Duration: 15 seconds
Director: Uncredited (believed to be Edmund Ravel)
Cinematographer: L. Greaves
Production: Studio 8, New Wexford
Filming Location: Closed wing of the Hadlow Institute, North Devon
Status: Suppressed by StormCroft Historical Committee, 1936
Background:
The Listening Floor was a 1935 short produced under extraordinary secrecy by a group of independent filmmakers connected to the now-defunct New Wexford Society for Psychical Studies. Allegedly shot on 16mm stock using repurposed Ministry equipment, the film was intended as a silent dramatization of the Morris Brothers incident — an unsolved 1934 case involving two siblings who vanished after claiming to hear “deep floor sounds” in their Dartmoor home.
Production took place inside a sealed-off ward of the Hadlow Institute, a facility with connections to early auditory hallucination experiments. The crew was instructed to record without sound, but several journals from the set reference “abnormal thumping from below” and unidentifiable mutterings during the shoot.
Suppression & Warning from StormCroft
Shortly after filming wrapped, StormCroft — then an informal but powerful archival and preservation society — issued a private denouncement of the project, calling it:
“a reckless and spiritually hazardous attempt to breach sonic containment.”
The viewing of the rough cut caused at least one crew member to experience prolonged auditory hallucinations, while another (identified only as “M.J.D.”) was hospitalised after reportedly claiming he could still hear “the brothers speaking” through floorboards at home.
StormCroft issued a Level IV Memorandum, urging all reels be destroyed or “immured in chalk-stone block under ecclesiastical seal.” Only one known copy escaped this order.
Rediscovery & Consequences
In April 2025, a digital restoration of The Listening Floor was leaked to the public — a clip lasting just 15 seconds. Though silent, it was paired with an authentic film projector loop and released via Stormcroft.com.
The person responsible for uploading the video — an unnamed site contributor and archival intern — has since been unreachable, their family citing “obsessive replaying of creaking floorboards and repeated removal of all rugs from the home.”
StormCroft has not officially commented but has updated its digital registry to include a “Persistent Disclosure Alert” next to the entry for The Listening Floor.
Content Summary:
The clip shows a man kneeling on a warped floor in a candlelit room. He pauses, listens… then slowly begins to turn his head — not to the sound, but toward the viewer.
His lips never move, but the moment he looks into the camera… something changes.
You are not the observer. You are the one being heard.
The Listening Floor (1935)
Believed lost until recently, this rare 15-second fragment from the 1935 silent short The Listening Floor shows a man crouched in an abandoned room, straining to hear something deep beneath the wooden boards.
As the grain flickers and the projector hums, he slowly turns his head — not toward the floor, but toward us — as if becoming aware of a presence beyond the frame.
Historians speculate this may have been an experimental public information film, while others claim it is a piece of found propaganda tied to the disappearance of the Morris Brothers.
Sketch fragment dated 1935: “…speak with caution above this line…”