Most Haunted (TV Series)

Most Haunted is a British reality TV series, hosted by Yvette Fielding, which investigates paranormal activity across the UK. The show follows a team of professionals and their investigations as they visit famously haunted sites, they use scientific equipment to detect all haunted activity.

The show was aired on Living TV in 2002 up until 2010. Following this, it has been shown on various platforms including Really, YouTube, and a mobile app. More than 300 episodes of Most Haunted have been aired so far.

Cancelled

To the viewers surprise, Most Haunted came to a sudden end in 2011 when it was cancelled by Sky Living. Although, the show wasn’t off our screens for too long. Antix Productions and Lionsgate began to work together to redevelop the show a year later. Yvette Fielding then confirmed the news that the show was to return on the channel Really in 2014.

Most Haunted aired on Really until 2019, before moving the content onto a YouTube Channel. The YouTube shows were a lot shorter and aired weekly, they featured the same infamous hosts Yvette, Karl and Mary Beattie.

How Is The Show Made?

Many experts have contributed to the show creatively, the production of music and photography has developed the show over the years.

The team have travelled across the UK and sometimes outside of the UK to investigate paranormal sites over a period of 24 hours. Some episodes have seen them visit Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, and even the United States.

Alan Clark is credited for the music in Most Haunted, he created his own samples and used these to produce the music. A CD featuring Clark’s music was later released by Living TV.

The style of photography has progressed throughout each series of Most Haunted. The show began with a very dramatised style, they used fog machines and dark blue illuminations to create an eery feel in the shots. In the early series, the production was clearly very professional and high quality. A lot of panning shots were used to show the locations, this then progressed to drone photography in the later series. A specialist thermal camera was also used to detect any spots that highlighted paranormal activity.

Who Is In The Team?

The Most Haunted on-screen crew includes the presenter Yvette Fielding, who presented the show since the beginning in 2002. The remaining crew members who feature on the show are a psychic medium, parapsychologist, and historian. The purpose of this was to even out the bias and include experts from opposing fields. This meant that when evidence did come to light, it was interpreted not just from a paranormal perspective, but also from a scientific one.

The show was produced and directed by Karl Beattie, he also worked as a cameraman. Many celebrities have appeared in the show, including Scott Mills, Paul O’Grady and and Vic Reeves.

The Early Series

Series 1-3 were titled ‘Most Haunted with Yvette Fielding and Derek Acorah’. Each episode lasted 30 minutes, additionally a special re-run of the show aired as ‘Most Haunted Unseen’.

The last episode in the series was a monumental investigation of Michelham Priory, this haunted site became significant for the team as they returned for there for the 100th episode.

In 2003, the second series launched with an added feature called ‘Most Haunted Extra’. This was a 10-minute feature of extra footage available for red button viewers only.

The Controversy

There were many controversies surrounding the show, as a paranormal show which showed some extreme cases of hauntings, there were many skeptics which attacked the legitimacy of the content.

Derek Acorah, the psychic medium, claimed to have been possessed on many occasions. The spirits that allegedly possessed him were thought to be evil and would Derek would appear very confused all of a sudden.

There was one particular case whereby Derek had been mislead to believe the ghost of Kreed Kafer was a real ghost on site, he was told this by one of the crew members. Later in the episode, we saw Derek allegedly possessed by this spirit. It was then revealed that Kreed Kafer had been a fictional creation, made up to be an anagram of ‘Derek Faker’.

This case of misinformation was published in an interview, it was also claimed that the crew member had intended to expose Derek for the fraud he believed that he was. Yvette Fielding has also testified that the possession was all an act.

Fake or not, the show has proved successful at investigating some of the most haunted locations across the UK.