
Ghost Signals
The Shadowlands Of British Analogue Television 1968-1995
Stephen Prince(Author)
A Year In The Country (Publisher)
Published on 16. February 2026
978-1-916940-19-2 (ISBN)
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Description
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Exploring the Haunted Airwaves
Before the ubiquity of streaming, British television was a landscape with room for strange experiments, folk-horror nightmares, and "wyrd" transmissions. Today, many of these programmes have vanished from official channels, leaving behind only "ghost signals": a shadowland of terrestrial TV hidden in plain sight across the unmediated and unmarketed corners of the internet.
Ghost Signals maps this territory from 1968 - the foundational "wyrd" year of acid folk and iconic folk horror - to 1995, the dawn of the digital revolution. The book delves into a unique era where public funding met social experimentation, creating a "broad diet" of television that was often as challenging as it was chilling.
This landscape invited viewers to encounter the seasonal hauntings of A Ghost Story for Christmas, the suburban occult of Scorpion Tales: Great Albert,and the layered mythologies of The Moon Stallion. It was a time that embraced the edgeland quiet horror of Unnatural Causes: Lost Property, the prescient virtual worlds of Play for Tomorrow: Shades, and the metatextual timeslip satire of ScreenPlay: The Black and Blue Lamp. From the paranormal pathways of Leap in the Dark: Jack Be Nimble to the non-horror folk horror of Play for Today: The Lonely Man's Lover, these broadcasts pushed the boundaries of the terrestrial signal.
Released as part of the A Year In The Country project - which explores the intersection of folk horror, hauntology, and the "eerie" landscape - Ghost Signalsis a journey through the fading frequencies of a spectral past: the hidden gems that continue to resonate within our collective cultural memory, flourishing quietly in the digital attic of the internet.
Includes writing on, amongst other programmes:
A Ghost Story For Christmas (1968, 1971-1978)
Tales of Unease (1970)
Play for Today: The Lonely Man's Lover (1974)
Play for Today: Stronger Than the Sun (1977)
Scorpion Tales: The Great Albert (1978)
The Moon Stallion (1978)
Leap in the Dark: Jack Be Nimble (1980)
The Bells of Astercote (1980)
A Pattern of Roses (1983)
Play for Tomorrow: Shades (1982)
Dramarama - Spooky: The Exorcism of Amy (1983)
Screen Two: Unfair Exchanges (1985)
Screen Two: The Blue Boy (1994)
Unnatural Causes: Lost Property (1986)
ScreenPlay: The Black and Blue Lamp (1988)
The Plant (1995)
More details
Language
English
File size
0,13 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-916940-19-2 (9781916940192)
Schweitzer Classification
Person
"A Year In The Country make excellent music and excellent books about all things dark rural, folk horror, liminal England and hauntology." Stuart Maconie, Freak Zone, BBC Radio 6
"Stephen Prince is a multimedia artist who's been building his own otherworldly visions of Arcadian England under the name A Year In The Country. Both an exploration of a pastoral past and a rumination on a dystopian present, his recordings marry spectral folk to an electronic otherworld, whilst he has written books of non-fiction that investigate the inner-psyche of our collective histories. He is one of our most authoritative and tireless guides... for any self-respecting hauntologist A Year In The Country is a treasure trove of wyrd delights." Thomas Patterson, Sarah Gregory and Ben Graham, Shindig!
"A Year In The Country epitomises the confluence of interest and dark synergy between nature, myth, occultism and ghost traces of hauntological memory." Rob Young, The Magic Box
"Stephen Prince's impressively comprehensive multimedia project A Year In The Country has explored and documented some of the lesser-trodden pathways between pastoral folk music and Radiophonic electronica, as well as actively contributing to these genres with a succession of hugely enjoyable musical releases. He has created a tangled, overgrown enclave of twisted, rustic oddness and continues to weave his own darkly entrancing magic over the countryside." Bob Fischer, Fortean Times' The Haunted Generation columnist, writing at his website and in Electronic Sound magazine
"A Year In The Country is steadily building up a body of work that presents an alternative view of rural Britain and the project's output is consistently fascinating." Psychogeographic Review
Press quotes on A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields, also written by Stephen Prince and released as part of the A Year In The Country project:
"A new book caught my eye recently - the title A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields, that goes in search of the darker, eerier side of the bucolic countryside dream by looking at films of a certain genre, books, TV series, music; it is great to have this fascinating subject explored so thoroughly and brought together under one title." Verity Sharp, Late Junction, BBC Radio 3
"An excellent compendium of Prince's musings and meditations on all things wyrdly bucolic, uncanny, and elegiac." Simon Reynolds, author of Retromania and Energy Flash
Content
1. A Ghost Story for Christmas - Whistle and I'll Come to You, The Stalls of Barchester and The Icehouse: A Lineage of Seasonal Hauntings
2. Tales of Unease: Conjuring Half-Hour Worlds of Unsettling Tension and Intrigue
3. Play For Today - The Lonely Man's Lover and Stronger Than the Sun: From the Fields of Non-Horror Folk Horror to Seaside Secret State Cycle Subterfuge
4. Scorpion Tales - The Great Albert: Occult Summonings and Ambiguity in Suburbia
5. The Moon Stallion: A Teatime Layering of Legend and Mythology
6. Leap in the Dark - Jack Be Nimble: Pathways Through Paranormal Powers and Between the Roots of Magic and Glamour
7. The Bells of Astercote: Trapped Forever Guarding the Chalice
8. A Pattern of Roses: Timeslip Echoes and Cold War Controversies
9. Play for Tomorrow - Shades: Escaping from Real World Shadows Into Prescient Virtual Worlds
10. Dramarama - Spooky: The Exorcism of Amy: Stepping Into a Fever Dream Nightmare
11. Screen Two - Unfair Exchanges and The Blue Boy: A Multi-Layered Shadowed Whirlwind of Creativity, Paranoia and Fringe Science, A Phantom's Revenge and Roads to Doom
12. Unnatural Causes - Lost Property: A Bubble Edgeland of Quiet Horror
13. ScreenPlay - The Black and Blue Lamp: Metatextual Satire and Preternatural Timeslip to Life on Mars and Back
14. The Plant: Unearthing a Leafy Suburban Invasion
Appendix: A Definition of Hauntology, its Recurring Themes and Intertwining with Otherly Folk, Folk Horror and Explorations of a Rural and Urban Wyrd Cultural Landscape
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