Ghost Signals

Exploring the Haunted Airwaves

Before the ubiquity of streaming, British television was a landscape with room for strange experiments, folk-horror nightmares, and "wyrd" transmissions. Today, many of these programmes have vanished from official channels, leaving behind only "ghost signals": a shadowland of terrestrial TV hidden in plain sight across the unmediated and unmarketed corners of the internet.

Ghost Signals maps this territory from 1968 - the foundational "wyrd" year of acid folk and iconic folk horror - to 1995, the dawn of the digital revolution. The book delves into a unique era where public funding met social experimentation, creating a "broad diet" of television that was often as challenging as it was chilling.

This landscape invited viewers to encounter the seasonal hauntings of A Ghost Story for Christmas, the suburban occult of Scorpion Tales: Great Albert,and the layered mythologies of The Moon Stallion. It was a time that embraced the edgeland quiet horror of Unnatural Causes: Lost Property, the prescient virtual worlds of Play for Tomorrow: Shades, and the metatextual timeslip satire of ScreenPlay: The Black and Blue Lamp. From the paranormal pathways of Leap in the Dark: Jack Be Nimble to the non-horror folk horror of Play for Today: The Lonely Man’s Lover, these broadcasts pushed the boundaries of the terrestrial signal.

Released as part of the A Year In The Country project - which explores the intersection of folk horror, hauntology, and the "eerie" landscape - Ghost Signalsis a journey through the fading frequencies of a spectral past: the hidden gems that continue to resonate within our collective cultural memory, flourishing quietly in the digital attic of the internet.

Includes writing on, amongst other programmes:
A Ghost Story For Christmas (1968, 1971-1978)
Tales of Unease (1970)
Play for Today: The Lonely Man's Lover (1974)
Play for Today: Stronger Than the Sun (1977)
Scorpion Tales: The Great Albert (1978)
The Moon Stallion (1978)
Leap in the Dark: Jack Be Nimble (1980)
The Bells of Astercote (1980)
A Pattern of Roses (1983)
Play for Tomorrow: Shades (1982)
Dramarama - Spooky: The Exorcism of Amy (1983)
Screen Two: Unfair Exchanges (1985)
Screen Two: The Blue Boy (1994)
Unnatural Causes: Lost Property (1986)
ScreenPlay: The Black and Blue Lamp (1988)
The Plant (1995)