Ghostwatch - early powerful perceptor

Mentalfloss carried the story which begins, "After more than 20,000 phone calls, one induced labor, and thousands of angry letters, the UK's Broadcasting Standards Council convened for a hearing. On June 27, 1995, they ruled that the producers of Ghostwatch, a BBC program that aired on Halloween night less than three years earlier, had deliberately set out to “cultivate a sense of menace.”

The Telegraph reports, "Ghostwatch, first screened on 31 October 1992, was a mockumentary about an ordinary household in Northolt, north London, haunted by Pipes, a malevolent ghost that caused plumbing pipes to bang. "The drama was given an air of authenticity by using real BBC personalities of the time. Sarah Greene and Craig Charles played reporters who decamped to the haunted house, while Michael Parkinson and the late Mike Smith provided studio links in a mock-up of the BBC’s Crimewatch studio. On tickertape at the bottom of the screen, a phone number was displayed through which viewers could report supernatural sightings. The number (081 811 8181) was the standard phone-in for BBC shows of the time."

It even caused the death of a young lad after he saw it and the pipes in his house started to bang. The Independent says, "An inquest yesterday in Nottingham recorded a verdict that Martin Denham, 18, killed himself, but his mother, April Denham, said: 'I blame the BBC - it is all their fault. They said it was based on a true story but it was all a hoax."