the BBC comedy's uncanny resemblance to a “real” Victorian haunted house

Alison and her husband Mike inherit the run-down Button House and its group of eccentric ghosts from different periods of history. After suffering a head injury, Alison suddenly sees ghosts and communicates with them. And so begins a bizarre house split that’s each surprisingly uplifting and hilarious. That's the premise of the BBC's paranormal comedy, Ghostswhich is currently entering its fifth and final season.

Ghosts' mixture of humor and poignancy draws on real-life attempts to speak with spirits, especially within the late nineteenth century.

A chief example is an 1892 report on a haunted house written for: Society for Psychical Research. The group was founded in 1882 to attempt to bring scientific rigor to the seek for ghosts and other phenomena, and it still exists today. Miss R. C. Morton's report entitled Record of a haunted houseshe describes intimately her extensive experiments geared toward proving that ghosts roam her childhood home.

Like Button House, the unnamed apartment featured within the report has witnessed quite a lot of dramatic, seemingly ghostly events. In Ghosts, each of Alison's ghostly roommates met a grim end. Edwardian lady-in-waiting Fanny Button was pushed out of a window by her husband. The romantic poet Thomas was shot in a row due to a lady. In contrast, Nineteen Eighties Boy Scout leader Pat was the victim of a young child with a bow and arrow.

Miss Morton's house was no different. Its first owner was an Indian from Great Britain named Mr S, who began drinking heavily after his wife's death. Two years later he remarried, but the brand new marriage was marred by arguments over his first wife's jewelry collection. In a little bit of dark humor straight out of Ghosts, the opposite Mrs. S. began drinking too.

After the death of Mr and Mrs S, the home – now in an identical condition to Button House – was bought by Mr L, who died immediately within the front room. Mr. S's body was also present in this front room and within the place where he allegedly hid his first wife's jewelry under the floorboards. The house was then rented to Captain Morton, his wife and kids. Miss R. C. Morton was their oldest.

Paranormal parallels

Every night, in a state of trance, Lady Button he relives his death jumping out the window with a piercing scream. And it’s with an identical ghostly female figure that Miss Morton's experiences begin.

One evening, while lying in bed, he sees the specter of a “tall woman dressed in black.” Over the next years, various servants and the Morton children reported seeing the girl sneaking across the house, disappearing behind the partitions, seemingly unaware of the living inhabitants.

Moreover, the ghostly woman appears to be in despair and mourning, covering her face with a handkerchief as if she were crying. Later, her brother hears the ghost “crying so bitterly.” Both Lady Button and Morton's ghost recreate emotionally turbulent moments from their lives in noisy and disturbing ways.

A running joke in Ghosts is that Mike, Alison's husband, cannot see ghosts. Therefore, he finds himself within the strange position of knowing they’re around him, but having to depend on Alison's reports of where they’re and what they’re doing.

In her report, Miss Morton describes a lady in black standing within the front room directly behind her father, although her father insists that he doesn’t see a ghost. But like Mike, he trusts his daughter's experience and believes her completely.

Despite her infinite pomposity, Lady Button step by step becomes friends with Alison, who’s her distant relative. In the sixth episode of the primary series Exitdecides to assist Alison in her difficult financial situation by discovering a hidden treasure under the floorboards of a priceless jewel.

From Miss Morton's report, the family learns in regards to the history of the primary Mrs. S. and her hidden jewelry, and so they tear up the front room floor to seek out it. There is a striking similarity here. The report said a vessel was discovered, but there have been no jewels inside. The box was present in Ghosts, however it contained a note from Lady Button's husband apologizing for pawning the jewel.

Miss Morton's Report shouldn’t be without its comedic moments, which, while unintentional, wouldn’t be misplaced in Ghosts. At one point, in an attempt to collect evidence of the haunting, Miss Morton loosely tapes thread to the door to see if the barrier can be broken overnight. The thread stays in place, apparently indicating the existence of a ghostly woman who can go through objects without disturbing them. Hmm.

Perhaps probably the most interesting similarity, nonetheless, is how ghosts influence the living inhabitants' relationship with the home. Both Alison and Miss Morton feel that their paranormal experiences help them develop into attached to their recent home, allowing them to learn in regards to the constructing's past while making it their very own.

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