A research project to discover a new recording medium relocates to a large English manor house. When the project leader Peter (Michael Bryant) looks into why a cellar room has not been converted for data storage as requested, he learns that the room is reportedly haunted with multiple people having heard cries and screams while inside. The research project is suspended so that the haunting may be scientifically investigated - an investigation with troubling consequences for the team's programmer Jill (Jane Asher).
I recently reviewed Lost Hearts, a BBC television play broadcast over Christmas, and noted the BBC's odd attitude to Christmas in scheduling ghost stories on Christmas night. It is a choice perhaps stemming from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, a ghost story which pretty much nailed the zeitgeist of the Victorian era's obsession with Christmas. That still does not quite explain why the BBC elected to broadcast The Stone Tape on Christmas night 1972. It has nothing to do with Christmas. It does not tap into an sense of winter of Victoriana. It is also possibly the most dark and effective horror story that the BBC has ever broadcast. I still can't work out if this scheduling decision was folly or genius.
