[citation needed] The stories were promoted as being based on actual real-life experiences, including historically well-known events such as sinking of RMS Titanic, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
[citation needed] Ghostwatch, a fictional news broadcast about a haunted house in the UK that aired in 1992, created controversy when a majority of viewers believed the televised show was real.
The innovative show established the visual look, music and editing style of the paranormal reality television genre; most iconically, the format of investigators filming themselves with portable cameras as they become frightened exploring dark, unnerving environments.
[1] By the end of 2000, shows inspired by MTV's Fear began production for a growing range of networks, starting with Fox Family's Scariest Places on Earth, followed by Murder in Small Town X in 2001, Scare Tactics in 2003.
Ghost Adventures, another ghost-hunting program, which premiered on the Discovery Networks-owned Travel Channel in 2008, was the successor to a documentary film of the same name that aired on Sci Fi in 2007.
"[8] Writer Diane Dorby proposes that paranormal reality TV shows provide "plausibility structures" that people use for "interpreting the meaning and experience of death".