Sightings

• There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. (William Shakespeare, Hamlet)

Sightings was a paranormal-themed news television program that was first broadcast as an hour special entitled "UFO Report: Sightings" in October 1991. The original Concept Creator and Supervising Producer of that hour special produced by Paramount for Fox-TV was Linda Moulton Howe, an Emmy Award-winning TV producer and documentary filmmaker of TV specials about science and the environment. One of her Emmy award-winning broadcasts was A STRANGE HARVEST (KMGH-TV in May 1980), about the worldwide animal mutilation mystery linked by law enforcement to extraterrestrial biological entities. After the hour special broadcast to high ratings, it went forward into weekly TV production as the series, Sightings, which aired from 1992 to 1997 in the United States. The show featured everything from UFOs to ghosts to bigfoot in an investigative news format, and was hosted by reporter Tim White. The show was created by Ann Daniels Productions, Fair Dinkum Productions, and Paramount Television. One of its executive producers was Henry Winkler, of Happy Days fame. The series began on Fox in 1992 (the first Paramount Television production ever to air on that network), in a 30 minute long format that aired on Friday nights. When the show was put into syndication in 1994, it was extended to an hour long format and was on at various times. In 1996, it was picked up by Sci Fi Channel. Sightings was cancelled in 1997 (although a special episode aired in 1998), and reruns continued on the Sci Fi Channel until 2003. In 2002, one of the stories featured on Sightings became the subject of a television movie, called Sightings: Heartland Ghost. The movie tells the story of a Sightings crew sent to investigate a poltergeist haunting, eventually becoming victimized by the ghost themselves. In 2003, a program called Unexplained Mysteries debuted in syndication. Although it did not have the same hosted news format like Sightings, it was produced by many of the same individuals involved with Sightings, and sometimes reused footage and graphics from the earlier series.

A ghost is the apparition of a deceased person, frequently similar in appearance to that person, and usually encountered in places she or he frequented, the place of his or her death, or in association with the person's former belongings. The word ghost may also refer to the spirit or soul of a deceased person, or to any spirit or demon. A place in which ghosts are supposed to appear is described as haunted. A related phenomenon is the poltergeist, literally a 'noisy spirit' that manifests itself by moving and influencing objects, though a widespread view today is that these occurrences are either fraudulent or manifestations of the psychic energy of, particularly, adolescent girls. Phantom armies, ghost-animals, ghost trains and phantom ships have also been reported. The reality of ghosts is a vexed subject which divides believers and skeptics. The study of ghosts is both the subject of folklore and also, since the nineteenth century, of the investigations of parapsychologists, who have attempted to refine the vocabulary used in describing ghostly phenomena. Summoning or exorcising the shades of the departed is an item of belief and religious practice for spiritualists and practitioners of ritual magic. Though some claims of ghostly phenomena are proven frauds others remain unexplained or are subject to conflicting explanations. So far no one explanation has gained universal acceptance. According to a poll conducted in 2005 by the Gallup Organization about 32% of Americans believe in the existence of ghosts. Their ubiquity is attested to by their apparition even in the unlikely area of Mathematics, when Bishop Berkeley sought to exorcise the Ghosts of departed quantities of Isaac Newton's new science.

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