Mark Fryers

British history is full of strange and disturbing noises. They rebound
and echo, providing a constant reminder to future generations of the
violent noises of the past- signalling colonial atrocities, and the
stifled disenfranchised voices of class and gender inequalities. If the
gothic, supernatural and horror genres are concerned with the 'return of
the repressed', then it is perhaps no surprise that supernatural British
television reflects this. Yet furthermore, this piece will argue that
the utilisation of sound in this generic context is reflected in the
quality of the output of British supernatural television whereby a sonic
or aural aesthetic is expertly employed to create a specific paradigm of
sound to optimise the acoustic possibilities of the televisual medium. I
will argue that this persistent strain not only manifests due to either
budgetary restrictions, antecedents in both oral story-telling and radio
'horror', or even simply an appendage of the theatrical tradition of
British film and television (all important components, nonetheless) but
an aesthetic which at once utilises the dynamics of the televisual
medium and suggests a deeper, British cultural concern with the
inability to silence voices of discontent in historic domestic and
national history.

Sound and music are integral to British supernatural television. In many
cases, the sonic aesthetic insinuates itself into the titles of these
productions: *The Stone Tape* (1972), *A Woman Sobbing* (1972), *A
Child's Voice* (1978)*, Whistle and I'll Come to You* (1968, 2010)*.*
Elsewhere, as noted by Wheatley (2006), the playing of instruments and
music signals terror or the 'return of the repressed'. Wheatley mentions
the hurdy-gurdy in *Lost Hearts* and there are more instances: the
clavichord in *The Exorcism*, the whistle in *Whistle and I'll Come to
You* (1968, 2010) the song 'Scarborough Fair' in *Remember Me* (2014)
and the children's music box in *The Woman in Black* (1989). *In The
Stone Tape*, by Nigel Kneale, the sonic parameters act as a recording
device, which captures severe emotional distress and re-plays it
endlessly for future generations. The same is also true for Kneale's
adaptation of Susan Hill's *The Woman in Black*. In this, the terrible
accident, which claimed the lives of the Drablow children on the
causeway, is a persistent and prominent aural motif (also evident in the
highly successful stage adaptation). It features a short leitmotif in
which the eerie 'clip-clopping' of horse's hooves builds to a crescendo
of whinnying horses and screaming children. It is hard to replicate in
writing, but the desperate climactic cry of "mummy, mummy-
mum-eh-hee-ee!" as the children sink into the mire plagues the central
character, forcing him to cover his ears and cower in horror. This sonic
vortex of despair represents an endless recording of the tragedy of
history, suggesting that the voices of the wronged and fallen must
endlessly return to remind those in the present of past transgressions.
Similarly, a disruption of the quotidian and mundane sounds of empty
landscapes produces an eruption of 'noisy' history. It is an aesthetic
technique, which at once utilises the confined and open spaces of the
diegetic environment and the domestic setting of televisual reception,
yet also sidesteps the utility of excessive and extravagant special
effects and visceral display more common in filmic horror. This is
evidenced in a number of other texts, many of which remain relatively
obscure as lost or forgotten examples of British televisual history. For
example, by the 1980s, the state levied Children's Film Foundation
series of films had migrated to television. In *Haunters of the Deep*
(1984), the plight of Cornish tin miners tragically 'caved-in' is
signalled by the ghostly tapping of picks against stone. In a more
pronounced sense, in the CFF TV film *Out of the Darkness* (1985), the
spirit of a plague victim, wrongly ostracised and killed by the local
community, is again manifested by a sonic echo of the past as an
increasingly forceful sonic vortex, which opens a window into a terrible
history.  An ancient, pagan evil is a common theme of 1970s British
supernatural television with the famous children's series *Children of
the Stones* (1977) title sequence exhibiting an enhanced aesthetic of
pre-Christian, pagan echoes- complete with eerie breathing, chanting,
moaning and singing and discordant music. The unwanted and unexpected
appearance of the standing stones is signalled by a version of this
deeply unsettling sonic confection throughout the episodes.

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Yet oftentimes, it is the mundanity and desolation of the landscape,
which evokes fears of isolation, abandonment and terror. Again, this is
evoked through abstemious use of sound. The use of the sound of wind
echoing through empty landscapes is manifest in titles such as *A
Warning to the Curious* (1972), *The Woman in Black* and *Robin
Redbreast* (1970) whilst the desolate sounds of the undulating sea are
employed to create an atmosphere of dread in both versions of *Whistle
and I'll Come To You* as well as lesser known texts such as *Tarry Dan,
Tarry Dan, Scary Spooky Old Man* (1978). In many cases, the title
sequences themselves, such as those for the BBC series *Dead of Night*,
employ this technique of both aural and visual scarcity and dissonance.
In *Dead of Night*, breathing sounds and other natural phenomena create
an instant atmosphere of dread which is then replicated in the ensuing
narratives whilst the title sequence for another BBC series
*Supernatural* (1977) consists simply of church organ music echoing
throughout cavernous spaces whilst the visuals present close-ups of
gargoyles and other gothic architecture.

The strengths of British television are often demonstrated through
actorly performance and theatrical staging. A chiaroscuro aural
technique, whereby the jarring contrasts between light and dark, sound
and silence is created. This is in evidence in a number of the
supernatural texts discussed- particularly so in the more famous
examples of *Robin Redbreast* and *Shalcken The Painter* (1979).  This
has been discussed (e.g. Hand, 2010) particularly with regards to the
famous 'Ghost Story for Christmas' entries of the 1970s as well as
Jonathan Miller's Omnibus special adaptation of *Whistle and I'll Come
to You* (1967). This last example perhaps represents the apotheosis of
sound technique in supernatural television with perfectly orchestrated
use of sound and silence, natural and unnatural soundscapes pitched in
perfect discordant and unsettling rhythm matched with Michael Horden's
own busy and self-revealing vocal performance. Another lesser-
celebrated example is *The Exorcism*, one of the episodes of the *Dead
of Night* series. In this, a Christmas day celebration between two
middle-class couples in an old renovated cottage is disrupted when they
are made to suffer for their relative decadence by the avenging spirit
of a woman (Sarah-Jane) who starved to death with her two children in
the same cottage hundreds of years earlier whilst the local gentry dined
extravagantly. In one extraordinary sequence given dramatic thrust by
the performance of Anna Cropper as Rachel (who also played the lead in
*Robin Redbreast*) she is possessed by the spirit of Sarah-Jane who
speaks through her for a full, sad, eloquent ten-minute speech. Here the
voices of British history are given full expression by the actorly
tradition which equates the struggles of the past to the class struggles
of its setting (in the year of industrial strife and the first 'winter
of discontent'). For an even more obscure yet equally worthy example,
the Granada Production 'Christmas Spirits' (1981) is emboldened and
almost entirely carried by the narrative voiceover of American actress
Elaine Stritch (as Julia Myerson) as she spends an evening in a haunted
mansion.

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*A Woman Sobbing* (1972), one of the other remaining episodes from the
*Dead of Night* series introduced an even more pronounced 'gendered'
element to this aesthetic of aurality. Anna Massey portrays a bored and
depressed housewife (Jane Pullar) who moves into a large property in the
country. Jane is plagued by the nightly sobbing of an unidentified
female that emanates from the house's attic, and increasingly driven to
madness by these nocturnal episodes as well as her usurpation as female
head of the household by an attractive Swedish au pair (while her
husband and his work cronies leer at their secretaries). Eventually, as
a spell in a psychiatric ward and a cleansing séance fail to eliminate
the ghostly sobbing, she takes her own life. The episode's coda sees the
same happening with the new female inhabitant, as presumably, it is
June's crying which continues the wretched circle. Here, the entrapment
of women in a despairing patriarchal system (in the milieu of 1970s
British sexual politics) including fear of her husband replacing her
with a younger model, her unsuitability for motherhood and the sheer
boredom and unfulfilling nature of domestic servitude are conflated as a
sonic curse which similarly afflicts all the female inhabitants,
trapping them within the parameters of its own sonic boundaries. This is
similarly echoed by Jane Asher's character Jill in *The Stone Tape*, who
is the first to be plagued by the screaming ghost of a servant girl
ascending an imaginary staircase, before falling victim to a far older
and malevolent evil.

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To take a more recent example, *The Enfield Haunting*, premiered on Sky
Living in 2015 and was based on alleged events in a North London council
home in the 1970s. Shooting on lightweight HD and with access to more
sophisticated special effects technology (which it makes great use of),
the sonic aesthetic is still very much in evidence. It opens with a
recitation of a child's late night ghost story, and escalates through a
series of banging noises (see also *The Haunting*, 1963) before the
malevolent spirit is viewed. It is the voice of the spirit, which is
most significant, appearing through the mouth of a medium and the lead
character of Janet Hodgson (Eleanor Worthington- Cox) as well as various
recording equipment. It is redolent of the controversial 'Screen One'
entry *Ghostwatch* (1992) which itself was loosely inspired by the same
alleged events at Enfield. In this drama, the 'ghost in the machine'
paradigm is enacted with live television acting as a significant conduit
through which the evil manifests. A single mother and her two daughters
are plagued by a malevolent spirit nicknamed 'Mr Pipes' after the
banging sound which first manifests as banging sounds in the pipes. As
with *The Enfield Haunting*, the evil voice from the past speaks through
the young female character at first, and then through Michael Parkinson
at the end. The physical manifestation is preceded by the sound of cats
screeching and the repetition of a line from *Little Red Riding Hood*--
"what big eyes you have". Women and children, the most vulnerable
sections of society, are therefore often the victims, alongside
excessively inquisitive, sensitive or arrogant males.

In a discussion of the possibility of supernatural phenomena in *The
Secret of Crickley Hall* (2012) the question is posed "If it's not
ghosts...what is it then"? The answer: "It's history". Indeed, the
ghostly echo of history in British supernatural television travels far
and this piece is simply an indicator to draw attention both to
under-appreciated texts and the techniques from which they draw their
auditory power. Dripping taps, scratching rats and the sinister flapping
of birds' wings, amongst other mundane and primal sounds punctuate the
soundscape of British horror and supernatural television in numerous
other examples (*Doctor Who* alone, could possibly engender a similar
consideration). Significantly, in contrast to many of the celebrated
horror films of both British and Hollywood cinematic history, the threat
here is not satanic or demonic, but the eruption of historic misdeeds.
British history is haunted by the voices of the past, and these texts
speak to the terror evoked when these voices return to the present.

 

 

**Mark Fryers** completed his AHRC funded PhD, *British National
Identity and Maritime Film and Television, 1960-2012* in 2015. He has
recently published a book chapter on *The Onedin Line* and amongst
others, has another forthcoming on *To The Ends of the Earth* as well as
journal articles on *Howards' Way* and British television's role in the
film industry. He is currently working on an AHRC funded research
project on women amateur filmmakers.

 


British history is full of strange and disturbing noises. They rebound and echo, providing a constant reminder to future generations of the violent noises of the past- signalling colonial atrocities, and the stifled disenfranchised voices of class and gender inequalities.

Postagens de Rogue Scholar

IT’S NOT GHOSTS … IT’S HISTORY: THE SONIC QUALITIES OF BRITISH SUPERNATURAL TELEVISION