The Stone Tape

''The Stone Tape'' is a 1972 British television horror drama film written by Nigel Kneale and directed by Peter Sasdy and starring Michael Bryant, Jane Asher, Michael Bates and Iain Cuthbertson. It was broadcast on BBC Two as a Christmas ghost story in 1972. Combining aspects of science fiction and horror, the story concerns a team of scientists who move into their new research facility, a renovated Victorian mansion that has a reputation for being haunted. The team investigate the phenomena, trying to determine if the stones of the building are acting as a recording medium for past events (the "stone tape" of the play's title). However, their investigations serve only to unleash a darker, more malevolent force.

''The Stone Tape'' was written by Nigel Kneale, best known as the writer of '' Quatermass''. Its juxtaposition of science and superstition is a frequent theme in Kneale's work; in particular, his 1952 radio play ''You Must Listen'', about a haunted telephone line, is a notable antecedent of ''The Stone Tape''. The play was also inspired by a visit Kneale had paid to the BBC's research and development department, which was then located in an old Victorian house in Kingswood, Surrey.

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".

Plot

Peter Brock is the selfish and 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 a new facility at Taskerlands, an old Victorian mansion renovated for their use. On arrival, they learn from estates manager Roy Collinson that the refurbishment of one of the rooms in Taskerlands remains incomplete. The builders 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. The rest of the mansion was added on over the centuries.

Curious, the researchers explore the room and hear the sounds of a woman running, followed by a gut-wrenching scream. Jill Greeley, an emotionally sensitive computer programmer, has a vision of a woman running up the steps in the room and falling, apparently to her death.

Inquiring of old records, Collinson finds records of a young maid who had died in the room in 1890 and that an unsuccessful exorcism had previously been performed on the property. Brock and Jill briefly meet with a local Vicar, who is also an archivist, but he fails to turn up records of the exorcism.

Brock hypothesises that it is not a ghost, but that somehow the stone in the room has preserved an image of the girl's death— this "stone tape" may be the new recording medium they have been seeking. Their scientific devices fail to detect any evidence of the phenomena the team experience, and different team members experience different phenomena: most are able to hear sounds, Jill can also see images, but another member of the team experiences no sensory input. Jill hypothesises that the "tape" does not produce actual sound or light, but instead interfaces with the human nervous system during playback to create the sensory impression of sound and vision. Some individuals are more sensitive to this than others. She surmises that the recordings are imprinted in moments of extreme emotion, like a kind of telepathy.

Excited by the possibilities presented by a recording medium that uses a person's senses as the means of recording and playback, Brock and his team move into the room. They bombard it with their technology, hoping to find the "stone tape" secret and have it play on demand. Brock is certain that the walls hold the secret, but he fails to develop a predictable method of triggering. Under mounting pressure to succeed, Brock uses every available instrumentation, only to be told, by Jill, that the presence she had felt earlier was now gone, apparently meaning that the "tape" has been erased. Brock's failures are compounded when his superiors signal their lost confidence in him, requiring him to share Taskerlands with a rival research team working on a new washing machine.

Embittered, Brock no longer wants anything to do with the stone tape. He disregards Jill's insistence that there is still more to learn about the room and her mounting concerns that it is dangerous to stop their research. As Brock directs the team to resume its past projects, the Vicar reappears, claiming to have found records of the unsuccessful exorcism, not in 1892, but much earlier, in 1760, before the house even stood.

Realising that the phenomenon occurring in the room is far older than the house, Jill theorizes that the stone tape can be recorded over again and again, like magnetic recording tape; the maid's death was simply the most recent and clearest recording. Independently continuing her research, Jill realizes that the maid's death was masking a much older recording, left many thousands of years ago. Brock cruelly dismisses her findings and forces Jill to take a two-month leave to prevent her from continuing her research.

When Jill returns to the room one last time, a powerful, malevolent presence from the much-degraded older recording besieges her senses. Like the maid before her, she dies while frantically trying to escape it.

During an inquest, Brock tries to save face by denouncing Jill as having been mentally unstable. Afterwards he orders that all of Jill's research be destroyed without reviewing it. The "haunted" room has been declared of historical importance by a preservation society, prohibiting development, destruction, or commercial use. He makes a final visit to the room and discovers to his horror that the stone tape has made a new, crystal-clear recording: that of Jill screaming his name as she dies.

Background

Nigel Kneale was a Manx television playwright who had first come to prominence in the 1950s thanks to his three ''Quatermass'' serials and his controversial adaptation of George Orwell's ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', all of which were produced by the BBC
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