I was not going to post this. I have read the other accounts online — from people in Casper, from people in Midwest, from people in Douglas — and I know how they are received. I know what the debunkers say. I'm not interested in arguing with anyone. I'm posting this because I found something in my attic last month and I need someone else to know it exists.
Background: I was in Casper in November 2008 when the broadcast happened. I was watching local programming when the signal cut and the images came on. I will not describe the images. You can find descriptions elsewhere, from people who are more comfortable describing them. What I will say is that afterward I experienced the same symptoms others reported: severe headaches, disorientation, an inability to look directly at any face for approximately four days, during which all faces seemed wrong in a way I could not identify or articulate.
The symptoms passed. I tried to forget about it.
Last month I was clearing out my attic. My house was built in 1963. I have lived here for eleven years. In a box that I did not put there, between insulation batts that have not been touched in at least a decade, I found a VHS tape.
The tape is labeled in handwriting I do not recognize. The label says only: BEFORE.
I did not want to watch it. I watched it anyway, on an old VCR I still have in a closet.
The tape shows, from a fixed camera angle, the intersection two blocks from my house. The footage is clearly old — VHS quality, the kind of color rendering from the late 1970s or early 1980s. The intersection is recognizable. The buildings are different — some of them hadn't been built yet in the era the footage appears to be from. But the intersection is the same.
For approximately forty minutes, the footage shows normal street activity. People walking. Cars passing. Daytime in what appears to be summer.
At the forty-two minute mark, everyone on the screen stops. Simultaneously. Every person visible stops moving. They turn, in unison, to look directly at the camera.
This footage was shot from an interior angle. The camera is positioned as if inside a building, looking through a window. Whatever they are looking at, it is not the camera as far as I understand. The angle is wrong for that.
They stand there for approximately four minutes. None of them moves. They all look in the same direction.
Then the footage cuts to static.
The static lasts for seven minutes. Then the tape ends.
The tape predates the 2008 broadcast by at least twenty years based on the visual quality and the appearances of the buildings. I have no explanation for how it came to be in my attic. I have no explanation for what is on it.
I have not been sleeping well since I watched it. I have been having trouble looking directly at faces again.
I do not think this is a coincidence. I do not know what else to do with that belief.
The tape is in a box in my car. I haven't been able to put it back in the house.