Director Michael Anderson has stated in interviews that this movie was taken out of his hands during editing and tampered with against his wishes. Ron Moody was the chief victim of the cuts made.
It has been said that "Cliff Robertson made this film in the UK whilst blacklisted from Hollywood after blowing the whistle on a major studio embezzlement scandal involving American film producer David Begelman.". However, although he had initiated the legal process, Robertson was not "blacklisted" at the time he accepted or acted in the film. No one in the film business outside of a literal handful of those intimately involved knew anything about the matter at the time.
The movie's story had previously been adapted for American television as the first episode of the second season of Thriller (1960) which premiered on 18th September 1961 [See: What Beckoning Ghost? (1961)].
The film was made and released about 31 years after its source short story "What Beckoning Ghost" by Harold Lawlor had been first published in 1948.