Reality TV, ghosts and the index

‘If we find nothing, then you’ll see nothing.’ These words, uttered to the camera by presenter Yvette Fielding in the very first episode of Most Haunted (Living TV, 2002–10; online 2013–14; Really TV, 2014– ), assert the factual nature of this paranormal reality series and its promise not to use cameras or other ghost-hunting devices to artificially fabricate images or events. Though apparently straightforward, this statement actually raises a number of fundamental questions about the way that audiovisual technology at once reveals and distorts material reality. The show’s premise is that this technology expands the viewer’s senses by unveiling hidden aspects of the physical world, while further suggesting it can take them beyond the material sphere. If the investigators ‘do manage to catch anything at all’, Fielding continues, they will ‘leave it up to you to make up your own mind’. Her unstated assumption is that no matter how technical and scientific the methods used by the programme-makers, the nature of the visual and aural evidence gathered is inevitably open to dispute. This ambivalence over the status of the evidence is thus neither effaced nor hidden, but conceived as an essential part of the series’ appeal. Typically for reality TV, where notions of ‘real’ and ‘fake’ are enmeshed, uncertainty is not something to be removed – on the contrary, it is part of the attraction.