The Woman In Black And The Genius Of Nigel Kneale Final Part

1. The Stone Tape theory of haunting is something thrown out by Nigel Kneale in his stories only to be later contradicted by events.Looking through his ouvre  as well as Quatermass And The Pit,The Road and The Stone Tape he also produced two ghost stories for his 1970s anthology Beasts. These were Buddy with its story of a deserted dolphinarium haunted by the spirit of a dolphin murdered by the owner and Baby in which the mummified body of a 17th century witches familiar is found in the wall of a country cottage by a trendy 70s couple.In The Stone Tape the initial haunting which is investigated is that of a 19th century servant girl who appears in a sealed up room of an old mansion  being used as the HQ of a scientific team trying to develop a new recording medium..Eventually the stone tape of the room is accidently wiped by the powerful electronic devices used to investigate it.The stones in that part of the house long predate the Victorian house and date back to Saxon times.It is found in the finale to harbour a malign ancient pagan force which garners a fresh victim and adds it as a new addition to the stone tape.This is reminiscent of the Martian spacecraft in the finale of Quatermass And The Pit which is actually alive in some strange way and capable of acting on human minds.In Buddy and Baby also the spirit forces involved turn out be be more than merely recordings and reach out to malign effect. In Kneale's version of The Woman In Black the ghostly replaying of the overturning of the pony and trap in the marsh is dealt with to great effect and seems a classic instance of the stone tape theory which probably attracted him to the offer to adapt the story. Nigel Kneale was a writer of great integrity who would only work on projects he thought worthwhile.He was very critical of the way television was heading and very much predicted today's age of TV dross in his satirical masterpiece The Year Of The Sex Olympics 1968.Another invention he used to great effect in his adaption of TWIB was a wax cylinder recording machine in Eel Marsh House a piece of state of the art late Victorian technology .The same piece of technology was also used in Bram Stoker's Dracula by Dr Seward as an audio diary.
2. The Martians in Quatermass and The Pit and the ancient force in The Stone Tape are reminiscent of the elder gods of H P Lovecraft.Nigel Kneale was asked about this but he said he had never read him which was likely as HP Lovecraft was pretty much an unknown American pulp writer during Kneales formative  years.Kneale said his two main influences were H G Wells and M R James.He actually wrote the script for the excellent Ray Harryhausen 1964 adaption of  H G Wells The First Men In The Moon.He also wrote the script for the 1962 18th century mutiny film HMS Defiant.I feel that The Road his 18th century future ghost story probably came from the research he did for this.His work will live on hopefully .Mark Gatiss (The League of Gentlemen,Dr Who and Sherlock) is a great fan and tried at one time to remake The Road so his influence goes on . I have been a lifelong fan of Nigel Kneale and have dealt with his work elsewhere in my book on some of Britain's leading science fiction writers.