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Russel Hoban’s “Come and Find Me” Episode of Leap in the Dark, Stone Tape Theory and the Porosity of Time: Wanderings 20/26

As mentioned in an earlier post, Leap in the Dark was a paranormal orientated British television anthology series broadcast on the BBC for four seasons in 1973, 1975, 1977 and 1980. There were 24 episodes in total, with the first series being documentary orientated, while seasons two and three mixed documentary footage with dramatisations of real-life cases of paranormal events. Season four featured original dramas themed around the paranormal and included episodes written by, amongst others, renowned writers Fay Weldon and Russell Hoban, alongside Alan Garner and David Rudkin, the latter two of whose work has since come to be associated with “wyrd” rural and folk or otherly pastoral culture.

And as also mentioned in that earlier post, a large number of the episodes are thought to have been wiped, with only seven seeming to be available and/or exist, either via unofficial distribution online or in the British Film Institute’s National Archive.

“Come and Find Me” is the fifth episode in the fourth season of Leap in the Dark. As mentioned previously it was written by Russell Hoban, who is best known for his 1980 post-apocalyptic novel Riddley Walker (Footnote 1).

Its metatextual fictional story involves a writer called who receives a letter from a television series called Leap in the Dark which “examines the paranormal”, asking him if he had experienced an event he would consider paranormal and would be interested in writing about or if anything in their files might interest him. He subsequently visits a middle aged widow in a grand rural house who says she is being visited by the ghost of her dead husband and finding it frightening, with him presumedly following a lead from Leap in the Dark’s files, although this is not specifically explained. His investigations of this haunting are interwoven throughout the episode with sections where a young woman – possibly the widow’s daughter – is pictured with her boyfriend, possibly in a previous time period, and shown to be struggling both with being allowed to progress into adulthood and fears that if she cannot then she may become a literal spectral version of herself.

Other sections feature the writer walking down darkened streets as in voiceover he considers his findings, sometimes accompanied by ghostly images of the daughter, and it is in these sections where the philosophical discussion of the nature of ghosts, how they come into existence and why they appear or linger, which are some of the episode’s main themes, is particularly prominent:

“A ghost is a defeat. A ghost is a remnant. It’s what’s left behind when you go away and haven’t the strength to take all of yourself with you. No wonder people are afraid of ghosts. You see a ghost and you know it could happen to you. You could lose yourself. You could end up transparent. No strength to move. No strength to get away. Not even wanting to get away. Because a ghost is what hangs on. A ghost is what can’t let go.” (Quoted from the writer’s dialogue in the episode.)

The degraded quality of the version of the episode that is available online notably affects this episode and potentially the viewer’s interpretations of the story. It is difficult at times to distinguish if during his investigations the writer is carrying a tape recorder or some kind of electronic ghost hunting device; and as just mentioned the identity of the ghostly spectre that appears on his walks is probably the widow’s daughter but this is at times hard to fully ascertain due to the video quality; also responses to situations indicated by facial expressions cannot always be ascertained, nor even can the style and era of the characters at times.

At one point the writer captures an audio tape recording of a cry that may have originated with the ghost of the daughter, which connects with the episode and the wider world’s debate of the nature of ghosts; are they a physical phenomena that can be recorded by conventional media such as photographs, film, video, audio cassettes and in more recent years on digital devices etc and/or be detected by other scientific techniques?

Related to scientific explanations of ghosts, in “Come and Find Me” there is a connection to stone tape theory, which was popularised by it being the central theme of Nigel Kneale’s drama The Stone Tape, that was broadcast by the BBC as part of a Christmas television ghost story tradition in 1972. This theory involves speculation that ghosts and hauntings are analogous to tape recordings, in that mental impressions during emotional or traumatic events can be projected as a form of energy and “recorded” onto rocks and other items, with these “recordings” being able to be “replayed” under certain conditions. A stone tape theory-esque discussion occurs in “Come and Find Me” when the writer first visits the widow at her apparently affluent and well appointed in a traditional manner home and they have the following exchange:

The writer: “Do you think there’s something in this house that is particularly retentive of… spiritual essences?”

The widow: “I think it’s the brick. It’s all the old brick… yes, clay. And what are we all but clay, really?”

The writer: “And the clay holds them [the ghosts] you think? The clay brings them back?”

The widow: “I don’t say it brings them back. I think it’s the impression. Having once been made, it makes it easier for them to show themselves.”

Their discussion of such esoteric subject matter seems terribly sensible, British and respectably middle class (or upper middle class or higher in the widow’s case) and they could well be merely talking about the lawns. Despite, as previously discussed, the occult revival and related interest in the paranormal spreading throughout numerous different strata of society from the mid-1960s and into the 1970s (and continuing to a degree after that), the commonplace acceptance of such subject matter in the episode is notably unexpected and surprising, particularly in this social setting. Because of this it creates for the viewer a sense of having stumbled into or being given a view of an intriguing semi-hidden corner of the world and time where such interests have taken root and flourished.

In its exploration of the fantastic and paranormal in relation to crossing over into womanhood, the episode intersects with the aforementioned film The Company of Wolves, which, is in part a darkly hued reimagining of the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood and explores its central character’s attempt to escape her trapped existence and enter adulthood and womanhood. Similar themes are explored in “Come and Find Me; in some unspecified previous time the daughter talks of how the ghost that she sees, that seems to be walking right through her, gaining substance as it makes her fainter and more transparent, appears dressed all in white and innocent as that is how “they” want her to be, i.e. caught in a never ending limbo of adolescence. The daughter also says she needs her own “special place” and later, when she and her boyfriend walk alone in a walled garden, she seems to have found it, saying “This is where the first of me happened. This is where the best of me happened. This is the place I’ll come back to.”

Although who the “they” she refers to are not explicitly revealed, through voice-overs and visions it is implied that the young woman may be the widow’s daughter and that there has been some kind of battle of wills between them, particularly in regards to the daughter’s romantic affairs, and that the widow is being haunted by multiple remnants of a cyclical battle between the generations which has repeated over centuries. However this is not fully clear, partly due to the episode’s layered and oblique storytelling, and also because the previously referred to degraded quality of the video muddies the water somewhat, as mentioned earlier, in terms of period style and even at points which character is which.

Throughout the episode there is a layering of another form of existence with the conventionally alive and an intertwining of their stories. Spectres and spectral versions of people appear, change location and seem to return to and interact with normal flesh and blood existence throughout the episode. These spectres include English Civil War era soldiers, the ghosts of which the widow had mentioned seeing when discussing the appearance of her husband’s ghost in her first meeting with the writer.

Certain locations in the episode seem to be particularly embedded with such layering and contain a sense of the “porosity of time”. This is expressly shown in one multi-faceted section where at first the widow walks alone on the stairs of her house in contemporary times and steps off a landing into a bedroom and has apparently stepped over or in-between the threshold of time; she sees the young woman, who is possibly her daughter and also exists in a previous period of time, in an intimate embrace with her lover; they turn shocked to see her but without comment the widow, presumedly in contemporary times, leaves the room and walks silently back down the stairs. A ghostly presence dressed in an “innocent” white dress then appears on the stairs as a mother’s voice berates a daughter for her “tawdry” behaviour; this spectre fades and the widow is pictured gulping down alcoholic spirits, possibly as a form of Dutch courage. She returns to the stairs and has a giddiness to her step, and is followed by an English Civil War era soldier; when outside the daughter’s bedroom, as the image begins to brighten before bleaching away, she appears to openly and perhaps even wantonly accept the soldier’s embrace.

This porosity of time and the way the episode attempts to provide alternative preternatural explanations for ghosts has similarities with some of the themes of the previously mentioned science fiction and fantasy television series Sapphire & Steel, which was originally broadcast between 1979 and 1982, at a similar time to the final season of Leap in the Dark’s transmission in 1980. In Sapphire & Steel the titular transdimensional operatives attempt to guard the flow of time, and it is explained that time is similar to a progressing corridor that surrounds everything. However, roaming this corridor there are weak spots where creatures from the beginning and end of time attempt to break through and take things and people, as also does Time itself, which is implied to be a malignant force. Throughout the series various such “raids” across time occur, often featuring spectral versions of people and events, which break through into the present day. In terms of the depiction, setting and eras which intertwine via the porosity of time there is a notable connection between “Come and Find Me” and Sapphire & Steel’s first story “Assignment 1”, which features the spectres of Civil War era soldiers who cross over time and are shown in contemporary time marching up stairs, across a landing and attempting to enter a bedroom in order to repeat an historic atrocity.

A further connection between Sapphire & Steel and “Come and Find Me” (and some of the other episodes of the final drama orientated season of Leap in the Dark) is that they both have a willingness to present their stories and explanations of events in an open ended and enigmatic manner, allowing space for the viewer’s imagination to explore, wonder (and wander) long after the credits have rolled. This aspect seems to contrast somewhat with much of contemporary mainstream science fiction and fantasy television series, where often little is left unexplained or not having been neatly rounded off (apart from to allow for the continuation of the series).

As with the widow, and to a lesser extent possibly also the writer, the daughter also appears to cross over and travel through different times, adding to which she also seems to exist in and inhabit different forms of existence. Throughout the episode she is shown in times gone by, which connect in a porous or portal-like manner with the present, and as previously mentioned, appears as a spectral presence which accompanies the writer on his night time walks.

She also seems to exist in the “real” world as a form of unseen phantasm. This is implied when it is revealed that she has run away from her conventional life and husband and the writer attempts to track her down and meets her husband at their home. However the only indicators of her actual existence are a photograph and her presence in the memories of others. Through these she appears no more “real” than any of her other timeslip and spectral appearances, and though the photograph and memories are accepted as representing fact they may well merely be further spectral will-o’-the-wisps.

Connecting to the daughter existing in different forms, and returning to the stone tape-esque intersection of the paranormal and recording technology, the writer is pictured in the dark with a tape recorder and asks the audio recording it contains, and therefore the daughter’s ghost, which he believes is imprinted on it:

“Where do you want to go? Do you want to join up with the rest of yourself? You must want that, that’s why you came away from the house. Alright, I’ll take you where you want to go. Where do you want to go?”

(It is at this point that the young couple are shown in the walled garden and the daughter says it is the place she will “come back to”.)

The tape contains a cry and when he plays this to the widow she is upset by it but claims to not know who it is. After this (possibly untruthful) claim he is shown outside the widow’s house in the dark and asks what exactly it is that he has on his tape, wondering if it is the ghost of the young woman who lost some kind of battle in the house, one who is not dead but who has grown up and gone away, leaving a spectral fragment of herself behind to “cry out in the shadows”.

As he considers this and whether the recording was the result of this left behind spectral fragment, which had gathered up the last of its strength in order to imprint itself on the tape and escape the house, there is a sense that he is losing his connection with the real world and that he has become too personally entwined with the conflicts between the living and spectral that he is investigating and studying. This sense of losing himself, of going “native”, is heightened by the playing on the soundtrack of a psych or wyrd folk-like siren-ish song, which is also effectively the episode’s title song, in which a female voice seductively and somewhat eerily and sinisterly calls him her sweet and beckons him to “come and find me”. (Footnote 2) As he disappears into the distance of the blackened street a spectral image of the daughter’s face appears and she smiles in a knowing, satisfied way, as though she knows that the spell she has spun has caught her prey.

Towards the end of the episode the writer is shown alone in the same garden as the young lovers previously were, but on a different plane of existence and time as them, and he asks “Is this the place? Is this where the best of you is?” This indicates some kind of supernatural telepathic connection between him and the daughter, as it is very similar to the daughter saying about the garden, as referred to earlier, “This is where the first of me happened. This is where the best of me happened. This is the place I’ll come back to.”

The writer plays the tape containing the young woman’s cry in the garden and the first time it is present but on a second playing it is no longer part of the recording. His intention is revealed to have been utilising the stone tape-esque spectral recording in order to return the daughter to her “special place”, where she can be free from restrictions. The porosity and intertwined layering of time is further shown as the daughter and her lover appear as ghostly apparitions in the garden, then the writer is shown as a spectre walking past them before he becomes another spectre walking down the dark streets where he debated the origins and forms of ghosts. He then seems to have returned to conventional reality and is pictured outside the widow’s house.

On entering he sees a motionless female figure, dressed in a similar white dress as the one worn by the ghost which appeared on the stairs, and which the young woman had worried was taking her over and making her transparent. Again the degraded video quality initially makes this scene ambiguous; is it the young woman’s physical body, an abandoned corporeal vessel of a ghost finally able to rest now it has been returned to a place it can find peace? In fact it is the body of the widow, who appears to have attempted to take on the physical appearance, and possibly even form, of the ghost which her daughter once feared, and she also seems to have taken an overdose. Is this due to guilt at how she treated her daughter or perhaps for betraying the memory of her husband with a spectre? Does she feel defeated by the escape from her grasp of her daughter’s spectre? Is it fear of the spectral “other”? Was she in fact once the daughter berated for her “tawdry” behaviour? As with many other aspects and strands of the episode this is left unexplained.

The penultimate scene features a return to the metatextual setting of the story, as the writer discusses via telephone the events that have occurred with a member of the production team of Leap in the Dark; after worrying that the writer has gone native and is becoming “transparent” (i.e. a spectre) the team member says “Who would’ve thought this would’ve happened when I wrote to you?”

The final scene again returns to the writer walking alone at night; as he says that he does not think the young woman’s husband will be the one to find her, his own transparent spectre now appears to accompany him and intermingle with his own real world body, before it materialises as a solid presence and his two incarnations continue their lonely walk. He has indeed started to become “transparent” and there is a sense that, despite having set the ghost of the young woman who sought her escape via his tape recorder free, he will still continue to obey her siren call to “come and find me”.

Footnotes:

  1.  Russel Hoban’s Ridley Walker is set 2000 years after war has devastated civilisation, in a society where church and state are combined, with the authorities telling stories of the war using Punch and Judy shows where missiles have been replaced by sausages. Written in a corrupted version of English similar to Nadsat in Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange (1962), its central character is an adolescent who stumbles upon efforts to recreate a weapon from the ancient world. It has been adapted for the stage several times and has also been the inspiration for a number of music releases, including Diana Collier’s album Ode to Riddley Walker (2020), the title song of which is a hauntingly atmospheric folk ballad that explores scenes from the novel. This album provides lines of connection with the lineage of wyrd folk as its recording and release involved work by various members of the alternative folk music collective The Owl Service that was active between 2006-2016, which Collier was a member of and that forebears and inspired aspects of wyrd folk.
  2. The song was written and/or performed by Frank Evans and Norma Winstone, who are more known for their work in jazz. Evans (1930-2007) was a member of the Tubby Hayes Quartet and by the 1970s had performed for and appeared in around 250 television shows for the BBC and ITV, and across his career also recorded approximately 20 film and television scores, including three for Leap in the Dark. Winstone is a jazz vocalist who has released 38 albums over a fifty year career, and is credited with almost 200 appearances on record releases at the discogs.com website.

Elsewhere:

 

Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:

 

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