The Camcorder

Here, it's something that has some roots in truth but isn't 100% true, more like 67% true and 48% provable.

I have quite an interest in camcorders. The technology that allows a chunk of time to be recorded and played back later on, it is so cool to think about! I have a hard disk drive camcorder that I got for Christmas in 2008. I've used the damn thing nearly to the point that it has died from the use. It's been acting quite strange as of late.

Whenever I set it on the desk to record a video, the screen whites out then text flashes on the screen for a split second before returning to the screen that shows up when I go to record. That's not even the weirdest thing. Sometimes when I record a video, something will appear to be moving or existing behind me in the display, but when I turn to look, nothing is there and I look like a paranoid fuck when I play back the clip.

It gets weirder. I was recording a video where I voice my opinion on something and I swear the camcorder blanked out. I went to turn it on only to feel that it had gotten very hot. So hot that I couldn't touch it. The fact that the plastic hadn't melted off the hard drive was the first sign that something was off. The heat didn't surprise me, it was an old camcorder. I ended up turning it on with a combination of pliers and a soldering tip that had been sanded down for some reason. Despite being in the recording mode, it showed the playback screen. All of my videos had been erased off the hard drive. I wasn't particularly surprised by that since the camcorder had heated up quite a bit as I mentioned earlier. What was weird was the thumbnail of the one clip that I had no recollection of its recording. Using my little pliers and soldering tip setup I pushed play on the file.

This was a big fucking mistake. I saw myself, or what looked like a distorted version of myself on the screen. The audio was garbled in what was strangely an analog sounding way. The reason this was weird was the camcorder was not only digital, it was tapeless. It recorded stuff to a hard drive, so the garbling should have been limited to audio dropouts. That aside, the picture of my distorted self was just...absolutely horrifying. My eyes were pure white with an occasional vein. It looked as if my eyes had done a 90 degree turn either upward or downward.

I felt extremely cold puffs of air down my neck coming from behind me. At the same time something showed up on the screen that looked like a demonic shadow. Red eyes, satanic shaped, yeah, whatever, how common. I turned around and I don't know what I saw because my memory from then until sitting on my bed having the camcorder in my hand doesn't exist. I did, however, have bite marks on my arm.

I have since stashed the camcorder in the garage and bought a DSLR. Despite that, whenever I go to make a video with the DSLR hooked up to the tripod, I will occasionally see the camcorder's shadow outline on the desk. It doesn't show up in the screen of the DSLR...

This piece of crap was written by bakonfreek.