Spirit Dance Tape

Alright, now. My name... my name... I can't remember who I am. I couldn't remember my name, my family, or my friends since it happened. Before all of this happened, I was a video collector. I loved VHS tapes, so much that I would copy every movie I had and record them onto blank tapes. I even had my own VHS video camera and would record everything I wanted to keep memorable. However, that was until I found the tape that changed me forever.

It was several weeks ago when it started. I just got back from a vacation to Yokohama, Japan and I started cleaning out my house. The back yard was green with overgrown lawn and all of the furniture inside was covered in dust. My best friend had taken good care of my pet rabbit, so all I had to do was give her a few leaves of basil, and she was happy that I was home. After I cleaned everything, I headed out to the storage room to put the yard work tools away, but it was after I put the tools away that I noticed something on top of one of the boxes. It was an unlabeled VHS tape. I picked it up and stared at it. I had never kept any VHS tapes in the storage room before, let alone one that wasn't labeled. The tape sparked curiosity within me, so I brought it into my room. Before I put it into my VCR, however, I decided to call my friends and ask them if they left the tape for me to watch. None of them answered, so I just left messages on their machines. Unable to keep my patience, I put the tape into the VCR and turned on the TV.

At first I thought it was empty because the screen showed static for several seconds. Thinking that it was blank, I was about to eject it, but before I could, the tape showed a black screen with white text appearing one second later. The text read, "Spirit Dance" and then cut to a stage. A masked man walked onto the stage and stood at the center for a few seconds, then came the music and he started a tribal dance. I recognized the song immediately, it was one of my favorites, "Yulunga - Spirit Dance" by Dead Can Dance. Whoever this guy was, he was a very good dancer. The video wasn't bad at all, but then near the middle of the song, the dancer pulled a brass ritual dagger from his belt and cut his arms and legs with the dagger's tip before he continued dancing. It became clear to me what was going on, the guy in this video wanted people to see him torture himself for their own sick pleasure. As soon as the song ended, the dancer killed himself by slitting his own throat and the video cut to static before his knees hit the floor.

Completely disturbed I ejected the video and put it back in the storage room. I tried making sense of things, like why he would want people to view his death on camera, but an hour after I put the tape away, I began hearing things, jungle creatures. I looked around, nothing there. Thinking I was going insane, I called my psychiatrist and told him that I was hearing things, but he was too busy already, so I called 911 and told them that I needed to go to the emergency room. It was as soon as I hung up that the hallucinations began. I started seeing myself in a jungle of some sort, but seeing things didn't stop there. I was also able to "feel" everything, and they felt as real as real gets. And that was when I heard the roar behind me. I turned around and screamed at what I saw, it was what looked like a Chimaera, a lion with the body of a goat and the tail of a snake. I tried running but I bumped into something I could not see, then right when the beast was upon me, it vanished. The jungle had disappeared from sight and turned back into my living room. Then I heard the coming sirens. The ambulance had come to pick me up. I ran out the door, but as soon as it swung open, the world outside had become the jungle once again. Trying to remember where the ambulance was, I ran in that direction. Then I saw two native jungle inhabitants. I knew I could trust them. The hallucinations were trying to make me think they were dangerous, but I went with them and they knocked me out with gas.

After my therapy, the doctor said that I had been given amnesia-inducing medication, and that's why I can't remember anything about myself, my family, or my friends. I could never find that tape again afterward. I guess it was all for the best that it had gone, but it wasn't until two days later that I discovered that someone had posted the video on YouTube.