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04:21:2002 Entry: "Ghost Tape...a real-life spooky mystery"
Ghost Tape...a real-life spooky mystery
On Saturday, Stan was sorting through a bunch of his books and VCR tapes in the living room in preparation for removing the old rug and installing the new one. As he came across VCR tapes that were generically marked, he'd put them into the player to watch a few minutes of them to see whether he should keep them out as tapes to record over, or stash them away for safekeeping. One tape had us particularly baffled. It was not in with the rest of the tapes, but rather in with a bunch of his physics books (yes, he reads quantum physics books for fun and relaxation...don't ask). As he put it in the player and pushed "play," we were even more baffled by what appeared to be on the tape.
It was an independent production with the brand of "FSTV" of a bunch of people protesting the World Economic Forum, protesting the "New War" and interviews with Americans visiting Afghanistan.
What was this? How did it get here? Was it something Stan's bio-dad sent us? He did send us a tape of biblical prophecies (again, don't ask...it's not our world), but I don't remember him sending us any other tape. Anyway, this tape did seem too left-wing for him, although sometimes his very quirky ideas are so far right, they're almost left, if you know what I mean. Maybe he sent it to us and we forgot about it. But why? And when? Then I had a thought. Perhaps it was something our neighbors left here when they were taking care of our cats and plants in the fall when we were gone for several weeks. We said they could watch our tv and use our VCR. That must be it. We stopped watching the tape; it was not that interesting. Stan pushed "stop" and ejected the tape and left it on top of the VCR in a conspicuous spot.
On Sunday, we just happened to see our neighbors and I asked them if they happened to leave a tape over there.
"No," Mary said, looking at her husand, "we didn't leave a tape, unless it was something the kids left...what was on it?" She was understandably hoping it wasn't porn.
"Oh, nothing like that," I said, and explained the amateurish, independent production and content of protests and such. "It's like something they would show on Channel Four," I said, mentioning Madison's local independent public-access network.
"No, that's not something the kids would watch." She was right...if it bored me, I cannot imagine what it would do for teenagers.
The last hope was to ask Stan's bio-dad to see if it was something he sent us. Stan got ahold of him last night, and after the typical arguments they had (he's known him less than a year and already they're arguing like the adopted-dad Stan grew up with!), we found out that no, he did not send us the tape.
This was a true mystery. How did that tape get in our house? Who left it? Did someone Stan knew at work give it to us? It's nothing my parents would've sent, and neither of Stan's mom's, either bio or adopted, would've sent us something like that either. I asked Stan to play it again, and that we should watch it all the way through this time, perhaps it would give us some clues.
He popped the rewound tape in the VCR. It started out like a typical tape we would have in our stash that we use to record Ebert and Roper when we don't want to stay up that late to watch it. It began with the tail end of local news, a Channel Three editorial, and then launched into an Ebert and Roper that was several months old. Curious. Where were the people protesting the World Economic Forum? We fast-forwarded through it, past the awful show that comes on after Ebert and Roper (Entertainment Tonight), still no Americans in Afghanistan. We fast-forwarded more, way to the end of the tape that contained an old Gunsmoke rerun that I recorded some time last year. Then the tape got that static-fuzz that showed it was the end, that there was no more recording on it.
I guess I was in too much shock to feel spooked.
How could the tape have one thing on it on Saturday, and something else on it on Sunday? Were we living in a different universe or something? Was it a different tape entirely, and if so, where did the protest tape go? Did they beam into different astro planes, realize they were in the wrong universes and change places? Or was it the same physical tape, but it had different levels of recordings, like the protest was a "sub"-recording that can only be seen when played back at a specific cosmic frequency that was only visible on March 9? Was the tape from aliens trying to tell us something? Was it implanted in our house, like a chip under our skin?
This was very spooky.
It suddenly dawned on me, pehaps we weren't really watching the tape when we "watched" it on Saturday. Perhaps we were, in fact, watching Channel Four, and just thinking we were watching the tape because we hit "play." After all, Channel Four is the default channel our TV is on when the VCR and cable are not engaged, and since Stan had moved the TV and disengaged some cables, things weren't exactly working like they should. I did a web search for the network that I saw mentioned on the tape, "FSTV." FSTV stands for Free Speech TeleVision. I searched further and found out that Channel Four does indeed carry FSTV, and it carries it on Saturday afternoon, at the time that we would have been "watching" the tape.
Mystery solved. And I kind of feel stupid. But relieved.
7 Comments
A footnote.
One of the American women they showed being interviewed on FSTV while on her trip in Afghanistan was viewing a bombed-out Afghan mosque. "oooh," she moaned sadly, "look at it...it looks just like the World Trade Center," she said with such naive empathy that could only be mustered up by a Limousine Liberal who self-centeredly sees echoes of America in other cultures. It was as if she was seeing the weeping Virgin Mary in tree bark.
Stan and I stared at eachother, aghast.
"The World Trade Center!?!" we said practically in unison, "It looks like a bombed-out Afghan mosque!"
Posted by Ann @ 03/11/2002 09:57 AM CST
That story was indeed scary! But the solution came fast and I´m relieved. No ghosts. What a pity!
Posted by Mistress Angelique @ 03/11/2002 11:05 AM CST
First I thought there must be higher powers involved or the two people watching the tapes were high in the weekend, but it's good(!?) there was a less fun, but ordinary reason to the tape mystery ;o]
Posted by Nico @ 03/12/2002 01:30 AM CST
Yeah, it is sort of disappointing that I found a rational solution. I still would like to see proof of higher powers and strange phenomenon. I'm one of those people who WANTS spaceships to land on my front lawn and WANTS to be abducted by aliens. Why don't they take me? Um...maybe because they DON'T exist? Probably why I didn't score as Fox Mulder on the X Files quiz.
I'm such a dang skeptic atheist.
Posted by Ann @ 03/12/2002 08:32 AM CST
I'm sure there's much strange going on, that science can't prove it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it just mean the scientists are not doing a great job ;o]
Anyway, I once thought God gave me a sign, another time I was sure I had lived before and been a SS guy in a camp in Berlin.
Besides I'm 99,99 percent sure there's life out there, after all the milky way is just one galaxy and we haven't been outside it and there's a whole lot of bunch galaxies out there so why the heck should it not be life in any of them.
Posted by Nicopico @ 03/12/2002 11:52 AM CST
Good point. I do think there's life out there, but I reeeeallly doubt they're visiting us.
Hey, I think Stan had that past-life memory too. Maybe you knew eachother. Or, maybe it was just his grandfather. ;-)
Posted by Ann @ 03/12/2002 02:11 PM CST
Why the heck would they visit us, we are crazy ;o]
I'm serious about the past life thing, it wasn't just something I got in my head one day, or I got it in my head of course, but because of certain things.
Posted by Nicopico @ 03/12/2002 04:56 PM CST