“Whether it was magic mushrooms, LSD or even peyote, TV writers were knocking back quite extravagant amounts of not quite illegal substances, giving them a new view on reality, writing and the creative process.” – Rob Buckley, ‘The Medium Is Not Enough’ blog, 2008.

Hauntology has had more than a passing mention on this blog since it first started a couple of years ago. That is reflective of a wider and growing interest in the subject, along with the fact that I’m a fully freaked-out member of The Haunted Generation – like many children of the 1970’s, as a child I was exposed to a lot of creepy daytime TV. Over the years there have been certain series that have frequently been namechecked in discussions on the subject – Children Of The Stones, The Stone Tape and The Owl Service among them – but one that rarely got mentioned was Sky. 

There were two specific TV moments in the 1970s that went on to haunt me for years, and with the persistent reviving of all things hauntological and 1970s, in some ways they still do. The second of those moments involved a fleeting clip of a werewolf during Nationwide’s report about the infamous case of The Hexham Heads, broadcast in February 1976, and the first came less than a year before, when Sky was first aired in April 1975. It was the opening scene; the boy alone in the woods, the voice whispering “Help Me”, the hand springing forth from a pile of leaves, and the emergence of an alien face – that of Sky, with his blond hair and startling, solidly blue eyeballs. Typically, given the subsequent advances made in special effects and cinematography, along with my own advancing years, it doesn’t seem as creepy when watching it now, but I can still see exactly why it frightened the life out of me back then, and the memories of how it made me feel at the time and the months and years that followed, come flooding back – for a long while afterwards a walk in the woods would be accompanied by a sense of creeping dread. And that is, in musical terms, exactly how hauntology works – it revives the emotions we felt when we first watched this stuff, as is the case when listening to Eric Wetherell’s sinister musical score to Sky.