Movie (or TV show) story with haunted house and organ playing

Question

I was trying to remember some strange story I saw as a kid. It was on TV, but it don't remember if it was a TV show or a movie. I remember that the camera work was in color, and had that weird gamma-correction look of early video.

The plot involved 3 or 4 people in a supposedly haunted house that had a pipe organ installed in the parlor.

They discovered that by playing a specific melody on the organ that it would trigger hidden memories in one of the women.

She went into a trance walked around and started clawing at a blank section of wall. Two men took crowbars or axes and opened the wall to find a hidden door behind it.

I don't remember what was behind the door, but I remember it was scary, and somehow solved the ghost story of the house.

Is that enough to go on?

Answer 1

Some parts of your description suggest that this film may be The Legend of Hell House (watch out for spoilers in the wikipedia article).

Specifically:

• A woman goes into a trance at some point.
• There is a hidden room discovered.

I don't recall organ music being involved in the trance. Note that there are similar films (see also The Haunting of Hill House).

Answer 2

What you are describing is definitely the British TV series "The Clifton House Mystery". Check about it in Wikipedia or YouTube, which has all its episodes.

The plot revolves around concert pianist Timothy Clare and his family - a daughter and two sons - moving into an old house in Bristol they had just bought from the elderly Mrs Betterton; the house having been in her family for generations. While exploring the garden, Timothy's two sons notice that the house has an extra window, and deduce that a hidden room may exist. After breaking through an upstairs wall and discovering an ancient dusty bedroom, a long-dead skeleton is found in the four-poster bed.

A number of strange incidents then start to occur. The Clares' daughter Jenny is visited by the ghost of a kindly old woman who appears to be summoned by a music box left behind by Mrs Betterton's granddaughter. Plates and bowls jump out of people's hands and smash to the ground. A dragoon's helmet that the boys had bought at Mrs Betterton's contents auction starts to glow mysteriously; and a blood-like liquid drips through the ceiling onto some dinner party guests.

After these unexplained incidents, the boys recruit a local ghost hunter called Milton Guest to investigate. After hearing what has happened, Guest becomes convinced that a ghost connected in some way with the Bristol Riots of 1831 is haunting the house. After checking local records, they realize that it may be the ghost of a dragoon commander called George Bretherton who was court-martialled for his lenient handling of the rioters, and who subsequently disappeared without trace.

Answer 3

I know this is awfully late to the party, and there's an accepted answer with The Legend of Hell House, coupled with a mention of possibly confusing aspects of The Haunting, based off of The Haunting of Hill House, but I think there's a decent chance you might also be mixing in the 1959 House on Haunted Hill, which has an organ that plays itself, secret rooms, and women in trances. And there was a colorized version released, although the film was released in black and white (which might partially account for the odd color aspect of things).

However, I do not believe it likely to be the correct answer because those three items occur in different parts of the film, there are no aspects of lost memory, and there's no scene that I remember where they break down a wall to get at what's behind it (they do in the remake, but the less said about that, the better).