Most Haunted

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Upintheair83 said:
It's on You Tube now, they post new ones every week when a new series is out. But they go on forever and are so boring. There's no mediums anymore, just Yvette, Karl, Stuart and the team. Occasionally they bring out that Demonologist, Fred Batt, but not always.
Just lost its sparkle now unfortunately.
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Wow, they’re still making episodes 😳 I remember its revival being dull enough
 
Kay's Good Cooking said:
Wow, they’re still making episodes 😳 I remember its revival being dull enough
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Yeh! Just all shown on you tube. For example the first episode of this latest series, the episode was dragged out for 3 painful parts 😬😬🥴🥴🥴 only managed the first part. All it consisted of was Yvette saying 'shhhhhh did you hear that?', yvette flirting with Glenn, Karl and Stuart running around pretending a toy had moved, Darren being scared shitless as usual. Just same old stuff! 🙈🙈🙈 it's a shame they don't use a medium anymore and stick to more the original format. They can't make much money from it now.
 
Upintheair83 said:
Yeh! Just all shown on you tube. For example the first episode of this latest series, the episode was dragged out for 3 painful parts 😬😬🥴🥴🥴 only managed the first part. All it consisted of was Yvette saying 'shhhhhh did you hear that?', yvette flirting with Glenn, Karl and Stuart running around pretending a toy had moved, Darren being scared shitless as usual. Just same old stuff! 🙈🙈🙈 it's a shame they don't use a medium anymore and stick to more the original format. They can't make much money from it now.
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Surprises me that they bother!

I remember a blog from a few years ago which dissected their newer episodes - the blogger pinned everything ‘ghostly’ on Karl and Stuart

The ghost of Stuart:
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Any episode I was involved with it was shot in darkness but some locations, I recall a prison in Aberdeenshire, insisted that security lights stay on because the stairs were a death trap. The nightvision green tint was actually built into the cameras that were used. So I can vouch that it was sometimes pitch dark during filming. They do use a grey filter over the green in the new episodes for some reason.

There was very much an unwritten rule with the show that if someone proved to be more popular than Yvette. Derek, Richard Felix, David Bull, even her own brother, Rick were all chucked from the show because the fans really liked them. There was a new medium during my time on the show, she was lovely, an American woman called Johnnie and it seemed very likely she would get the job full time. She was very funny, very talented as a medium and just a good egg but the problem was the fans went wild for her so she was dropped almost instantly. One of her best moments was when she asked for a spirit to throw a stone at Yvette and you saw Yvette was annoyed and said "Why say throw it at me?" and Johnnie without missing a beat replied "Because I don't want to get hit!" She would have been brilliant if she got to stick around.

I think that's what they missed when Derek left was the showman character. Gordon Smith, David Wells, Brian Shepherd, Chris Conway all brought their own thing to the show but Derek left very big shoes to fill and no one ever managed. Johnnie might have been a close second if she was allowed to stay.

Pendle Hill was the best show they ever did, sadly I wasn't there at the time but I remember watching it live. That was probably the first show where you could start to see cracks in the team. It's not as well remembered as the second night at Tynedale Farm but on Night 1, Derek picked up on what he said was a ghostly alien and Yvette went mental at him and told him not to say anything like that ever again :LOL:
 
There’s a notorious haunted mansion/house near me that Most Haunted tried to do a show from for years and the owner point blank refused to allow them. It’s a shame because I’ve been there and done an actual ghost hunt there and it’s probably the creepiest place I’ve ever been to. I only saw a few orbs but I took some photos and there as a weird white mist on them that I hadn’t seen at the time. Derek would have had a field day getting possessed there 😂

The Village of the Damned in Denbigh is interesting because I know people who worked there when it was still an a working psychiatric hospital and it was a hotbed for the paranormal even then. The staff saw lots of strange stuff. It was a proper old fashioned Victorian Asylum and with the history and stuff that went on there(electric shock therapy, lobotomies etc) its not surprising. A lot of the patients had been there for years and were very institutionalised, When the hospital closed they kept coming back to area because to them it was, it was also the towns main employer and its closure sort of killed the area stone dead. That’s where the whole Village of the Damned thing came from.
 
Denbigh was such a great location. Lesley summed it up when she said it was "alive with the dead". I remember the chapel being absolutely terrifying. There was a woman's voice being picked up on radio mics and it actually sounded like there were words forming. Some of the staff who used to work there actually came along to the show and shared their experiences.

I'll tell you a funny story from Denbigh. It was night 4 or 5 and at about 11.45pm the place went into total darkness and in the studio one of the camera crew shouted "Batman is under the stage!". Sure enough two blokes dressed as Batman and Robin and broken into the building and pulled the plug killing the power and the entire broadcast. I have fond memories of watching the security team chasing Batman and Robin around an old asylum!
 
Oh yes I remember the ghostly rabbits! There was also the ghost of the ape way back in Series 1 as well!

I started on what was a spin off series Most Haunted Midsummer Murders which was shot in early 2007 and my first Live was Bristol in May 2007 and I stayed until the end on LivingTV in March 2010. It was a very sudden end because as far as we all knew we were to go off and film the 15th and 16th series later in 2010 and there was a huge live show planned for Halloween 2010. I'm still not 100% on what happened because Yvette quit, and then she took it back and then she quit again and then there was word that someone else would come in to host and then it was meant to be moving to channel 5 which never happened and then Sky cancelled it all together and replaced it with another show for that Halloween.

I'm happy to answer any questions that anyone has. I'll write up some more funny moments we had on the show as well.
 
I remember a some celebs doing the show as well. Yvette was on Paul O’Grady’s chat show one night, invited him to take part and then he was on a hunt with her on the live show a few hours later. Was very funny and he was convinced he was seeing stuff that no one else could Lisa Faulkner was another one. I’m sure there were others.
 
Gym&Tonic said:
I remember a some celebs doing the show as well. Yvette was on Paul O’Grady’s chat show one night, invited him to take part and then he was on a hunt with her on the live show a few hours later. Was very funny and he was convinced he was seeing stuff that no one else could Lisa Faulkner was another one. I’m sure there were others.
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There were a few over the years, Vic Reeves and Nancy Sorrell were the first, Daniella Westbrook, Richard Arnold, Scott Mills, Simon Gregson, Sue Cleaver, oddly Carol Thatcher turned up once. Plus Yvette had her celebrity ghost hunting show on ITV which had Girls Aloud, The Saturdays and the Happy Mondays (which was TV Gold!)

I do know they really tried hard to get Paul O'Grady to host the live shows but he wasn't available when he was asked and by the time he was free they already had Paul Ross. Paul was also meant to do the Transylvania live but he had a heart attack not long before but he did eventually film one of Yvette's ghost hunting with shows and they also did a two part series about ghosts in Venice and his last appearance was the Halloween 2015 show from East Drive. He would have been fab full time on the show and he really did genuinely love it. Still sad about his death.
 
Jason left of his own accord after the first series as he didn't enjoy his experience while filming. Richard was quietly let go after Series 8 because they apparently no longer wanted a historian on the show but they still had Lesley and she later took his place on the pre-recorded episodes. Others said that Sky wanted someone with a history degree in the role, which Richard didn't have.

Richard and Jason later went on to work on a stage show with Derek called Psychic and Science.
 
Jason had a few acting credits before he was on the show and his CV was found by the guy that used to run a website where he spent all his time exposing the show. So it was added to his site as "absolute proof that Most Haunted is totally fake!!!" Jason wasn't a parapsychologist and it has been a long time since I have seen the first series but I don't know if he was actually billed as such. He was very knowledgeable as a paranormal investigator and had his own team before he joined the show. He was replaced by Phil Wyman who was always introduced as "our paranormal investigator" The only people on the show that were parapsychologists were Ciaran O'Keefe and Matthew Smith who both worked with Liverpool Hope University.

I am a total believer in the paranormal. Before and after MH I have been involved in many investigations. During my time on the show there were two moments which really stuck with me. One was during the Halloween 2007 show from Townley Hall where the camera man, Geoff, was pulled off his feet by a spirit and I watched with my own eyes as he was dragged backwards out of a door. The next time was at a pub in Morecambe during the Halloween 2009 show where the Pendle Witches turned up and much like the 2004 show from Clitheroe, team members started to drop like flies and I did feel that there was something tightening around my throat. Poor Matt who was did the sound ended up getting taken away in an ambulance that night.
 
DrLoomis said:
Any episode I was involved with it was shot in darkness but some locations, I recall a prison in Aberdeenshire, insisted that security lights stay on because the stairs were a death trap. The nightvision green tint was actually built into the cameras that were used. So I can vouch that it was sometimes pitch dark during filming. They do use a grey filter over the green in the new episodes for some reason.

There was very much an unwritten rule with the show that if someone proved to be more popular than Yvette. Derek, Richard Felix, David Bull, even her own brother, Rick were all chucked from the show because the fans really liked them. There was a new medium during my time on the show, she was lovely, an American woman called Johnnie and it seemed very likely she would get the job full time. She was very funny, very talented as a medium and just a good egg but the problem was the fans went wild for her so she was dropped almost instantly. One of her best moments was when she asked for a spirit to throw a stone at Yvette and you saw Yvette was annoyed and said "Why say throw it at me?" and Johnnie without missing a beat replied "Because I don't want to get hit!" She would have been brilliant if she got to stick around.

I think that's what they missed when Derek left was the showman character. Gordon Smith, David Wells, Brian Shepherd, Chris Conway all brought their own thing to the show but Derek left very big shoes to fill and no one ever managed. Johnnie might have been a close second if she was allowed to stay.

Pendle Hill was the best show they ever did, sadly I wasn't there at the time but I remember watching it live. That was probably the first show where you could start to see cracks in the team. It's not as well remembered as the second night at Tynedale Farm but on Night 1, Derek picked up on what he said was a ghostly alien and Yvette went mental at him and told him not to say anything like that ever again :LOL:
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Wow! I'm loving all of this information! How long did you work with them for? I remember Rick, didn't he go to America? I think he came back for a later episode not too long ago.
I really like Gordon Smith, iv seen him live and I feel he's immensely gifted, but as you say- no one beat the showmanship and warmth of Derek.
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DrLoomis said:
Jason had a few acting credits before he was on the show and his CV was found by the guy that used to run a website where he spent all his time exposing the show. So it was added to his site as "absolute proof that Most Haunted is totally fake!!!" Jason wasn't a parapsychologist and it has been a long time since I have seen the first series but I don't know if he was actually billed as such. He was very knowledgeable as a paranormal investigator and had his own team before he joined the show. He was replaced by Phil Wyman who was always introduced as "our paranormal investigator" The only people on the show that were parapsychologists were Ciaran O'Keefe and Matthew Smith who both worked with Liverpool Hope University.

I am a total believer in the paranormal. Before and after MH I have been involved in many investigations. During my time on the show there were two moments which really stuck with me. One was during the Halloween 2007 show from Townley Hall where the camera man, Geoff, was pulled off his feet by a spirit and I watched with my own eyes as he was dragged backwards out of a door. The next time was at a pub in Morecambe during the Halloween 2009 show where the Pendle Witches turned up and much like the 2004 show from Clitheroe, team members started to drop like flies and I did feel that there was something tightening around my throat. Poor Matt who was did the sound ended up getting taken away in an ambulance that night.
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Omg yes! Jason Karl! Didn't he have a small part in 3 men and a lady??? Gosh that's bringing back memories. I remember him in the first series.
Were you there for the Pendle Hill episode? Xx
 
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Upintheair83 said:
Wow! I'm loving all of this information! How long did you work with them for? I remember Rick, didn't he go to America? I think he came back for a later episode not too long ago.
I really like Gordon Smith, iv seen him live and I feel he's immensely gifted, but as you say- no one beat the showmanship and warmth of Derek.
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I did three years all told, 2007 - 2010. I wasn't asked back for the revival on Really... I'm not bitter about that at all... honest..... haha. Rick did go off to LA. I think it was around about Series 4 he left and he did go back for a later episode on the revival.

I've met Gordon once very briefly at a book launch and he said that MH just wasn't for him. His first live was the first one after Derek left and he felt the pressure. His very first night at the location he honestly said to Yvette that he didn't sense any sort of paranormal activity in the building at all. You could see the colour drain from Yvette's face at the thought of having to fill three hours live with nothing to report on.
 
DrLoomis said:
I did three years all told, 2007 - 2010. I wasn't asked back for the revival on Really... I'm not bitter about that at all... honest..... haha. Rick did go off to LA. I think it was around about Series 4 he left and he did go back for a later episode on the revival.

I've met Gordon once very briefly at a book launch and he said that MH just wasn't for him. His first live was the first one after Derek left and he felt the pressure. His very first night at the location he honestly said to Yvette that he didn't sense any sort of paranormal activity in the building at all. You could see the colour drain from Yvette's face at the thought of having to fill three hours live with nothing to report on.
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Wow! Thanks so much for all this info! I'm absolutely loving it. I really was a massive fan back in the day. Got all of the series on DVD! I'm so jealous you got to work on it.
What happened to Cath, who did the make up after Marcelle? She seemed quite close to Yvette.
Is it true Stu got the nickname 'pebbles' because he used to throw stones to make out as there was paranormal activity???
Sorry for all the questions!! Xx
 
I was very lucky because I was a fan of the show before I joined. I've got a complete set of all the lives as they were broadcast from the very first one in 2002 to the last one. There was so much edited out of the DVD releases.

Marcelle also left of her own accord because she was terrified while filming. Cath still works as a hairdresser in Manchester but is very much off the radar now. I haven't heard from her for a good three/four years. As far as I know she wasn't asked back for the revival either. Yes Stuart was known as Pebbles. He was known at times to "help" the activity if there wasn't much happening. I wasn't a fan of when Karl and Stuart went off on their own because it usually meant there was a "drama" incoming. David Wells gave Karl a right slap one time because they were messing about too much. I think that was on one of the American lives.

Happy to answer any questions, it is nice to see that Most Haunted is remembered fondly by some. It can be a tricky subject to speak about at times.
 
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