people more possible. Something happened when we were doing Most Haunted Live in America. I have no idea what happened. I blacked out, but apparently I picked Stuart up and threw him off a third floor balcony. Fortunately there was some stuff underneath that stopped him falling three floors onto a concrete floor in the prison. David realised something was happening, ran upstairs, and very uncharacteristically for David, he actually slapped me across the face! I don't remember any of that. I remember coming out of it, but I don't remember being slapped by David. But apparently he really clouted me, and I thought, 'Thanks!' Those are the things that make you think it's weird. Again, Stuart got attacked in one place, and the next morning, what you don't see on camera, is that he's covered in bruises. You think, no one physical could have done that. We've both been scratched in places. Cynics out there would say that we're doing it ourselves, which is absolutely preposterous that you would go that far just to get people to believe it. Stuart got caught in the Edinburgh vaults by something that scratched him on the back, and it was in front of everybody. Blood seeped through his T-shirt, how do you explain that?

It seems to be happening more and more to you and Stuart being affected by the surroundings. Do you think as the investigations are going on you're letting your guard down more, and getting more affected? And does that worry you?
There are some things I do that are never seen on camera. Firstly, against all the advice that David gives us, we refuse to accept any spiritual protection, but before an investigation Stuart and I will go round and basically try to piss off all the ghosts, and insult them, and really give it large, and swear at them. Yvette, David and the rest of the crew won't have anything to do with that, and we go off on our own and we do it. We have a little seance ourselves; we usually have a black candle, we burn it, we insult whatever's there. And I think some people, certainly David, would say that's why we get the brunt of things, because, one: we have no protection; and two: we are earmarking ourselves because we're p***ing off the local ghost community.

Do they try and talk you out of that?
Oh yeah. David every single time. The other thing you don't see is that David can be quite vocal to both Stuart and myself. He's shouted and screamed at us for doing it in the past, especially when something happened to us. He says it's his job to protect us spiritually, and when we won't accept that protection it frustrates him. I suppose if you go down and provoke things it upsets him a bit.

How do the live events differ from the regular shows?
My job on the lives is to oversee everything. We tend to have 130-140 staff on the lives, and it's my job to make sure it works, and everything's in the right place. And the thing is, once it starts, I'm on air with everybody else on screen, so for me, the most relaxing time, as far as putting the show on, is when we get the 10 second count to go on, because if something technical happens, I can't deal with it because I'm doing an investigation. But of course, then you've got something else to worry about: what's actually going to happen that night. And the hardest thing is, you have no say so on what you look like when something happens: it just happens. We've had some stuff on live where our clothes have been ripped, and you think, 'I don't really want that', but people have seen it. And if you wet yourself, I mean, that's happened before, not to myself or Stuart, but one of the girls went once live on air, and she was very embarrassed about it. And we obviously didn't let anybody else know, but sometimes that can be seen. And it happens, it's live, you can't stop it. But the thing I love about it is the fans. You actually get to see the fans. The live is all about the fans: them enjoying themselves; them coming along; us being able to talk to them. We spend quite a lot of time with them. Sometimes we have lunch with some of the fans, or we meet them in the afternoon before the shoot, because they wait a long time to come in. And at least you get a chance to see them; and they come up with some great stuff, because you can ask them what they want to see more of in the show: what they like, what they don't like. And that's really what the live is about: it's just about the fans. But the sad thing about them is it's only three hours. I know that's a lot to watch but for us as an investigative group, we finish at midnight, but again, we want to carry on right through the night and do more.

Yeah, it always seems like on the lives, something happens just before it finishes.
The trouble is, when we do the recorded show most of the stuff happens between 11.30pm to about 4 o'clock.

Where do you think would be your ideal place to visit, and where would be your ideal place to go and investigate?
I think that most people would say that the worst place we went was Pendle Hill, and I think that's because most of us passed out, and we still don't know what happened there. It wasn't just one or two people. I think it was everybody that was affected. And I think that that was probably the frightening place; but I still maintain that Michelham Priory was probably the most haunted place we've ever been to, and I think there's a lot there. Again, Caesar's nightclub, I'd like to go back there, because we did an investigation there, and it was scary, but not a great deal happened; but since we've been the guy who runs it says he's had three doormen, big doormen, I think he's got some of the best in the industry there, walk out because of what they've seen. You've got punters there on a Saturday night saying that they've seen things, that they've seen an old lady jumping off the upper circle, and she clearly doesn't hit the floor, but they're complaining about it. It's weird that you're getting six or seven people in a night complaining about the same thing, and they don't know each other, you have to take that seriously. So I'd like to go back and do some more stuff there. (As for brand new places) we'd like to go to Hampton Court. We are talking to Hampton Court to see if we can get there because I think it's got a lot to offer.