5 - Nigel Kneale’s - The Stone Tape

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English - February 28, 2021 00:01 - 1 hour - 84.2 MB - ★★★★ - 8 ratings
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The Stone Tape was broadcast on BBC Two as a Christmas ghost story in 1972. It was written by Nigel Kneale, best known as the writer of Quatermass, for whose juxtaposition of science and superstition is a frequent theme.

Peter Brock played by Michael Bryant is the petulant head of a research team for Ryan Electrics. His team is developing a new recording medium that will give the company an edge over its Japanese competitors. They move into an old Victorian mansion that has been renovated for their use. On arrival, they learn that the refurbishment of one of the rooms remains incomplete, the builders having refused to work in it because it is supposedly haunted. The room, with its stone walls, is a remnant of the original building, with foundations dating back to the Saxon era.

After the team witness the haunting in particular by Jill Greeley, an emotionally sensitive computer programmer played by Jane Asher, Brock hypotheses that it is not a ghost, but that somehow the stone in the room has preserved an image of a girl's death—this "stone tape" may be the new recording medium they have been seeking.

Realising that the phenomenon occurring in the room is far older than the house, Jill theorises that the stone tape can be recorded over again and again, like magnetic recording tape; Jill realises that the girl's death they are hearing is masking a much older recording, left many thousands of years ago.

Returning to the room one last time, Jill's senses are besieged by a powerful, malevolent presence from the much-degraded older recording.

Critically acclaimed at time of broadcast, it remains well regarded to this day as one of Nigel Kneale's best and most terrifying plays. Since its broadcast, the hypothesis of residual haunting – that ghosts are recordings of past events made by the natural environment – has come to be known as the "Stone Tape Theory".

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