I didn't really mean to become a collector of strange and obscure VHS. For about 10 years I've made notebooks using original VHS boxes of popular movies to sell at comic cons and craft shows (you can find those at facebook.com/arealpieceofwerk, or on Instagram @toddwerkhoven). Initially I would visit all the Goodwill and second hand stores around Portland, but then I discovered the Goodwill Outlet, or "The Bins" as they're sometimes known. The Goodwill Outlet isn't a regular retail store with a somewhat fixed inventory, but a warehouse filled with 4'x16' plastic bins that are the repository for all the things they weren't able to sell at the regular Goodwill stores, and priced by the pound. Usually there are about 30 or so of the bins set out at a time, in groups of 8. The bins are set out for an hour or so, and then rotated out for a new one, meaning that things are not in the store for very long before they're carted off to the dump. The Outlet bins also had *hundreds* of VHS tapes come through. While building my stock of notebook VHS tapes (mainstream titles for the most part, nothing collectable or rare), I started noticing some of the stranger tapes that would surface, and I quickly became fascinated by them. Instructional tapes, travel tapes, obscure how-to tapes, and sometimes unlabeled or hand-labeled tapes. Red Letter Media's "Best of the Worst" series on YouTube is a favorite of mine, and I knew there were other people out there who would appreciate the random and weird tapes I was finding. I couldn't keep the strangeness to myself, and felt a need to keep these tapes alive and from being completely lost to history. The only thing that made sense was to start my own YouTube channel and share them with the rest of the world.

It's been a few years since my discovery of this particular tape, so I don't have many strong memories. I looked back at my initial Facebook post from a few years ago when I first posted the tape, and was reminded that I did see some other tapes along with this one at the Bins. I mentioned military tapes and counter intelligence tapes and terrorism tapes, but they must not have been very interesting because I passed on them. Many of the VHS tapes surrounding this one look like the typical grandfather's collections: WW2 tapes, History channel tapes, vintage military planes, random war documentaries, golfing tapes, tapes of programs that seem like they'd run at midnight on some weird TV channel that needed content...those types of tapes. Pretty standard and boring. I see those types of tapes all the time, and I rarely get them (mostly due to the fact most are boring and poorly made, and many are still under active copyright so I wouldn't be able to post them anyway), so I passed on them and only noted the "military grandpa" aspect of it all. I remember being ecstatic finding this tape, though. It was full of mystery, but in a more dangerous way, with its cryptic numbers, the strange and enticing "VHS COPY of PERTINENT SEGMENT" type, and the creepy "JERRY HILL" hand-written on either side. It's the type of tape I always hope to find, but rarely do.

I came back home, ripped the tape to my computer, and was supremely freaked out. I've seen all sorts of strange VHS, but this one was certainly different. The fact that it was taped over something else (a Mexican telenovella? Someone in the video comments was able to figure out which one), the fact that it clearly wasn't made to be shared or broadcast, and the fact that it was creepy, hand-held footage with very ominous in-camera titles given to it -- all of it was incredibly bizarre. I knew it had to be evidence of some kind, but what? Was it made by the police, or by some crazy person? Who were all those people, and why were the titles at the bottom the scariest thing I've ever seen? When I posted it on my original channel (my first two channels have been taken down without warning by YouTube; the second channel had never even gotten a strike against it and was nearing 2,000 subs when it disappeared), I posted about it on my Facebook page, and two of my friends jumped on the case, and found many of the same facts that you did. My mind was blown, but I figured that was that; I thought it was a famous case that I had somehow not heard of, and I just moved on, and forgot about what they had found.WhenI posted the mystery again on my current channel, that's when you got a hold of me to expand on what my friends had found.

So between me coincidentally being at the Goodwill Outlet bins at the right time to find my tape, and considering the small channel audience I have that somehow got this tape to you, it's a fascinating story of happenstance that this story is getting out at all. It's been a fun journey, which is the entire purpose of my channel. Just where do these weird tapes come from? And how did they happen to get into my hands? And what can happen if I give these tapes a new lease on life?