The Stone Tape

The Stone Tape is a television play 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 is 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".

The Stone

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The Stone (Dave Matthews Band song)

"The Stone" is a Dave Matthews Band song from the album Before These Crowded Streets. A ballad about mistakes and forgiveness, it features distinct backing by the Kronos Quartet. It contains lush orchestrations which were arranged by trumpeter John D'earth.

Background

The song originally held the working title "Chim Chimeney." The song is written in a 6/8 time signature and features orchestral arrangements by John D'earth, with the Kronos Quartet on strings. A 28-second studio jam in 2/2 is heard at the end of the track that features Béla Fleck.

One interpretation of the song is a theme of Dave Matthews' fear of asking his wife for marriage, as well as the life of Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus in his final days.

Live performance

In concert, especially at acoustic shows, Matthews has been known to interpolate Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love" towards the end of the song as the crowd sings along. Late saxophonist LeRoi Moore plays the melody of the song on the album version. During live performances of the song, the band plays an outro not featured on the studio version. Toward the end of the song, after it decrescendos, the band suddenly and intensely comes back in with the main riff of the song and finishes that way, as opposed to fading out gradually as on the album itself.

The Stone (blog)

The Stone is the New York Times philosophy blog moderated by Simon Critchley. It was established in May 2010. The blog features the writing of contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.

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Stone Tape

The Stone Tape theory is the speculation that ghosts and hauntings are analogous to tape recordings, and that electrical mental impressions released during emotional or traumatic events can somehow be "stored" in moist rocks and other items and "replayed" under certain conditions. The idea was first proposed by British archaeologist turned parapsychologist Thomas Charles Lethbridge in 1961. Lethbridge believed that ghosts were not spirits of the deceased, but were simply non-interactive recordings similar to a movie. The idea was popularized in 1972 in a Christmas ghost story called The Stone Tape, produced by the BBC.

Reception

In their book How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age, authors Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn dismissed the idea as an irrational claim, stating, "The problem is that we know of no mechanism that could record such information in a stone or play it back. Chunks of stone just do not have the same properties as reels of tape."

Richard Wiseman has also written there is no scientific evidence for the stone tape theory of ghosts. According to Wiseman the idea is "completely implausible – as far as we know, there is no way that information about events can be stored in the fabric of a building."