The first episode is also my personal favourite because it deals with apparitions from my favourite period in history, the Roman Empire, while also exploring the Stone Tape Theory as an alternative explanation for hauntings in old stone buildings.
Here is the synopsis on the back of the DVD cover:
“The Romans occupied Britain for over 400 years. Many thousands of Roman legionnaires or soldiers lived out their lives and were buried on these islands. Two of the greatest Roman camps were at York in the North, and at Colchester in the East. This episode tells two quite remarkable stories of modern encounters in close quarters with the long departed legionnaires; close enough to see their mud bespattered uniforms and their unshaven chins!”
The episode begins with a witness giving his account of seeing Roman soldiers walking through walls. He includes an odd detail of the apparitions missing their lower legs and feet. As if they were walking on the old Roman road which was only partly exposed. The apparitions, showed no interest in the witness at all, as if he wasn’t there. The description this plumber by trade gave of the Roman soldiers equipment and uniforms matched exactly what Roman and mercenary soldiers based in Britain would have been wearing almost 2000 years ago. The episode then considers the Stone Tape Theory as a possible explanation for this and similar hauntings which appear to be recordings rather than sentient spiritual beings.
The Stone Tape Theory owes its name to a BBC ghost story for Christmas called ‘The Stone Tape’ written by Manx writer Nigel Kneale. Like Kneale’s ‘Quatermass And The Pit’, which suggested that poltergeist activity could be explained by mankind’s psychic abilities rather than spirits, ‘The Stone Tape’ also combined science with the supernatural.
The TV play revolves around a group of scientists who move into a new research facility: an allegedly haunted Victorian mansion. Curious, they investigate the alleged “ghost” but soon determine that it is really only a psychic recording of a past event somehow stored in the stone walls of cellar: a “stone tape”. Believing that this discovery may lead to the development of a whole new recording medium, which they were originally brought together to find in the first place, they throw all their knowledge and high-tech equipment into trying to find a means of playing back the stone tape recording on command.
But how could any information be stored in stonework? We use inanimate matter to store information every day, DVD and older VHS tape recordings are an example of this. Crystals can also be used to store digital information much like a DVD. And from a physicist perspective crystals are made of silicon like other stones, so why shouldn’t stone buildings be able to store other forms of information like psychic energy? (If such mental impressions exist).
This explanation might also provide the answer to another popular problem in the paranormal: why is it that some people see full-blown solid apparitions whereas others only see transparent figures, shadows or, worse, nothing at all? Again like a conventional video tape perhaps the older a “Stone Tape" recording gets the more the sound and picture quality suffers.
Alternatively, of course, perhaps a better explanation opened up by the theory might be that some people may simply make better psychic video players than others. Maybe an important point to make here is that according to the theory, the ghost or recording is seen (perhaps "played" might be a better term here) internally inside the minds of the witnesses rather than in the outside external physical universe. Therefore, depending on the sensitivity of the witnesses, it's quite possible that several people might experience the same encounter very differently depending on how psychic the individual is. Some people may see apparitions in living colour whereas others only see a humanoid figure in fuzzy black and white. Perhaps some people can never see or experience anything paranormal because they have a psychic form of colour blindness.
The idea that ghosts might really be some kind of psychic tape recording rather than the spirits of the dead might not be desirable to some die-hard researchers who believe ghosts offer us proof of life after death. Although, the two ideas are not mutually exclusive, it's possible that there could be more than one type of "ghost" each representing something very different. However, if ever proven the theory would raise perhaps almost equally important questions about the true nature of consciousness and the human mind.
Logically, the only way such a psychic recording could be made and replayed would be if there was some kind of direct connection between the human mind and inanimate stone. There would have to be some form of telepathy between two "minds" (for lack of a better word) suggesting that inanimate matter might have some form of highly primitive consciousness or awareness.
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