Most Haunted Live 15 Review: Summer Solstice Edition - by Liam R
Day Two: The Wakefield Theatre Royal & Opera House
Well after last night’s non-event I have slightly higher hopes for tonight what with it being a simulcast with FTN and going to a bigger audience. After a wrap-up of last night’s “phenomena” which David Bull proclaims as “extraordinary” we had straight out to the Yorkshire wasteland for our first location of the evening.
Location One: Main Auditorium
Something weird happens right off the bat, as the crew are already at the location despite appearing on the supposedly live and incredibly vapid “Access All Areas” show. Now unless they managed to go twenty miles in twenty minutes I’m calling bullshit on this one. Derek sets the ball rolling by picking up on a female spirit (later named as Miriam) aged around 20-25 which is nice and vague but is NOT a guess. She has a beef with the man who built the building. Well don’t we all love? Anyways, various lights and noises all mysteriously fail to be picked up by the mikes or cameras and this is all “fantastic” to quote Dr Bull. I’m losing faith already.
Location Two: The Stage
Onto the stage our intrepid investigators go, spotting lights and hearing noises which again are strangely absent from all recording sources. Without any concrete evidence, the team start a table-tipping experiment. For all those who are unaware of what this entails, a group of people stand around a table, place their fingers on it and let the spirits “use the energy” to move the table. I know what you’re thinking: “But of course they’ll move the table because their touching it!” Exactly why I won’t dignify this sequence with a response. To make matters even worse, Yvette says that someone is fiddling with he trousers. Only forty minutes gone and already I’m wishing I had something better to do.
With nothing better to do, the team is split up leaving Yvette on her own. After she hears various creaks and scratches (still inaudible) we at home are treated to our own little show. During the sequence when she is on her own, a noise which can only be described as being Darth Vader is quite clearly heard by everyone EXCEPT Yvette. After she tries to piss the spirit off (“Come On You Shit!”) she loses it and cuts back to the studio. While speaking to the Bull, the Vader noise comes across her camera, back through the studio and back to her mike at which point the audience soils their pants. I’ll leave comment on this until the end though I do have a gut feeling as to what it was.
Location Three: The Bar
Derek somewhat reliably picks up on three more spirits (giving him a 100% success rate in each location so far, a new record?) - the first two are a pair of harmony singers, the third spirit a young boy who WASN’T murdered. I HAVE JUST SHAT MY PANTS IN SHOCK. Well we’ll leave it at that as absolutely nothing happens for twenty minutes.
Location Four: The Upper Circle
While Big Mac and some of the crew do a séance on the stage, Degsy and chums find nothing but lights and bangs which again aren’t picked up by camera or microphone. You know, if the crew actually pointed their recording devices in the direction of the phenomena rather than showing the crews reaction then MAYBE they might catch something. Just a thought mind you.
Location Five: Under The Stage
By this point my patience is spent. Again nothing of note happens and when something does, it’s merely expected that it has been recorded and they move on without so much as a follow-up. Indeed the only follow-up they do is keep the camera on the vague area where said noises come from before turning them away. I mean, can you imagine police investigating a suspected break-in at a factory hearing a noise, deducing that the criminals aren’t there and leaving the place? I know it’s a whacked out analogy (the police doing work but you’ve got to go with me on this one) but in order to salvage whatever integrity the team have left (so small as it’s immeasurable) you have to follow up on these things.
Location 6: The Dressing Rooms
After Derek’s “spirit picking up” streak was snapped underneath the team head into the dressing rooms where he picks up on a fat midget (no name, no surname) just a beard. “Terrifying” sayeth the Bull as I wonder why the hell I’m not completely shit-faced when I watch this crap. As the team begin ANOTHER table tipping experiment Bull then one-ups his previous dumbarse comment by declaring the night has been “unbelievably nerve-wracking”. I have one response to that: “Mum hand me the shotgun, we’re going retard hunting.” The night finishes with a variety of sound problems and a teaser that one of the crew might have previous links to the theatre (see The Dougal Incident for a worrying precedent) and we’re out. Bizarrely, the most interesting thing happened during the Your Say program afterwards when one of the seats in the theatre had been pulled slightly (about six inches or so) forward. Ciaran O’Keefe said that the seats were all up before he went downstairs to supervise the séance BUT there was a good fifteen to twenty minute period until the seat was noticed as being down, leaving a possibility of fraud out there.
Random text message quotes (copied verbatim from the screen as they appeared):
“wot a brill show. No 1 can say those noises were fake”
“tonight’s most haunted live was spectacular”
“that noise was well scary”
“I was so scared tonight”
“The sound heard was a leopard or tiger” (I couldn’t make that up if I tried)
“did sound like a snarl of a dog”
“the breath was definitely the reaction of the spirit being insulted by Yvette”
“that breath had to be one of the spookiest things I’ve ever heard or seen on most haunted”
“I heard that breath noise four times!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“freaky”
“it was a dog I think”
“the breathing noise sacred me”
“I jumped a mile every time”
“YVETTE WAS VERY BRAVE”
“did anyone else hear that heart beat?”
“will need to sleep with the light on”
“PARANORMAL ACTIVITIES IN ABUNDENCE”
“more like someone snoring”
“sounded like a Doberman”
“Derek is cool”
Summary: a whole lot of nothing. With their biggest possible audience the team failed miserably to even pique additional interest in the show. A little possession at the end of the show would have done WONDERS for the last night but they blew it. As for my own opinion on the show, I’ll leave that to my good friend Billie Joe Armstrong: “I don’t care if you don’t, I don’t care if you don’t, I don’t care if you don’t care”