PrimeWire

After its initial airing, Ghostwatch was banned from being broadcast on the BBC for ten years. What was supposed to be a bit of a Halloween prank ended up with 30,000 calls to the BBC switchboard in an hour. In an ill-fated attempt to straddle fiction and documentary, the network failed to properly warn the viewing audience that what they were watching was definitely not real. Cut to thousands of British children watching a beloved kids’ TV presenter, Lesley Manning, being possessed by a ghost called Pipes.
In the wake of Ghostwatch an intellectually challenged young man killed himself after the pipes in his house began to knock like those in the show. There was even a medical journal report, with dubious validity, about kids showing symptoms of PTSD after watching the program.
Viewing Ghostwatch now you could never fully grasp the effect it had on a nation. It would look hokey and stupid. But before all of our minds were trained, by reality television and social media, to watch with a more skeptical eye, stuff like this could really do some damage. (Go find a British person between their mid 30s and mid 40s. Ask them about Pipes.)