10 tapes found in the Occult Underground; some are still circulating. Some have the keys to ancient secrets. Some are Beta-Max.

Ten tapes found, over the course of fifteen years, in various hidey-holes of the OU.

1.) “The Knife Fight” — security camera tape from the Fox Hills Mall, Culver City, CA. Seen from above and behind all six people involved, the incident took place in May, 2000, after closing hours, on Memorial Day. Six combatants had a six-way knife fight which lasted over an hour (63 minutes, 11 seconds); the choreography involved was almost surreal, provided such choreography was actually involved. No blood was drawn until the end of the 64th minute mark, when the first one to enter the ‘scene’ flipped the blade across four throats and landed the blade into the sternum of the fifth. No one was monitoring the cameras that night, and thusly, no arrests were made. None of the combatants involved had faces until they fell to the floor, dead — they were exact duplicates of each other, except the last man standing has an eye patch.

2.) “Dixie’s Trux Stoppe” — Chicago, IL. truck stop’s camera, overlooking the parking lot where the long-haulers stop their rigs to buy breakfast, speed and local working girls. A truck labelled ‘S & J Hauling’ pulls up, roughly four minutes to midnight, October 30th, 1997, and the driver dismounts, checks the rig, and unlocks the rear door to the trailer he’s hauling. Three minutes later, and a dozen men dressed in SCUBA diving suits fall to the ground on the top of the rig, and crawl into the back; all evidence points to them arriving from above the rig. They seemed to fall from somewhere out of frame, but some witnesses who wander into the camera’s range of video are seen looking to the distant overhead skies, and looking around in confusion. Five minutes after the divers arrival, the driver enters the rig, and departs.

3.) “The Taser Incident” — Los Alamos, NM. New Year’s Eve, 1993. Cashier working at a register for a Quick-E-Mart stops his crossword puzzle at approximately 9 PM, and opens his lunch bag, removing a taser. The taser is then used on the next forteen people who enter. The tape skips forward briefly, to show the cashier is having a tea party, with the store closed up, and the cash drawer slowly smoldering, cash still inside it. The fourteen customers are lashed to a park bench, dragged in from outside, and are being force-fed ice cream and what can only be assumed to be the cashier’s blood and fingers, in joint-sized sections. At the end of the four hour ordeal, the cashier departs, dropping a sheaf of papers from under the counter. On all of them is the single word: “SLEEPLESSNESS”. He departs without his fingertips, but the door’s lock is visibly moved into a ‘locked’ position by the man. How he does it without fingers isn’t defined exactly.

4.) “Hang-Gliding 101” — New York City, NY. Atop the Empire State Building, a man on the afternoon of September 11th, 2003, jumped from the observation deck wearing a hand-made hang-glider. Deploying the wings before security can stop his noon-time suicide, they scream (soundlessly; no audio) as he leaps from the building. All involved parties look over the roof, and then sharply look to their right, seeing something approaching. Seconds later, five men wearing similar hang-gliders fly through the deck’s safety screens, kicking wildly at anyone nearby, before flying back off the building. The attack takes less than five seconds. It is not, as far as documentation, repeated.

5.) “Baby Carriage” — Detroit, MI. Crosswalk-mounted street camera, circa 2002, July 8th, 4PM. A woman with a large, rather outdated, baby carriage abruptly stops pushing it, while trying to beat a crosswalk light, abandoning the contents and carriage in one shot. Moments later, a Chevy Suburban hits the carriage and is nearly flipped completely over it by the impact. Estimated speed of the Suburban is approximately ninety five miles per hour. The carriage then rolls away, unattended, past the camera’s view, dismaying onlookers even further than the Suburban’s crash.

6.) “Bullet Catching Biker” — Interstate 5, WA, near Everett. Dashboard-mounted camera for a police cruiser; the digital camera has a fairly wide angle and some sounds are audible. The tape begins with a standard-issue traffic stop for a rather tall biker, wearing a red leather jacket and knee boots with spurs. Abruptly, the biker becomes audibly hostile, and falls to the ground, clutching his chest. The state trooper leans over the body, weapon ready but not yet drawn. CPR is administered while the officer calls in backup and medical support; before the arrival of the backup, the biker stands up when the officer is momentarily distracted by traffic, and withdraws a hunting knife, and advances menacingly. The officer spins on his heel, and fires eight shots in three seconds. The biker makes a fast strike outwards with his left hand, slowly opening it afterwards, with all eight rounds clearly visible and relatively undeformed. The cop then runs into oncoming traffic, with an accompanyingly loud ‘splat’ sound. The biker departs with no further odd activity.

7.) “Traffic Runner” — Compton, CA. Undated tape evidence, misfiled as a stolen VCR cleaning tape. During a videotaped gang initiation, a young black man (identified on the tape as ‘Vasa’) is asked to show his loyalty to the gang by shooting a man selling oranges at an off-ramp. After several minutes of discussion as to the methodology, the gunman jumps from the driver’s side of the Toyota Tercel, cameraman trailing him. The man selling oranges is shot to death, and the gunman then turns on the cameraman, shakily discharging another round. The camera then drops, but shows the gunman fleeing on foot, through traffic, and at four different points, jumping onto the hoods of moving cars, nimbly avoiding the Tercel’s other gunners. Tape ends abruptly (possibly run over).

8.) “Money Bomb” — Grand Island, NE. AAt a CitiBank security camera, there are five people in the bank (as customers) and twice that as cashiers and support staff. During the lunchbreak (roughly 11:300 AM, June 19th, 1992) two figures (tape is heavily blurred; some assume video trickery is involved), and threaten the staff and clients with long-handled shovels. No money is removed, but wallets are collected; all the contents are poured into a wastepaper basket, and then hurled into the vault’s open door. Seconds later, all the money in the vault abruptly flies outwards, blowing out the windows of the bank, shattering the lense to the camera. No damage is done beyond some minor cuts and the robbers escape in the intense confusion.

9.) “Ghost Fight” — New Delhi, India. During the filming of a wedding ceremony on Ghandi’s birthday (October 2nd, 1990), strange ghost-like apparition of American Southwest Indians and some sort of law enforcement officials appear, during the initial speech. The camera operator is speechless, left mute, for the duration of the three hour proceedings. During this time, the ghosts of what can be assumed to be American Indians and Old West sheriffs plays out eight times, in sequence. The fight begins with rifle fire exchanged from behind guests (who don’t seem to notice the spirits) and ends with a pitched pistol battle, crossing repeatedly in front of the camera. It ends with a tomahawk to the temple of the last remaining lawman, who is abruptly scalped, but is still alive, feebly crawling away. Tape ends with the battery dying on the camera.

10.) “Homeless Dance Number” — location unknown, time/date unknown. The camera’s operator is clearly audible, as is some sort of strange, haunting music (some claim it is Beethoven played backwards). The dialogue is repeated below, with the view in brackets.

“.. set up yet?”
“Yeah, we’re good. How many tonight?” “.. two, maybe three hundred. More than last time. Way more.”
“They gonna do it?”


“Yeah.”

“Chips and dips are here. We got beer?”
“We gots the beer, pretty lady. You wanna watch them?” “They’re weird, yeah. But, it is kind of cool.”

“What?”
“… starting. Look!”

“… I think it’ll be better than last time. There’s, like, way more than before.”

“Cue the lights.”

“Dude. This is so cool.”
“Shut up.”
“… ay.”


“Shh!”


>music fades< "They're done?" "Yeah. They usually do a few others, but they haven't done that.. what was it? Spanish one." "Flamenco." "Yeah. That's new." "Been watching long?" "Yeah. When it was two of them, doing a ballroom-thing." "When was that?" "Two weeks ago. Every other night, they get together, and do this." "Ever wanted to catch them at it, like down in the parking lot?" "No." "How come? You afraid they'll give you homeless diseases?" "No."
“What did you say it was?”

“Dude. What the hell is with the slappin’ and all?”
“You had it comin’. We don’t break their parties up. No.”
“What was that?”
“I said it’s ‘mysterious and reassuring’. That’s what we call it.”

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Ain’t it all just some format of ‘mysterious and reassuring’?