The Video Tapes

Introduction
Hello, I am James, I worked for a police department and I've been working there for a long time, I've always worked with snuff films and what not, but this was kind of different. It is not gore or torture shit, like the rest of the things here. I actually found 7 tapes from a case of a serial killer who usually killed women, this isn't a killing, instead it is more of puzzles and what not, it is weird. I found these at the age of 31, now I'm working online still and I'm 53. But I am going to try to describe every film I found from this man. I have a good memory, so this'll be easy.

Video #1
As I remember, the first video began with a blue screen, then it switched to a title saying "Quit Searching for Me" and under that it said "By John M. Lancaster" who was the serial killer. It began zooming out of the sun, then the camera pointed down to show a man walking with a suit case. The first 3 weren't creepy at all. But then he went inside of a car, the trunk looked like it was bouncing up and down a bit, as if something was in there, it wasn't his suitcase, it was in the back seat. The film ended, the premise wasn't really understandable. I did find the title to be very weird. I couldn't really understand the next 2 either, the last 4 were pretty odd.

Video #2
The second video is the same beginning, blue screen, title screen, the title changed to "Not Close to Home" and it of course said "By John M. Lancaster" at the bottom, it began in the back seat, and then a shot from the trunk, showing the car moving from the back. Then it showed John, the serial killer, driving in a very dry looking place, a different thing happened at the end of this one, it said "I can't quite find a place to hide." and then it showed a moving dot on a map with coordinates at the top, this guy is showing where he is.

Video #3
Alright, the last sort of normal one. It began with the blue screen and it said "Safe house Hell" and it showed the name at the bottom. It begins in a house and this time, there is music playing, it just old music, for example, The Beatles, I watched the video and it was just John drinking some energy drink or something. It turned to a shot of his face, I noticed that he had a knife sitting next to his hand, when it started zooming in, it cut out with a glitch type sound, it just showed the blue screen after that. I instantly popped out this VHS tape and put Video #4 in.

Video #4
Now this is when the video tapes get a little bit more longer, this is the weird one, so it shows a shot of a basement door and then it zooms into the door, then it opens showing John and he has some blood on his hands, there is no gore or dead bodies shown in this, but it just shows blood on his hands, he goes up the stairs and then he goes inside the house, this part is a little weird, he gets some dolls and sets them up at a table, and then starts giving them tea and then giving them food, he is a grown man so at this point, we knew it was insanity. He just kept doing this, for about 10 minutes, then the scene changed with a repeating sound, the noise sounded like a drum just getting hit, nonstop. The camera seemed to have been pointing in one direction of the basement, this went on for about 1 minute. It changed after this, then a deep voice started humming, it was really strange. It then changed to a floor for a few seconds and then it showed John walking through the woods, he had been hiking, just hiking, like a normal person would do so, but there was some weird carvings, or symbols, in the trees, to me they reminded me of something from a movie that came out a few years after this, it was symbols very similar to a movie called The Blair Witch Project, but these symbols looked different, imagine a triangle with lines going through it, and a large dot in the middle, then he took the camera man to a place for bond fires, it had a book laying on a stand with the symbol on it, it said it was written by, of course, John M. Lancaster. Then the footage just started messing up, that's when it ended. Sorry for a little bit of a rushed description, I don't remember this one that much.

Video #5
This one had the blue screen and then it showed the basement door on this one again. The door was open, not showing John coming out, it was just open, I swear I can just hear screams inside, it was very creepy and, mind you, I watched this one at 4:00 AM in the morning, the camera than had a cinematic scene, it showed the camera going into the basement and showed nothing, I don't know if it was sound effects, ghosts, or there was a secret room. Then some kind of reverse audio started playing, when played forward, it said "Behind the special bookshelf" and it showed a bookshelf on the video, in that cinematic scene, then the audio stops and the camera swings around and John is there, the camera falls to the ground, it ends right there, this one and the sixth one are short, the sixth one is the shortest though.

Video #6
It begins with the camera in the woods, with a flashlight, John seems to be recording since you hear breathing, accompanied by old music, violin music. The camera is taken to the bond fire and then you hear another reverse audio, reversing this is "Under the stand." and I'll tell you what we did when we found John M. Lancaster later, after the 7th video.

Video #7
The final video, this was the craziest one, it was just too fast for me. The shots kept on changing, it was very fast, the first shot had no title like the last 4, it showed pieces of papers saying "Where the fox hides" and there were shots of a den and then it showed the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 things, think of an old movie from a long time ago, reels, from when I was a kid. It showed John running into the den and chasing foxes out, the screen then said "Where the frogs croak" and it showed a shot of a pond, then it showed a shot of a noose and then afterwards, it stopped going so fast, but instead had reverse music, it sounded very creepy in reverse and it sounded like a song, I've never heard before. It sounded like it said "Where the fox hides, where the frogs croak" and the next like was "where the-" and then it cut off. This video was kind of short, but it was very strange, it felt very cryptic. The findings were a lot more than what we expected.

The Findings
We headed straight to the coordinates shown on video 2, we got inside and found a note saying "I didn't have time, don't search for me." and we thought he would've left this with the VHS tapes at his old how. We found him inside of a room, we ended up arresting him, we then searched through his house searching for what we've found in the video tapes. The first places we looked were the basement bookshelf and then under the stand, behind the bookshelf were some macabre scenes, I don't want to go in-depth with this, the next thing, in the stand, was again, buried bodies, then I remembered that there was a fox den and a pond. We searched for hours trying to find these areas, we finally found it, we found some bodies, in both spots, so, this wasn't very bad of a manhunt. He was giving us clues on a few of them, but this was actually quite fun. I did get pretty shook of how many bodies we had found, but now it's 2018, I don't really want to describe anymore of this, so I think I might go, but before I go, I have to say something.

Afterstory
John was sent to prison in 1996 for murder.

He later died in prison and hadn't ever mentioned the symbol ever again.

It was a weird time for him, his family never knew he'd do something this evil, his parents never did anything to him to make him murder people. But this is all that we have to speak of, the government said we can't expose anymore information after the part about his family. But that is all we have, thanks for staying with me today and reading this story.