Most Haunted Live: Pirates’ Curse’
The Most Haunted series is a popular one on digital television and makes use of a fairly simple format. For the regular shows, a group comprising presenters, film crew and a psychic, visit locations (usually buildings), turn the lights out and wait for things to happen in the eerie green glow of the night-vision cameras. I don’t propose to discuss the ‘supernatural’ element of the show here, certainly not whether it is real or otherwise. It doesn’t matter.
Pirates’ Curse took as its foci three of the more important maritime heritage sites in Bristol. On Friday night we were taken to ‘Blackbeard’s House’, a large late-seventeenth century house at the top end of Guinea Street, Redcliffe. Saturday’s exploration was a short walk away on the harbourside in Redcliffe Caves. The final show took place in the Llandoger Trow, a very well known public house on King Street, again immediately off the waterfront. Backing up the on-site team was a studio based element with a presenter and, importantly, a ‘studio-historian’ checking up on the facts. Taking the full force of modern technology to the search for historic presences, it was also possible to log on to the Most Haunted website and access night-vision webcams set up in the various locations. With the television and webcams on and, bravely, with the lights off, I settled down to a very different method of archaeological investigation…
Redcliffe Caves
In Redcliffe Caves, the show moved immediately to dismiss the popular myth that the caves were used to house enslaved Africans in transit; it’s at the wrong point of the triangular trade. Also dismissed was the easy notion that the caves were used by pirates to hide treasure. Although a pretty idea, it’s unlikely that any pirate ships sailed into the tidal, river-fed Bristol harbour after plundering shipping (although there is a history of piracy in the Bristol Channel and a number of well-known privateering voyages originated in Bristol). This night’s investigation of a cave system contrasted interestingly with that of a house. People seemingly got lost, became isolated and were shown on screen with no recognisable surroundings. Conversely, in the house the night before, even on the night-vision camera, features were identifiable and anyone with a passing knowledge of historic buildings would have been able to work out exactly where in the house the team were. All of this added to an interesting programme where the team’s psychic apparently detected the presence of a murderer dragging his female victim to a hiding place within the caves.
Link - You Tube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgmsZ0j4iBo