Peter Brock (Michael Bryant) is a brilliant but driven researcher who heads a team of likewise brilliant researchers. He has purchased an old Victorian mansion called Taskerlands and has had it refurbished as a research center for his handpicked team. Peter plans on developing a new way of audio recording that doesn’t use plastic magnetic tape. His main objective is to outdo the Japanese. To that end he has hired Jill Greeley (Jane Asher) as the computer programmer. Jill wants to know if there is sufficient data storage for the project. Peter says he has designated an entire room to be refurbished for that end.
Peter finds out from the estate manager, Roy Collinson (Iain Cuthertson), that the storage room has not yet been built. When inquiring about it he gets very little information. Roy tells him that the workers don’t want to work in that room. While in the room alone, Jill sees a ghost. Peter and Jill find out that the stone room that is to be the data storage room dates from the Saxon era. Over the years the mansion was added. Further research reveals that in 1890 a young maid died in that room and an exorcism was performed two years after her death.
The other researchers begin hearing noises and a woman’s screams. Jill has actually seen the young woman. Peter realizes that they indeed have a ghost. Peter and the researchers decide to analyze the ghost, so they set up the stone room with their listening equipment.
Eventually Peter comes to realize that the “ghost” is actually an impression that is imprinted in the stone walls of the room. He thinks that this could lead to the new recording medium he is searching for. Peter and his team perform exhaustive tests. Jill believes that the room is a sensory device that delivers its images and sounds directly to the nervous system. The team thinks that the room acts similar to tape that is playing the death of the house maid over and over again.
The local vicar tells them that there was an earlier exorcism that happened in 1760. It was done before the house, even the Saxon room, was built. They now believe that the maid’s death was a recording that is covering at least one previous one. What they don’t know is that the there is something older and darker in the stone room.
“The Stone Tape” was released in 1972. It was written by Nigel Kneale and directed by Peter Sasdy. It is a British made for television horror and psychological thriller with science fiction elements. The film was broadcast on BBC Two, as a Christmas ghost story.
The film takes the old dark house story and projects it into the high-tech future. It is paranormal recording before the concept existed. It is a slow burning film. It is an interesting story and a little on the unique side. The idea of residual haunting that is imbedded into an environment is a lesser investigated aspect of paranormal activity, at least at the time the movie was made. None of the science in the film is actually real, but Kneale has a way of delivering it with aplomb.