ALAN MURDIE rewatches a 1970s TV ghost story that tapped into the Earth mysteries zeitgeist
GHOSTWATCHKEEPING AN EYE ON THE HAUNTED WORLD
After reading of Welsh mystery monoliths in FT444:6-7 and a news item “How ‘ghosts’ can affect your house price” carried in the Daily Telegraph money pages for 14 April 2024 (with thanks to Rob Gandy for spotting this), I was driven into rewatching the TV film Stigma (1977). This was a drama about a couple who move into a country cottage with a fallen megalith in the garden and one of the BBC’s renowned ‘Ghost stories for Christmas’ series originally broadcast between 1971 and 1979.
I remembered seeing it many years ago (possibly not on its original transmission date of 29 December 1977 since I recollect first being told about it by a school friend) and being rather underwhelmed at the time. It rates as one of the more anæmic contributions to the series, save in that it actually shows a lot of blood. Rewatching it with a hopefully better informed and more tolerant eye, I was rather more impressed. While agreeing with those critics feeling it lacks the dramatic fright value of its predecessors, it was one of two plays in the series not derived from an MR James story and one where most of the action occurs in daylight. Written by scriptwriter Clive Exton (1930-2007), it was set in the year of its transmission with the Voyager space probe, launched in September 1977, expressly mentioned.
Summarising the plot, Katherine and Peter Delgado (Kate Binchy and Peter Bowles) move with their adolescent daughter Verity (Maxine Gordon) into a country home close to some standing stones (recognisable as Avebury, Wiltshire). Their home has the added attraction of a fallen monolith on their lawn, but they want this gone and hire some local workmen to remove it. The first attempt at prising up the stone fails, but something invisible and nasty escapes, initially manifesting as an uncanny gust of wind experienced by Katherine alone. Later, indoors, Katherine begins mysteriously bleeding through her skin and struggles desperately to staunch the flow with bandages. After a night of noises and minor poltergeist activity, Peter finds Katherine unconscious with the bedsheets drenched in her blood. He is unable to rouse her, and the local GP and an ambulance are summoned. The doctor arrives first and upon seeing Katherine’s condition tells Peter to take her to hospital while he tries saving her. Meanwhile in the garden
