The Woman In Black And The Genius of Nigel Kneale

Nigel Kneale was the pioneer of the scientific ghost story.In his definitive science fiction story Quatermass and The Pit he features a haunted house but the house is actually being haunted by prehistoric ape men and Martians which emanate from a long buried and now excavated alien spacecraft.In The Road a play broadcast in 1963 he featured an 18th century English  wood subjected to a haunting thought to be a battle between Romans and ancient Britons. In actuality the wood is the site where a future road will be built which refugees from a nuclear strike will flee down and which is the true source of the haunting.In The Stone Tape broadcast in 1972 he set out the theory that ghosts are basically recordings of past events which have somehow impressed themselves on the physical surroundings in which they occurred and are then received by the minds of people now living.This is now actually called The Stone Tape theory after his play.Each of these programs proceeds as a form of scientific detective story in which the protagonists such as Quatermass, a scientific squire and a coffee house philosopher in The Road and a team of electronic engineers in The Stone Tape gradually solve the mystery surrounding the various supernatural goings on.