For almost a decade Yvette Fielding and her husband have been making the television show Most Haunted. Now fans of the show can own all of the episodes on DVD, here we take a peek at Series Two.

The show follows a regular format in that Yvette turns up at a place reputed to be haunted. She then sets the scene, throwing in some historical facts, before psychic Derek Acorah turns up to wander around giving his reading. The crew then wait till dark, turn on their night vision cameras and scare the bejesus out of each other.

There are, of course, some people who will be taken in by all this smoke and mirrors stuff, and I’m sure that fans of the show will point out that for a sceptic no proof would ever be enough, but after nine series the fact that they have failed to capture any credible evidence of the existence of spirits is a pretty good argument for their nonexistence. The case was further eroded when Ciaran O’Keefe, according to a mirror article, fed Derek Acorah false information about two non-existent ghost only to watch Derek commune with the them - and I don’t mean sex, though that would have been funnier.

The first four discs are set up in a similar manner with a copy of the full show with extras for each location - which range from around six to ten minutes and consist of... well, just more of the show. I believe that’s usually thought of as cutting room rubbish.

So we kick off disc one with The Skirrid Inn, Abergavenny, the Tutbury Castle, Staffordshire and The Station Hotel in Dudley. The first show on the disc is the best with Derek standing next to a noose and having the great insight that people may have been hanged in the Inn.

Disc two sees our intrepid poltergeist hunters in Llancaiach Manor, Wales and The House of Detention in London. Once more we get a lot of running around and not a lot of proof. Disc three has an investigation in Derby as well as Brannigans nightclub, Manchester and Pengersick Castle in Cornwall. Disc four has The Clock House, Surrey and Caesars nightclub in South London. The last disc in the set has a celebrity element with the inclusion of Vic Reeves and Nancy Sorrell joining the team in Belgrave Hall. The last disc also contains some deleted scenes (29 min, 36 sec) and fact files about each location.

Although a sceptic, I remain an open minded one, but the show fails to convince, plus the entire obvious rip-off of The Blair Witch Project - in the night vision scenes - just felt a little too contrived.

For fans of the show nothing I will say will stop them for going out and buying this in their droves. Personally, apart from Derek, who I found to be very funny, for all the wrong reasons, the whole thing left me cold with its formulaic attempt to create something out of nothing.

4

Charles Packer