This House has a Memory - The Haunted House as a technology of the uncanny in Stanley Kubricks’ The Shining and Nigel Kneales’ The Stone Tape.

A struggling writer, with his wife and son in tow, accepts an off-season position as a caretaker at a palatial Hotel in Colorados’ remote Rocky Mountains, an elite playground overshadowed by a history of violent and horrific acts. In rural Lancashire, England, a team of scientists and technicians convene at an ancient estate to research and develop innovative methods of recording technology, only to discover that the ancient foundations appear to have ‘recorded’ the trauma of the buildings past, manifesting in the tragic spectre of a serving girl. At first glance, Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 cinematic treatment of The Shining and Nigel Kneale’s 1979 BBC teleplay The Stone Tape bear little correlation to each other, beyond the common trope of the ghost story. However, closer scrutiny reveals that both texts share a common fascination with not only the Freudian concept of the Uncanny, but also of the liminality and innate permeability of such haunted spaces.

Kubrick and Kneale’s work is linked by the persistent presence of what Sigmund Freud described as “that species of frightening that goes back to what was once well known and has long been familiar” that is, the Uncanny, from the German unheimlich, or 'un-homely'. The Uncanny is a quality that seems at once both relatable and un-relatable, the homely space that hides an unspeakable, repressed secret history. Where Freud observes the uncanny as representing psychological disturbance, Mark Fisher extends Freuds original definition into a broader cultural phenomena - nothing less than the failure of the future to meaningfully manifest itself. Instead, what remains in both texts is a ‘fatal pattern’, a compulsion to repeat past traumas representative of the inescapable loops of History. 

Both Taskerlands and The Overlook aren't simply sites of haunted phenomena: they are effectively technologies of the uncanny. These haunted spaces are time machines that act both as a spiritualist medium, an open channel to ambivalent psychic influences, and psychic media, capturing, recording and playing back destructive libidinal energy. Fisher has observed that The Overlook “...is simply a massive version of the room in The Stone Tape”, highlighting the manner in which both locations are encoded with the accreted negative energy of their history. They are places imposed upon by modernising forces, yet indelibly marked (‘stained’ in Fisher’s words) and persistently re-visited by history. Therefore, these tragic histories are never truly confined to the past, but constantly, compulsively replayed.

Fisher considers Kubrick’s Overlook and the room of Kneale’s The Stone Tape as ‘recording systems’ of the histories of the atrocity, misery and violence embedded in their walls, replayed by ‘sensitive psychic apparatuses.’ He describes these hauntings as a disruption of space time, occurring when “space is invaded by a time that is out-of-joint, a dyschronia.” To Fisher, this dyschronia manifests in The Shining, a film fundamentally concerned with repetition, in Jack’s compulsion to revisit the failures of his past transforming into violent impulses toward his wife and child as he slowly succumbs under the malign influence of the Overlook. Similarly, Peter Brock of The Stone Tape’s obsessive drive to recreate the conditions of Taskerlands supernatural phenomena reflects Jack's compulsion, as he pushes his team of technicians and his psychically sensitive lover toward recreating tragedy in pursuit of a technological breakthrough. Both texts draw their hapless victims into what Fisher calls ‘aeonic time’ - a distorted and non-linear experience of violent history. The horrors of both narratives are not only supernatural, but historical and relational, the unquiet past haunting the present.

The tension between ancient and modern forces lies at the heart of both films, a point eloquently reinforced by Frederic Jameson’s description of Jack Torrance as a man ‘possessed by history’ rather than occult evil. Jameson interprets Jack’s breakdown as a ‘return of the repressed’ - a violent reaction of a working-class man against technological control in an attempt to reclaim autonomy and power. Fisher describes the supernatural effects of Taskerlands on Brock as an ‘eerie Thanatos’–a compunctive death drive, compelling the egoistic technician to manipulate those around him to serve his selfish, and ultimately tragic ends. Both The Overlook and Taskerlands are theatres for acts of violence and subjugation, played out in both macro and micro scales, forward and backward in time. Kubrick elaborates the hotel’s haunted history, recasting it as a Native American burial ground, a site marked during its development by the brutal expulsion and extirpation of the local tribe. Comparably, Taskerlands, the sprawling manse of The Stone Tape, is long steeped in local lore as the site of a failed exorcism. Consequently, the unquiet nature of these spaces reflect the unresolved tensions of their histories, amplifying the anxieties of more sensitive occupants and unleashing the destructive energies of the unmindful. 

In both The Shining and The Stone Tape, we observe a complex interplay of psychological energies and anxieties among the characters. The primary male protagonists exhibit a gradual transformation, their failures driving them toward tragedy as they become increasingly seduced by notions of their own power. This process inevitably involves the sublimation of that power at the expense of those they perceive as weak. By contrast, the women and children in these narratives experience a different psychological journey. They find themselves either gripped by a growing sense of unease or plagued by premonitory visions. These psychological assaults and breakdowns represent a teleology—that is, they push the actors arcs towards their predetermined, inevitable ends. The escalating tension between antagonism and anxiety ensures that a hidden, sinister cycle of history will inevitably repeat itself, culminating in outbursts of libidinal violence. 

Jack Torrance in The Shining exemplifies this pattern. An aspiring writer dreaming of producing the "Great American Novel," Torrances’ frustrated ambition and repressed hostility channels itself into obsessive, nonsensical typing, before it is finally unleashed on his hapless family at the films denouement. Similarly, in The Stone Tape, Peter Brock's character arc demonstrates how narcissism and misogyny can intertwine. As Taskerlands' mysterious room continues to baffle him scientifically, his frustrated ego drives him to alienate co-workers, family, and lovers alike. Ultimately, Brock's increasingly extreme attempts to understand the phenomena result in a metaphorical 'wiping of the tape'—a complete erasure of his progress and the tragic loss of his lover. Both works present a stark contrast between the male protagonists and the more sensitive characters. Danny and Wendy Torrance in The Shining, and Jill Greeley in The Stone Tape, demonstrate acute awareness of the growing distress in their environments. However, they struggle to comprehend the motivations behind these ominous changes, highlighting a recurrent theme of powerlessness in the face of overwhelming, often supernatural, forces.

Far from being mere ciphers, the characters of Jill Greeley, Danny Torrance, and Wendy Torrance play crucial roles in The Stone Tape and The Shining. Appropriately, they serve as important conduits for the supernatural forces at work in their respective narratives. Their roles could be analyzed through multiple lenses, from feminist theory to psychoanalysis, revealing deeper insights into the works' themes and cultural significance. From a feminist perspective, the positioning of Jill and Wendy as receptive to supernatural forces presents an intriguing dichotomy. On one hand, their sensitivity could be seen as reinforcing traditional gender roles, with women cast as intuitive and emotional. On the other, this sensitivity grants them a form of power and agency within the narrative, often placing them at odds with the rationalistic, and ultimately destructive, approaches of their male counterparts. This tension reflects broader societal shifts, following the impact of feminisms second wave, in gender roles during the 1970s, when both works were produced. 

From a psychoanalytic perspective, these characters' experiences of the uncanny – particularly their premonitions and visions – invite examination through a Freudian lens. The uncanny, as theorised by Freud, involves the return of repressed familial conflicts or primitive beliefs. In both The Shining and The Stone Tape, the characters' encounters with the supernatural can be interpreted as manifestations of repressed familial or social anxieties. The use of architecture, particularly staircases, as sites of dramatic and tragic events for Jill and Wendy is rich with symbolic possibility. Staircases–liminal spaces connecting different levels–demarcate these characters' precarious position between the mundane and supernatural realms. In an uncanny doubling, the stairs represent both the precarity of these characters' social positions and their psychological journeys. 

In terms of narrative technique, the portrayal of Jill, Danny, and Wendy's sensitivities often relies on non-linear storytelling elements such as premonitions and flashbacks. This disruption of chronological time mirrors the characters' disrupted sense of reality, enhancing the overall atmosphere of unease and instability in both works. Through examining these characters via various critical lenses, and in relation to their broader cultural contexts, we can appreciate the complexity of their roles. No mere passive observers of supernatural events, they are active agents, whose experiences and actions are central to the thematic and narrative development of their respective works. Their presence adds layers of meaning to the stories, inviting a deeper exploration of themes such as perception, family dynamics, and the nature of evil in ways that complement and complicate the overt horror elements of both narratives. 

Both The Shining and The Stone Tape powerfully articulate the tensions between history and the future, serving as a grave parables for the critical audience. The depiction of bureaucratic hubris and frustrated male ambition, exemplified by Peter Brock's obsessive pursuit of scientific breakthrough and Jack Torrance's gradual descent into madness, demonstrate the compulsion to revisit the past in a drive to capture the future. Simultaneously, they give voice to sublimated feminine perspectives through the characters of Wendy Torrance and Jill Greeley, whose intuitive understandings of the significance of their environments to the unfolding events ultimately prove crucial. In both narratives, sites of history act as records and witnesses to humanity's past. The Overlook's bloody history and Taskerlands' ancient stone room do function simply as backdrops to the bloody acts played out on their stages, but active antagonists in the unfolding drama. These locations simultaneously inform and constrain the future, preventing it from fully actualizing. This is evident in Jack's compulsion to reenact the hotel's violent past and in the research team's inability to move beyond the stone room's historical imprint.

The characters in both works are haunted by that which is repressed and hidden in the land, as both Fisher and Jameson propose, they are compelled by these places to repeat and reify the actions of history. This compulsion manifests in Jack's transformation into a literal figure from the hotel's past and in the research team's inadvertent "wiping of the tape" at Taskerlands revealing a more ancient and sinister signal embedded in the background noise. What is familiar becomes terrifyingly unfamiliar, blurring the lines between past and present, reality and nightmare, an embodiment of Freuds’ unheimlich. Ultimately, audiences of The Shining and The Stone Tape are invited to consider how place might yoke us unknowingly to history, our futures tantalisingly out of reach as we grapple with the weight of the past. These works challenge us to recognize the power of the repressed history embedded in the very walls we live in, and to consider how we might break free from compulsive repetition to forge new paths forward.

Fisher, Mark. “Eerie Thanatos: Nigel Kneale and Alan Garner.” The Weird and the Eerie. Repeater, 2016. Pp. 128 - 154

Fisher, Mark. ‘You have always been the caretaker’: the spectral spaces of the Overlook Hotel. K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004-2016). Edited by Darren Ambrose. Repeater, 2018. Pp. 324 - 342

Freud, Sigmund: “The Uncanny”. The Uncanny. Edited by David McLintock. Penguin Classics. 2003. Pp. 278 - 325

Jameson, Frederic: ‘Historicism in The Shining”. Signatures of the Visible. Routledge, 1992.

Pp. 209 - 249

Lutz, John. “From Domestic Nightmares to the Nightmare of History: Uncanny Eruptions of Violence in King’s and Kubrick’s Versions of The Shining.” The Philosophy of Horror, edited by Thomas Fahy, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, 2010, pp. 161–178. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2jck39.14.

Rolinson, Dave, and Karen Devlin. "'A new wilderness': memory and language in the television science fiction of Nigel Kneale." Science Fiction Film and Television, vol. 1, no. 1, 2008, p. 45+. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A243358520/AONE?u=learn&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=4fba1083.