[SPEAKER_03]: Warning, this episode contains details that some listeners may find disturbing.
[SPEAKER_03]: According to legend, in the late 1980s or early 90s, a VHS tape was making its way through tight circles of people that seek out the strange, sometimes scary, and provocative media.
[SPEAKER_03]: On this particular tape was footage of a young man with a long ponytail and a leather jacket.
[SPEAKER_03]: He stared at the camera and held a human skull.
[SPEAKER_03]: Over the next 26 minutes he delivered a macabre tutorial on how to dig up graves, clean bones, and sell them for a profit.
[SPEAKER_03]: The skull he holds appears disturbingly real, complete with dental implants and bits of decaying tissue and hair.
[SPEAKER_03]: The video later surfaced, in a bootleg and follaging movie called Ensuring Your Place in Hell, Volume 1, alongside three other shock segments.
[SPEAKER_03]: When a copy of it hit the internet and ignited debate, was the video real, or was it a hoax?
[SPEAKER_03]: Was the skull real, and who is the young man on camera?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like that, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's when the body decomposes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a long like that, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: It all rots out in a flat line almost so you can't see it, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: See, it's the top.
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually it has teeth, but the bottom is
[SPEAKER_00]: sometimes hard to find, okay, because it usually can't like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a study of strange.
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome back to the show.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm your host Michael joining me today is old guest got a kind of reaker.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm not show.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I don't feel old, but I feel like I was a guest that was on earlier, but age wise.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm still young at heart.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is Bill Werdie, a filmmaker, a writer, producer.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's now has well, to hear.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to let you explain it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Talk to us about your YouTube show and social
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, so while we're waiting for our films to get made, I revived my old YouTube channel The Geek Garage and me and my now wife Andrea are running that and we make costumes, props, cosplay, all kinds of stuff from, you know, just nerdy movie things that we build in the garage and we teach people how to do professional level, kind of film industry techniques for doing these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, we want to make it accessible for everybody.
[SPEAKER_03]: it's a great it's a great channel it honestly really is i i don't build props but i watch you and i'm like oh maybe i should go out and try to build a set right now out of cardboard and toothpaste um and you guys have a recent episode of series i could even call it potentially i don't know the right term bill yeah i guess it's uh
[SPEAKER_01]: At this new video, I just didn't lose any videos.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the new video is we did a mashup costume taking the screen ghost face character and mashing it up with the Springtrap or Spring Bonnie depending on your view from five minutes at Freddy's.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the connection there is their both characters will villains played by Matthew Lillard who's also in our video.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, definitely check that out if you're interested in building nerdy things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or if you're just a fan of Matthew Lillard because he's in it a bunch and he's just a gentleman.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so let's keep garage.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll have links in the show notes, but there is a reason I had you talk about this up top bill.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is because today we're talking about the internet mystery slash VHS slash DVD mystery, grave robbing for morons.
[SPEAKER_03]: And in that video,
[SPEAKER_03]: Someone explains how to rob graves and get this get the bones turn the bones into something you can sell And because you have experience as a filmmaker building props building your own things I thought you would have a really interesting point of view on this because we can talk about the bones in this video Yeah, try to dissect them a little bit as people online have already done, but I think you're you're gonna have a very interesting angle on it So let's wait it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's wait before you share your information or so in the end about the bones
[SPEAKER_03]: will get that into that later in the story.
[SPEAKER_03]: So let me give some context and background here to the audience.
[SPEAKER_03]: In the 80s or 90s, it was in Vogue for a niche audience to find and watch obscure movies, shock films,
[SPEAKER_03]: Disturbing weird indie movies things like faces of death traces of death cannibal holocaust all of these kind of fit this niche audience and finding those movies I don't know if you remember Bill but like you'd hear stories about movies like this and you try to find them you couldn't always find them You'd have to find them in some weird video store garage sale
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they basically went viral before there was any sort of online streaming YouTube thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just passed around on VHS tapes.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was like these fabled things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even South Park kind of started that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was that spirit of Christmas tape that they didn't demo that exploded around Hollywood and people heard about it or someone's side and you're always trying to get hold of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or even more recently, I remember hearing about the tofer grace cut of the Star Wars prequels where you mashed all three movies together.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, I gotta see this cut.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's always these, this underbelly of the film industry of things that are getting passed around.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously now with the internet things are readily available.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but it still fits this.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just going to for lack of a better term.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like it fits the same genre or vibe when you hear these stories of interesting internet mysteries or strange videos on YouTube or Reddit or whatever.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's still like that's the new angle of that world.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just before it had to be even more nation small because you had to like physically find a tape or a DVD.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the original found footage.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, that's why probably another witch took off.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, big when it did was this was something everyone heard about or knew about it and then when it's like, oh wow, now there's one of these actually in theaters.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone had to go see it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've seen the video and I just watched it yesterday for the first time.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were the one that introduced me to this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was, but yeah, definitely.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't hear about this growing up, which is really interesting, because it feels like something that we would have heard about.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, but yeah, I was like immediately taking back to being a kid and hearing about these tapes or like you said faces that stuff like that, we're just like, oh my god, it should not be watching this kind of thing, but uh, yeah, and the mystery of it is is real and because there's like multiple layers to this mystery, the mystery is a is this really a grave robber that this kid really go out and rob a grave.
[SPEAKER_03]: is the information he's giving correct and real, or is the skull real, and also there's also a mystery of who this person is.
[SPEAKER_03]: No one's really been able to 100% confirm and identify the person in the video, which I found fascinating.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now that it's become an internet video that's been passed around, I find it really interesting that there's not 100% confirmation of who is in the video.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have some theories.
[SPEAKER_03]: My theories literally have shifted all week.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you're hearing it fresh because I have a little bit of a new take today tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_03]: I might have a different opinion.
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, I'll give a little a little more of this story behind this video.
[SPEAKER_03]: The film is approximately 26 minutes long.
[SPEAKER_03]: It shows a young man with a pony tail.
[SPEAKER_03]: He has a speech impediment.
[SPEAKER_03]: He calls himself Anthony.
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, the speech impediment by the way adds to the the kind of weirdness of the video.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because he has a spider definitely.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he's holding a human skull and he's giving graphic instructions about how to dig up graves and even like clean the clean the bones and stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there is he's covered in dirt.
[SPEAKER_03]: It looks like he either has a scar or dirt on his face.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's because it's VHS.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of hard to see the details.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's bits of old hair or skin on the skull, or at least, again, that's what it looks like.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what he says.
[SPEAKER_03]: His hands and fingers are really dirty.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're super dirty.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he, again, he demonstrates about how to like, here's how you take off the skull from the rest of the bone.
[SPEAKER_03]: Here's how you get into coffins.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he also warns watchers not to drink before going grave robbing, you know, some good solid advice.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you want to have your wits about you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: He also gives you advice to make sure there's no witnesses.
[SPEAKER_01]: Meanwhile, there's a camera guy filming it, and then he talks about all the people that come with him as like lookouts and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: So his instructions are a little murky.
[SPEAKER_03]: It indeed, and here I'm on a play of quote about leaving no witnesses.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you leave witnesses,
[SPEAKER_00]: sometimes you might like doing these things and everything at the wall somebody might see them and say that was him, that was him, that was him, never, they, anybody point you out, because you get pointed out, it's very easy, all right?
[UNKNOWN]: It's like, let's say you're under all five degrees, you're right?
[UNKNOWN]: All right, for the first one, you might be a little, she might get caught, all right?
[SPEAKER_00]: play a new foreign right because they call you for this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: That means you're most like into the rest of them and the judge will say it was you that will be witnesses.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have to not them out, not the most that will be taken to dream.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's best not to
[SPEAKER_00]: killed, but if it's necessary, do it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the tape is believed to have been recorded in, or after 1987, because there is a VHS copy of evil dead, too, that's visible for a very quick portion of the video.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was just going to salute to them picking out little details to kind of carbonate this, so to speak.
[SPEAKER_03]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's also a Fangorea movie effects magazine, which came out, again, internet salute supported us out, 1989.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I, it's definitely 1989 or after I think it's sort of early 90s myself, there have been some people that have theorized that this was made later like late 90s or early 2000s and just used an older camcorder to do it for an effect.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think I think it's early 90s like there's it's not like they put a lot of money behind this thing it's you know there's because the clothes the tech you see like a stereo a turntable in the background like that kind of stuff all of that late 80s early 90s tech.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's always the hard thing is that like when you are in those zones where everything is so close to each other, like, you know, depending on, you know, this person's household, if they have a lot of income, sometimes you just have a lot of things sitting around that are older, you know, that's not necessarily a key indicator.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why a lot of times in movies when you see an 80s movie, if you're like, I'm thinking of this from a production design standpoint.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're designing like the kids bedroom or basement, stranger things is a perfect example.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you look at some of the basements, set pieces, in stranger things, it's actually a lot of carryover 70 stuff, because people aren't affording and buying the most
[SPEAKER_01]: newest 80s thing they had all this carryover leftover furniture they would get new furniture upstairs and then throw all the old furniture in the basement you know we all right Midwest we always have like the second fridge in the garage so you have this outdated fridge out there and then the new one in the kitchen so this stuff could have just been things that were laying around and yeah we could have been very late 90s for all we know and they're just using old equipment.
[SPEAKER_03]: I even have a DVD player in my living room.
[SPEAKER_03]: My son doesn't know what a DVD player is.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yet we have a DVD player right underneath the TV.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there is a carryover from these kind of things.
[SPEAKER_03]: And talk to me a little bit as a filmmaker when you look at this.
[SPEAKER_03]: There is this low-fi VHS camcorder aspect to it that I think.
[SPEAKER_03]: feeds and fuels the mystery and the odd strange scary vibe of this video.
[SPEAKER_03]: But talk to me about the vibe, the look, what kind of like how the image is kind of degraded because of what it was shot on that kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I mean, and that's something, I mean, I love the VHS look.
[SPEAKER_01]: We shot on those growing up as kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how we made all of our movies.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even when I did my more recent movie, I'm not recent now.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's still older than I was like 2008.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we did the misinventions of my little weather being.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had this fun little segment at the end where the kids are teaching a science experiment.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we used a VHS camcorder, because the idea was that the kids were filming this and the garage themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we wanted to feel a little bit more homemade, which is exactly what this does.
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels homemade.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, the fact that they're using VHS
[SPEAKER_01]: the footage lower quality and grain here which if you are faking a video hides a lot of you know the detail that would be giveaways to like what's real and what's fake kind of reminds me of one minute my buddy did this other fake video where when the final Harry Potter book was coming out we did this fake you know pretending to be borders employees like reading from
[SPEAKER_01]: the original book we went in the back room and like opened it up early and put it online.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it went viral like crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like all over the place.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we shot it on a lower res camera to hide, you know, the fact that the fake borders and play badges and like when we're showing our fake copyright page like all that stuff like the graininess made it a little bit harder to detect if it was real or not.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's funny wound up on like inside addition and I think like CNN people saw that video on because they thought it was real and we'd
[SPEAKER_01]: Telled because it's so grainy, but it has all like the the standard fingerprints of footage from that area of like the grainyness.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now the one thing I do notice is it cuts to play this again from the beginning, because it starts on like a blue frame, and I'm trying to remember because when we were kids, there's the distinct
[SPEAKER_01]: Like crossover reference point of like when camcorders went from recording static to when like they were doing more of a blue frame like if you were recording something the VCR and there was no signal like later equipment used like that blue screen or societal color but earlier 80 stuff I always remember you'd be recording maybe like some some noise or just like white noise static.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, there's an issue with that, though, and that's, I think the copies, everybody sees online are from the DVD ripoff.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, which we'll talk about in a minute.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, I'm not sure that's actually a perfect clue.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's good to know.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this has gotten DVD at some point.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, I will, I will chat about that.
[SPEAKER_03]: In fact, this is a nice way to talk about how this video even got out and why it started to become a mystery of sorts.
[SPEAKER_03]: these indie kind of shock movies used to be passed around.
[SPEAKER_03]: Some of them legit productions but still like low budget or some weird homemade things like this one.
[SPEAKER_03]: So great robbing for morons as far as we can tell appeared on
[SPEAKER_03]: a anthology movie called ensuring your place in hell volume one there is some debate online because a lot of information about this video comes from red it so you can't trust everything fully and it gets confusing some people claim it's in volume two from what I can tell is that it actually is volume one and a volume two has never been found it contains three other short films
[SPEAKER_03]: grave robbing for more rounds was first at 26 minutes.
[SPEAKER_03]: The second was mortuary of the dead, which shows some young men exploring a mortuary and there's dismembered bodies and things like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: The third one was cooking with hut bakko, which is a just kind of a satirical cooking show by a filmmaker named huck bak bakko.
[SPEAKER_03]: which is hard for me to say, it's really funny though, and he is actually a film maker.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the fourth one is exploding varments, which is exactly what it sounds like.
[SPEAKER_03]: People going out and blowing up varments, all three of those.
[SPEAKER_03]: There is some debate, but for the most part, I think all three of those after graverobbing for morons are fake.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're all fake.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's important to think about and note when we talk about theories later, because cooking with Huck-Batko, that guy became a screenwriter, the mortuary thing, I think, is completely fake.
[SPEAKER_03]: And even exploding garments, I also think it's fake.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's trying to be sort of over the top funny.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think they're all fake, although again, a few of those, there is, there is some debate about all of them being fake, but I think they are.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, and I think it's because it's a combination of all the different things.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just this young guy who looks to be in his teens early 20s talking about robbing a grave and holding this very real looking skull and there's some other bones and there's like a bag of dirt underneath them, which I imagine is where the skull came from and no one's been able to quite figure that out.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's been a great source for myself and some other people that I research this because he really did a deep dive for his own work into this video and he has found some evidence or at least people talking about the fact that this was passed around in these VHS trading circles in New York in the either late 80s or early 90s.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then there apparently was an anthology, like I just mentioned that this was a part of the anthology then became a DVD anthology in the early 2000s and a gentleman who had a video store found it in Chicago of all places.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're from Chicago.
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe you made this.
[SPEAKER_03]: or made the anthology, but he was at a horror convention, he found the anthology, he bought it, he doesn't remember who he bought it from, and then he put it on or someone connected to him, put it on this anthology DVD, ensuring your place in hell, which came out in the later 2000s.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is how it started to get passed around.
[SPEAKER_03]: However,
[SPEAKER_03]: It didn't become a big deal until about 2014 when it was uploaded to YouTube.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then even then it still took a couple of years before this really became a bit of a viral internet mystery.
[SPEAKER_03]: So,
[SPEAKER_03]: A lot of what I just said, it's a lot to kind of take in and again, a lot of information comes from Reddit, so take everything with a grain of salt, but it does seem like the life story of this is, hey, it was filmed late 80s early 90s, became part of a anthology on VHS, and then in the early 2000s, someone put that on a DVD.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then that DVD that was then put on another DVD around 2007, eight or nine, which then went around and then it was put on YouTube.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's been passed around if these interesting anthologies.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't think there's copyright on any of that.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think people are just bootlegging it, putting it out and trying to sell some DVDs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that was one of the questions I had.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you want to dive in, where do you want to dive in first, but I'm so torn because I'm like, do I want to put on my skeptical hat and just get this thing apart or do I want to believe you know, sort of thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to, I guess I'll go from the skeptical part first and we'll talk about, you know, the sort of potential holes in it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, first and foremost, as you're saying, it's on this compilation where every other video is clearly fake, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's like, that's like a red flag right there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, does anyone talk to the filmmaker?
[SPEAKER_01]: What was his name that did the cooking one who later if you said became a screenwriter?
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, that is a good question.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think this guy, Jesse Pollock, did.
[SPEAKER_03]: I could be wrong.
[SPEAKER_03]: I could be wrong about that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And honestly, I should email him.
[SPEAKER_03]: In fact, I'm going to email.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because I'm curious if that guy was approached like to put his video on the anthology or back then was it just like oh someone's putting these things together Like a mixed tape and yeah, it was a stolen from somewhere and just put on it like he may not have had any control about that You know, yeah, because if he might have the the key of like okay who put this thing together if they've reached out to him for like an original copy or something and then that might lead to whoever the original
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I guess, okay, another point would be, you know, thinking about the motivation of the video.
[SPEAKER_01]: At that time, when it's hard to circuit the stuff around what is Anthony's reason for recording himself, giving these instructions to other people and how is he planning to get that out to other people?
[SPEAKER_01]: And why was he not worried?
[SPEAKER_01]: that this would lead back to him and he would get like arrested or be in some sort of trouble.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, they, you know, he didn't really have to worry about getting tracked down because nobody knows who he is to this day.
[SPEAKER_01]: So apparently that is not really that much of an issue.
[SPEAKER_01]: So evading the police or at least online sleuths was successful.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, but like what is the motivation of it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Another thing for me that really stuck out was
[SPEAKER_01]: the way the video starts it just it almost cuts in in the middle so it's like where is the intro where's the start where's the intro mid sentence while he's already like in the middle of showing off the skull so is that like um for a fact was it just the you know back then sometimes the lockable really
[SPEAKER_01]: as this.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you hit record on a VHS camcorder, it would take a second for the motor to start the tape up so there was always this delay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So as a kid when we were shooting stuff a lot of times we'd notice the beginning and end of our shots would get clipped and you'd be missing a portion and obviously you wouldn't know that till after you went and rewound the tape and played it back.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a whole process.
[SPEAKER_01]: So maybe it was just you know, operator error and they started recording and you're missing the little
[SPEAKER_01]: little two-second intro, but those were some things that immediately stuck out to me as like, oh, I've got to take, make note of that because that's kind of interesting.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is interesting, and I pretty sure I sent you the link that is the longest version of it, because there is a version out there that starts even a little later.
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, it does seem to start right in on it, and it could be operational error.
[SPEAKER_03]: Could you be just the boot leg nature of this video?
[SPEAKER_03]: In fact, let me read a quote here because I initially had this idea that what if this wasn't actually passed around and VHS circles?
[SPEAKER_03]: What if that's just what people are saying now and so everybody believes it?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because it's that echo chamber of people having these theories online and people start to take that as fact.
[SPEAKER_03]: What if it really was just a random video some friends made, some teenagers trying to be provocative and whatever and have some fun one night and then later someone found it and put it on this anthology as a DVD.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I had that thought, but then there is this quote, again, take everything with a grain of salt because it comes from online.
[SPEAKER_03]: But this is a quote from a Reddit username training game 3263 on one of the many Reddit Reddit topics about this video.
[SPEAKER_03]: He says, I can confirm that the video dates back to at least the early 90s, 100%.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've seen this video back then, I was able to get my hands on the insure, your place in hell video, VHS from a rental place called Video Hits in a smaller town outside of Pittsburgh, long gone, of course.
[SPEAKER_03]: The other videos in the compilation, I believe, had four different stories.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can find them online, I'm fairly sure, and I'm sure this group already knows that.
[SPEAKER_03]: They were fake, but this one always seems legit.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I've seen this video, say, about 1991.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not exactly sure what year, but it's safe to say it was between 90, but no later
[SPEAKER_03]: 90%, 90% sure it was 1991.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love that he like keeps digging in the winter.
[SPEAKER_03]: People that don't believe this video of more recent years are thinking this was filmed in the 80s, but I'd placed money that was filmed in the very early 90s, maybe 89, but it has a 1995 ball over it.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's an educated guess, but trust me, a very good one.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there you go.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's that quote,
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think because this is so informal and the way he's going back about the years, it makes me believe this guy.
[SPEAKER_03]: I do believe that he saw this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's almost like the comments are in the same believability of the video.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the roughness and the just scattered brainness of it almost like fits within that whole world of like, well, if that would have that's also a fake and he's doing that on purpose to make you feel like he's actually trying to pull this memory out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is funny how this whole aura around this thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's not limited just to the tape and that I think is part of this motivation factor of like why did you make this video because back then without YouTube without the internet.
[SPEAKER_03]: who you're either making it for yourself to have fun with friends, you and I both made movies with friends at that time period, or was it, hey, there is somebody that's going to pass this around to people that, hey, they might be able to help us, maybe we'll go in business, like that could be a motivation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Probably the same circles where he's claiming like he grave robbs these bones and then sell them so maybe in that circle he's planning to sell the tape as an instructional like to make additional money without having to do more work.
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe but that also that's one of the big things that I think will circle around to probably over and over again which is he's making this video and he keeps mentioning don't have witnesses don't use your real name we better not use our last name he says at one point don't let anybody see he's like don't take pictures don't make videos
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think they're like we're doing now so it's like there is this amateurish almost like hey we're just teenagers having fun
[SPEAKER_03]: being cool and we're bad, kind of vibe, where they're just contradicting, he's contradicting himself or he's with a group of people.
[SPEAKER_03]: There is someone filming him.
[SPEAKER_03]: He mentions a bunch of people which we're talking about.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you're just like, there is this skeptic nature too at because you're literally doing the opposite of what you're advising people to do.
[SPEAKER_03]: People to do, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And but again, also teenagers are stupid.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's true.
[SPEAKER_03]: It could be giving that advice
[SPEAKER_03]: just for fun, because he's a crazy teenager.
[SPEAKER_03]: And probably not the brightest if you're robbing group, let's be honest, like, that's the story.
[SPEAKER_01]: Life decision.
[SPEAKER_03]: So let me give a little, a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Really quick, I've one question before we move on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you mentioned people saying, oh, I remember this VHS tape.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, that guy said he got it from a video store.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, when Faces of Death came out, that was, I remember those tapes in the video store.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was put out in distributed.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was actual cases, like VHS, like actual box cases, when we talked about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so there was cover art, there was all that stuff did this have that have you seen any pictures of actual VHS copies that people claim are the real deal.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like was there cover or was it all bootleg like in a just blank, you know, VHS cover with like a sticker handwritten, you know, with that volume one on it.
[SPEAKER_03]: That is a great, great question.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if any listeners can actually confirm a VHS compilation anthology of this, reach out to me a study of StrangerGmail.com, I have not seen artwork because I can only find artwork for the DVDs that came later in terms of being on a VHS in the 90s.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have not seen any imagery about that.
[SPEAKER_03]: In fact, that's again what my one of my first theories was it was never a VHS anthology, it just became later.
[SPEAKER_03]: But if we believe this commenter on YouTube and other sort of anecdotal stories, it was out there.
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, I've never seen imagery for the VHS, only the DVD.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there are some other images for DVD versions of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and nowadays it's so easy to make, you know, fake ones like there's almost like throwback ones that like I am steelberg doesn't stuff like that So even if you get a picture now, it's like what was this created now and to build this mythos out or is it or is it a legit old copy But I feel like there has to be some copies floating around somewhere with all the VHS collectors these days
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Someone's someone's got it in a basement.
[SPEAKER_03]: If it existed, it's out there somewhere.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's part of the mystery because no one has come forward with a copy of the VHS that at least that I've seen.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there are some other details we can we can start to pinpoint or look out to try to deduce or come up with a theory or answers to these questions.
[SPEAKER_03]: One is that the the host we've host.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to call him a host of the video.
[SPEAKER_03]: He is young teens early 20s at the oldest.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's believed to be in New York because of his accent, also local cemeteries that he mentions likely in Queens.
[SPEAKER_03]: He also mentions that they're going to go after Houdini's grave, which I believe is in Queens or Brooklyn.
[SPEAKER_03]: And yes, so those are just some little details that I think are worth mentioning.
[SPEAKER_03]: This skull.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's talk about the skull, Bill.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's move into this because that's one of the biggest things that makes people question
[SPEAKER_03]: if this is real or not.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because if it looked like a store bought plastic skull, we wouldn't be talking about the video.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it looks real.
[SPEAKER_03]: And again, there's like weird little bits of either flesh or hair on it.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's dirty.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's dirty.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it came from a bag of bones or dirt beneath him.
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't really always see the full thing in the video.
[SPEAKER_03]: But he does have this thing below him that looks like it's full of dirt.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he kind of lifts it up.
[SPEAKER_03]: It also has teeth which come out which are dentures.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot of people that don't watch the whole video.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, some people don't watch the whole video.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they're like, those teeth are fake, man.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, yeah, he says they're dentures.
[SPEAKER_03]: So talk to me about the skull.
[SPEAKER_03]: What did you notice about it?
[SPEAKER_03]: And does it look real to you?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I have to obviously preference by saying I've never seen a real skull in person other than at a museum that's been like cleaned up and prepared, you know, yeah, you know, in a museum obviously they take care of it and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I've actually seen one looks like most of my experiences what has been represented on, you know, TV and movies that being said, I mean,
[SPEAKER_01]: movie props look amazing obviously even now shows like walking dead and stuff but even back in the day like Indiana Jones you look at you know those movies and it's like the skulls and the props that they make there look very very real so from that regard it's like I feel like it's very easy to
[SPEAKER_01]: be able to make that for professionals now for someone like these kids that's probably a lot harder of a task especially back then trying to get materials to do castings and forms and I don't really know how they would go about that back then because even when when I was a kid in that era trying to get materials and stuff and ordering that like online wasn't even a thing yet so it was like finding catalogs or calling companies it just seems like
[SPEAKER_01]: highly unlikely that they created this skull, but that being said, yeah, I did some research because I remember there's always the stories of like schools using real skeletons as they're sort of biological for biology class and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I looked up, I was like, when did they stop using real skulls and skeletons and switch over to the plastic sort of resin, you know, copies?
[SPEAKER_01]: The real, you know, big moment was I think it was in, let me see, I think it was 1985 or so when India passed a law to like stop exporting skulls because I guess a lot of them came from India.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, but that was like an 85 and then later and I think it was 2004 was when the UK passed some law.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I mean up until the late 20th century,
[SPEAKER_01]: classroom still had human skulls and skeletons like hanging in the room.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there was a very good chance that they were able to find an actual skull is probably more likely back back then because it was so expensive to get the fake ones and it was so much cheaper.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean let's not forget the story famously in Poltergeist from 1982 where all the skeletons in that movie were real skeletons.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, because it was cheaper to find those skeletons than fake ones.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the skeletons you see at
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we are seeing a real skull.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just don't know if they grave robbed it, got it at an antique store, or through some other means, or like a school, you know, that went on a business, maybe they stole it from class.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a bunch of places they could have gotten it from.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I do feel like it's real.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one thing though that does stick out to me, and you sort of mentioned this a couple of times, was they pull it out of this bag of dirt.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the skull looks very dirty and grimy, so my question is, and they don't really mention this, but
[SPEAKER_01]: When they're digging these up in grave robbing, are they going for really, really, really old skeletons that were, I feel as far as I know, I feel like they always use casket.
[SPEAKER_01]: So why is it so covered in dirt?
[SPEAKER_01]: It looks like it's been dug literally out of the dirt as if you were finding fossils.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so just caked and impacted with dirt.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying to understand why it would be that versus being in the coffin and just decomposing and not covered in dirt.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, that's just, that's where my brain went because I feel like you're digging it up.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to get to the coffin, get a break open the coffin, and then you're not going to go bury it back in a bag of dirt to bring it home.
[SPEAKER_01]: I care the extra weight of the bag of dirt.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, that was the thing this took out to me was how dirty all these bones were.
[SPEAKER_01]: So glad you brought that up.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just feel like a mistake.
[SPEAKER_01]: A teenager would make of like, oh, we got to cover the bones with dirt.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it looks like dug them up.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's one of my thoughts about this, and that is, I actually think it is a real school, and there's a number of reasons why.
[SPEAKER_03]: One is someone mentioned, again, internet sluice, that there's a part of the, let me see if I can find it in my notes.
[SPEAKER_03]: One part of the school has an elongated, style-loid process bone, also known as eagle syndrome.
[SPEAKER_03]: a condition that can occur in human beings after the experience of throat injury, you wouldn't necessarily find that on a fake skull.
[SPEAKER_03]: Also the dentures I think seem to be very real like he's got this dirty old-looking skull and these cleaned it like the dentures to me add some authenticity to it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not saying he robbed a grave for that because there are other ways to get these things, but I never see anybody talk about the bag of dirt in his hands being super dirty because it almost looks like if I was putting on a play in high school and I was playing a graveyard or I'd be like, oh, it's dirty up my hands and whatever it's like, if this is something you've already robbed.
[SPEAKER_03]: why are your hands all dirty?
[SPEAKER_03]: Why is it in a bag of dirt because you're talking that he does talk about coffins and breaking into the coffins?
[SPEAKER_03]: The skulls aren't going to be covered in dirt.
[SPEAKER_03]: The bones aren't going to be covered in dirt.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then he talks about like putting in a bag and carrying it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the dirt to me can easily be them trying to add that quote unquote authenticity with like we need a dirty it up.
[SPEAKER_03]: It makes some mud and water and dirt.
[SPEAKER_03]: Even the bits of what he calls hairs, parts of skin, because of the VHS low quality of it, that could just be like some mud caked on there when they dirtied it up easily.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's where I go to this is like, and it's all due to that dirt.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm like the dirt is a way to hide some of the,
[SPEAKER_03]: the better looking parts of the this goal to make it look a little more real.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if it is fake, I think it's a real school, but if it is fake, that's also a way to kind of hide some of like the plastic in nature or whatever sort of material, and maybe made out of which can be way too shiny.
[SPEAKER_03]: So like let's do it up a bit by putting it in and dirt.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm glad you brought that up because I don't feel anybody talks about this bag of weird bones and dirt at his feet.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like that was the biggest thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Obviously in there.
[SPEAKER_03]: So like, why is it dirty?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and again, I feel like that's probably like the teenager mistake because again, going back to that Harry Potter video we did.
[SPEAKER_01]: We did so much research to make sure it was legit like even being dumb kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, I want a fool people into thinking this is real.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, from photoshopping the copyright page to update a previous copyright page with the new ISB number that's available online.
[SPEAKER_01]: Making the fake cover because they released the cover.
[SPEAKER_01]: the book press and everything when all these like big news reels and stuff we're going but we didn't actually have the boxes we just had a print fake labels so Yeah, we knew that the VHS it was probably some sort of like you know digital tape But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, DV tape But we knew that would help hide some of these features, but again, I think
[SPEAKER_01]: The little hole in their plan was their teenage brains, not, you know, thinking like, oh, we should, you know, we have to make these dirty to look like they're been dug up versus, but he does talk about, you know, like, There's a part where he mentions, depending how old the bones are that might be skin and maybe there's the camera man chimed and I'm trying to remember, but they talked about like,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, how long ago they were buried and if there's going to be a skin that you have to peel off versus the bones are all decayed.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, the dirt was like the biggest kind of like thing I noticed because again, if they're trying to be very detail oriented, they could seek out and find a real skull from an old medical school or any just anywhere that especially in New York with all those weird little shops and people reselling stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure there's some avenue
[SPEAKER_01]: to me again.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like it's real bones or at least the real skull, but everything around it just does something kills.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, this is a little weird.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he does mention that you can go to magic shops and sell the the school for X amount of dollars.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is specifically taken from a book called
[SPEAKER_03]: and there was some gravy robbing and rickie cassas life, he did sell things and literally talks about selling it to a magic shop for X-Men of Dollars.
[SPEAKER_03]: So people bring that up as like a possible influence to whoever made the video to like, oh, you got to say this and like, this is a thing that'll make it seem real.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he talks about like, I lovely it takes like, he talks about a femur and arm bone or something.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like if you can carve this into a necklace, you can get more money, you're about like,
[SPEAKER_03]: There's some interesting little like anecdotes in there that to me make it seem like someone's making something up, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there was also a point where I was thinking about like the you mentioned the dentures and it sort of sort of has me thinking
[SPEAKER_01]: This is where I go to the other side of the coin of like maybe it's maybe it is actually real like would a medical school or any sort of place that you'd buy a real skull use a skull that had dentures because it would be incomplete or
[SPEAKER_01]: Because looking at them, it's hard to actually tell if they're dentures, but if it is a medical one, is it maybe they made a device so you could take, you know how like a lot of times you can take those skeletons apart to see different pieces.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is the plastic ones I'm referring to now, but maybe before that they had the ability to separate parts of the skull or bones and stuff, so that students could actually get a feel for stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: So are they dentures or is it just a skull that's been designed for a classroom to be able to remove some teeth for
[SPEAKER_01]: Certain lessons where they have to look close.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've never obviously been the medical school.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't know what kind of lessons they teach, but yeah, that was one thing though In the column against it was like would they would they have one with dentures in any of the scenarios?
[SPEAKER_03]: I described of acquiring a real snow and I don't know and I will say this is why my theory kind of shifts throughout almost every day my theory is shifting on this
[SPEAKER_03]: But grave robbing is real.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like it does, it does happen.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that goes into some of the theories that have been floating around and some allegations about suspects and what actually happened.
[SPEAKER_03]: And just because you're bringing that up, I feel like it's a nice, it's a nice way into this.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there is one of the main theories.
[SPEAKER_03]: The list of suspects starts off with a guy named Anthony,
[SPEAKER_03]: Anthony in the video even says and brought to you like, it's my buddies and I were doing it and I'm Anthony Kess'a and he has that stutter and he never says the full name and people think he's about to say Kassama SEMA.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well in the late 90s, the reason this guy is a suspect is in New York, Anthony Kassama SEMA stole Tiffany Windows, which I think are stained glass windows and
[SPEAKER_03]: he was caught and his home was filled with stolen items from the Salem Hills or Salem fields and Cyprus Hills cemetery.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is one of the reasons why he's considered a suspect.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if he ever robbed bones, but he was definitely robbing from cemeteries.
[SPEAKER_03]: The point against him though, I'll quickly point out, a lot of people believe it's the same guy, but he was in his forties.
[SPEAKER_03]: in the 90s, he would have been too old, where the guy in the video is, I think, teens.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, that point in teens feels like high school kids.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and there are some, there are some photos of Casa Massima.
[SPEAKER_03]: It takes a little bit of a finding, but you can't find photos of them.
[SPEAKER_03]: They don't share the exact same facial features.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there are some, some look differences as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: There is another theory that's come up
[SPEAKER_03]: recent in recent years but people debunk it pretty quickly as a guy named Christopher Bushay who's an independent filmmaker and he was releasing bootleg copies of cult films.
[SPEAKER_03]: So he adds this like connection to that world of cult films and bootleg films and things.
[SPEAKER_03]: The issue is that his name is pronounced Bouché and Anthony in the video.
[SPEAKER_03]: Graver Apping for Moran's mentions a Bouchy, or I think he says Pouchy, but people kind of stretched it to say Bouchy.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have a friend named Pouchy too, so I was gonna go.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got any family members with some bones?
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, poochie, did you do this?
[SPEAKER_01]: But no, this is what I want to say, isn't it, but.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: So anyway, there's a Christopher Boucher, and also Boucher would be, I think he would have been like a kid when the video was made.
[SPEAKER_03]: So he was not part of this group of grave robbing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Which just to clarify, Anthony in the video says, he likes thanks people.
[SPEAKER_03]: So he thinks the camera guy, he thinks people that he's with a team.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because he's like, he got a team.
[SPEAKER_03]: He had a lookouts in help.
[SPEAKER_03]: And but things are heavy.
[SPEAKER_03]: So he, like, thinks his team, and that's when he mentions this poochie guy.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a story that's been floating around.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it started with a YouTube comment that claims a man, a red hook bootlicker named Screws, was selling bones and later died by suicide.
[SPEAKER_03]: There, however, is no record of such a person.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's no police records for a guy with a similar name or in the similar area that committed suicide.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's become a bit of like an urban legend on this mystery online.
[SPEAKER_03]: There are other real grave robbers, such as Craig Bradley, who is from New York, same area.
[SPEAKER_03]: He would use a crowbar and hammer to break open mausoleums in the mid 90s.
[SPEAKER_03]: He removed skulls.
[SPEAKER_03]: He was arrested, find, surf time.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then he was later re-arrested, but I think for something unrelated to the grave robbering.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it does show that this is real, like this is actually really going on and in that area,
[SPEAKER_03]: And there were some teenagers in 2003, three teenagers in Long Island.
[SPEAKER_03]: They broke into Cedar Grove Cemetery.
[SPEAKER_03]: They took a skeleton from the cemetery to a party.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not bringing them up as suspects.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just saying, these things do happen.
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is where I debate the whole video as a hoax, or could these people really have robbed you?
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, grave, and be like, dude, let's make a video about it, man.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, that's like, there is, there is some possibility that they were doing this.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there is a theory that I don't see mentioned very often that's kind of become part of the lore of this story and it's from a comment around YouTube but it caught my attention.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is obviously all anecdotal, but I do like this story.
[SPEAKER_03]: So apparently there's a guy named Jonathan Herrera from the New York area, from where we think this video was made, who was around the same
[SPEAKER_03]: He was either an illegal resident of the USA, or he was legal, but his parents weren't legal.
[SPEAKER_03]: Something like that, I think his family was from Ecuador, again, so the commenter says, and he was just a bit disturbed individual, and he used to hang out in graveyards, and no one knew we was actually doing in those graveyards, but that was like part of the thing around the kids in school, or like, why is he hanging out in graveyards?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so I just wanted to bring that up because it was like one of these local stories like it was a dude named Jonathan Herrera that like was super weird and would bring things from grave yards and would like talk about robbing graves so there's this these that again it adds to the legend of this because it's like how do you how do you do this now I'm not also I wonder is there any reports like can they go back and see where the reports of
[SPEAKER_01]: during this sort of early 90s period and because we know that we know the rough time period, we know the rough area in New York.
[SPEAKER_01]: So can they go and check if there are any police reports of graves being dug up?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because based on these kids, I'm guessing when they dig up a grave, even if they are being cautious and putting the dirt back and everything, I feel like they're going to just try to get out there as soon as possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what?
[SPEAKER_01]: So that would get reported.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if they do cover it back up,
[SPEAKER_01]: the ground's keeper is going to notice fresh dirt being dug up, you know, grass not being there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So is there reports that they can cross reference, especially with knowing someone that had dentures to try to like pinpoint who this was?
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like there's got to be some sort of sleuthening avenue for that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the simple answer is yes, and people have and no one's been able to quite get the exact details of this video to line up with anything that's found so far it is hard and it's weird to say like the 90s were not that long ago, it's modern day.
[SPEAKER_03]: everything was getting digitized, starting around then, but it still is actually hard to go through those kind of records now.
[SPEAKER_03]: Most of the stuff, and I don't have it all in my notes today, just because we'd have a four hour long episode, but there are people that have gone into police reports and they have found grave robbing, but they've also, they're usually tied to somebody being caught.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's not a lot of reports about just like, oh, this grave site was found dug up and left they usually catch the people, which is actually good sign, but there are some things, but yet nothing is quite lined up and anybody's research yet specifically with the dentures of these people.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, in the video, the person in the video and the people he talks about there is a suspect that is my favorite suspect if I'm to believe that there is a suspect because again I'm waffling on all this.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a gentleman named Manius Friass and he was a real grave rapper.
[SPEAKER_03]: And in 1991, he was about 21, 22 somewhere in there.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he was later described as being homeless.
[SPEAKER_03]: For most of this time in his early 20s, he was convicted of stealing a skull from the bus-mazilium at Cyprus Hills Cemetery in Queens.
[SPEAKER_03]: He was arrested for taking four more skulls from another Brooklyn Cemetery.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he told police that he would clean the skulls and his mother's backyard in Woodhaven, and then he would sell him.
[SPEAKER_03]: he was charged with burglary, larceny, body stealing, probably handful of other things.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's rumors that he would sell into people that were doing sort of a cult rituals for these things, although I cannot confirm that they were used for cult rituals.
[SPEAKER_03]: He was also, I think recently, or within the last 10 years, I forgot to write down the year, but he was arrested in Vermont for unrelated offenses.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I've looked him up, I've seen pictures.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not an exact match, but it is.
[SPEAKER_03]: close.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's much older in photos that I found in the kid in the video, but there are some similarities.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think it's an interesting, again, that's just me speculating.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have no evidence to point to the matter.
[SPEAKER_03]: He may not be, and I'm still leaning to this thing being more of a hoax anyway.
[SPEAKER_03]: But out of all the people I've seen brought up online, he's the one that I think connects more close to most of the most dots connect there.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if nothing else, he also shows again that grave robbing really is happening.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that ties in to how we can kind of surmise the video, which is it's still a mystery.
[SPEAKER_03]: I still lean to it being a hoax, but part of me does think that, in fact, let me just even be more specific build, because this is where my waffling through the week goes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: I am today, I think this kid and his friends robbed a grave.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think they did.
[SPEAKER_03]: So now you're on the grave robbing side.
[SPEAKER_03]: I wasn't yesterday, and I may not be tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_03]: Today, I think they robbed a grave.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just what is suede you from yesterday that now makes you feel more confident that it's real?
[SPEAKER_03]: I think because I've been reading about grave robbery, like trying to find specifics in the records, like you talked about, and finding all these other stories, especially on Long Island, like it's coming up a lot.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I could just see teenagers playing around in a graveyard, being like, hey dude, this thing's recently dug up, or this one's, no one's paid attention to this back corner over here.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's see what happens.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they dug it up, and they were like, dude, let's make a video, and like, we're going to be badass and clean.
[SPEAKER_03]: We do this all the time, and like, just talk about it, and he even, and Anthony kind of contradicts himself in the video.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's like, I've been doing this for a while, and
[SPEAKER_03]: He's giving all this advice about how to clean skin and you want older graves at least 60 years or older don't do a young one because then you got skin and it's gross and weird, but then he also mentions this is his second one.
[SPEAKER_03]: And which could mean just like the school he's holding is was his second one and he's done more or it could mean this is my second one and he's contradicting himself because he's just kind of making it up.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so there are these conflicting things that he mentions, but I do think the bones are real.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the dentures are an interesting aspect of it.
[SPEAKER_03]: The dirt could still be used to like, oh, let's dirty it up so people believe it even more.
[SPEAKER_03]: Or it's just they were enhased and they just threw a bunch of stuff in a bag and there's dirt and whatever like that can happen to So I I personally believe they broken to some grave.
[SPEAKER_03]: They robbed some bones and then they were just like do this make a fucking video We're so bad And they thought because of the air it's and no one's ever gonna see this.
[SPEAKER_03]: I make sure with the friend or whatever, but like
[SPEAKER_03]: Besides a friend in a friend's friend no one's ever going to see this video and we'll just gonna be maybe we'll share it around school I don't know like so they just did this thing so that's where I am now I think they really robbed a grave.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think they were prolific and I don't act as much as I said Maddie's free as is my favorite suspect that's if I believe it's anybody that's been found I don't necessarily think it's him.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think this Anthony guy could have been somebody else
[SPEAKER_03]: And but this could have been the end.
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe they never robbed another grave again.
[SPEAKER_03]: I just made this fun video one night for a weekend fun time.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's that's where I am, but again tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_03]: I may be different.
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, give me your thoughts.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm still so torn because again, like you make one copy.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're showing it just a friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we have a ton of, you know, videos like that, and they don't necessarily spread, so people have to be making copies and distributing them.
[SPEAKER_01]: For it to last this long, to get to where we are today, is very interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, I just remember being a kid, and like, I mean, obviously, depends on the neighborhood you grew up, but I feel like everyone knew what everyone was doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, of one person was talking about this, rumors would spread at school.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some kids are going to talk, and adults are going to get, you know, notified, and someone's
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So maybe that's why they stopped because they did get caught and the parents just didn't want other people to know about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's harder if you like, I do feel like the skull and bones are real.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, the source of those could have come from somewhere else.
[SPEAKER_01]: But again,
[SPEAKER_01]: being kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: The easiest solution is for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's probably easier for them to dig up a corpse than to go source it from antique stores or find a medical school that's closing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But again, you never know someone's got a weird uncle who what used to be a teacher.
[SPEAKER_01]: It has a box of stuff in his basement.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, they're horror fans because you've got the evil dead.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got the fangory of magazine.
[SPEAKER_01]: So sometimes you might just come up with this idea to like, hey, let's shoot this funny thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then
[SPEAKER_01]: found footage and, you know, faking stuff to be real was not out of the ordinary back then.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, cannibal holocaust goes back further than that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was a big, a kind of almost like one of the first, like where people were like, oh, is this real?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, my gosh, it's really, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so it's like maybe they were trying to mimic that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or maybe they just did a stupid thing and we're video tape.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've done a lot of things when I look back and we were filming like pranks and things now that would wind up on jackass or Borat.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, oh, some of those are probably things we shouldn't have filmed us doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But luckily for us, we couldn't afford to buy new tapes.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we just always would tape over the previous thing that we shot to keep making new stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And sadly, we lost a lot of those videos.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it might be for the best, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: You never know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it's a very interesting, I just wish that somebody could track down, like, who this person was, maybe they could use AI to upress the video and get some other clues in the background, because now you're seeing a lot of things where it's able to sort of analyze and take me, just footage and make it look, you know, HD or better.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then again, the legitimacy of that, because it's obviously making up information.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's making up information.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's hard to tell, but yeah, I feel like someone would have had to recognize that kid.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, he
[SPEAKER_01]: There's another actor when I was watching a last night that reminded me of the today when I was looking at him Yeah, I keep thinking of like Lucas has and then the stutter feels so real So the stutter is definitely real.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so like knowing the look of that kid That stutter.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like how is nobody sort of I did him?
[SPEAKER_01]: Especially with me again this this isn't mainstream this hasn't like blown up to where a lot of people are seeing it There was like a Netflix documentary on this someone at home would probably know what I grew up with that kid I need to go like comment on this, but it's still
[SPEAKER_01]: It's still sort of in that modern day version of what it was in the 90s where it's like sort of getting underground.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like again, I didn't know about this until you send it to me yesterday.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this feels like something that definitely would come across my disc earlier with all the weird stuff friends always send me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but I didn't even know about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, uh, yeah, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just so torn.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess the only definitive thing I could say is I feel like the skull is real, especially with the dentures that seems like a whole other.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd probably have to do a little bit more digging and see if
[SPEAKER_01]: Skulls back then did have removable parts for classroom teachings that were made stuff easier to see certain things, but yeah, as far as that like if they actually did the gray robbing, I wouldn't put it past them like these if there was anyone that did seem like they would do that it does feel like these kids and being kids I think you're just not really thinking I shouldn't be filming this kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And also all the contradictory stuff of like, don't let any witnesses see you, but I'm going to videotape this afternoon.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to bring a bunch of friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I mean, all those things check out to a being legit.
[SPEAKER_01]: I sent it to our mutual friend Tony, because this is stuff that me and him love sharing back and forth.
[SPEAKER_01]: And immediately he's like, dude, what is this?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm starting to watch this.
[SPEAKER_01]: What am I watching right now?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, he's like, I think, and we start talking about if it's real.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, 100% think this is real.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess as of right now, I would, I'm leaning towards probably real, but then there's always the other side of me that's like, yeah, but it was on that tape with all the other fake ones.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you got it clear, which was fake, but they took, you know, steps to make it look as real as possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I mean, and I've done things like I said the Harry Potter video and other stuff where it's like the guys of it trying to be real.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know the steps that I go to to make it feel more real, so that when people start picking it apart, there's less threads for them to pull on.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, so I'm so torn.
[SPEAKER_01]: The creative side of me versus the side that's like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's clearly some crazy kids that did stupid stuff in their youth.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I'm hoping that at some point someone comes forward and they've ID this person or at least give some clues to who they were or if this actually happened or not, but Yeah, and time will tell that's a good way to say it and you know the mystery of
[SPEAKER_03]: of this video I think keeps going because so much of it is just people sharing thoughts or stories online where we don't have anything concrete and there's no one that's like pulling up an old yearbook which people have looked for yearbooks for this guy or like here's a newspaper clipping when he won the the
[SPEAKER_03]: Occupella's singing contest and fifth grade or whatever.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was like there's none of those things that have come forward to prove this or someone just being like, look, it's me look at my face obviously I'm older but like it's me.
[SPEAKER_03]: I still have my stutter and it was something I was doing with friends or whatever.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like nothing has come out and maybe maybe this will just become more popular.
[SPEAKER_03]: And like you said, if it was a Netflix doc, there'd be people being like, oh, wait, that's, it's Joe across the hall.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, like, I think it would take a lot of deep research of going through the year books because These don't seem like the kids that were in extra critical activities.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like, yes, they, you'd have to just find their photo of them in the book.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I don't have a great robbing club.
[SPEAKER_03]: Didn't, yeah, what's the story?
[SPEAKER_03]: They're not being club.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And see, I think, but I think maybe as more things get digitized, and again, with some sort of use of AI, whether it's a more advanced version of a Google reverse image search, maybe there's some way for them to track down and cross-reference, but a lot of that stuff's not digitized, and probably doesn't have a reason to be, although,
[SPEAKER_01]: I know when I was doing all my Italian heritage research for my dual citizenship like ancestry.com has way more like information upload to it now than it did like years ago when it first launched and I went on there trying to find family stuff and there was zero and then it's got all these tools that auto find people and link stuff so it's like maybe there's some sort of way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also my other question is if it's real
[SPEAKER_01]: I wonder where those bones ended up today.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like those kids, like did they sell them?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it in someone's basement?
[SPEAKER_01]: Did they just toss them in the garbage?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because they didn't want to get caught.
[SPEAKER_01]: He talked about, well, you said making jewelry or like putting a candle on one to sell it as a display.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just someone have this exact skull with their house thinking it's maybe fake, but it's actually real.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not to mention, I mean, people do collect like real bones and skulls and stuff like we've seen real shrunken heads at one of our mutual friends dad house.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like when there was like a collection of shrunken heads that were actually real.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like this stuff is, you know, potentially traded, whether it's on the open market or black market.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is, this is where the story, like the motive lately, we talked about motivation earlier.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm at least with that Queen's because we have that break.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we talked about motivation earlier of like, why did they do this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why did they make this video?
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the video, they're talking about how it's sort of a guide to get bones to sell them to someone else for profit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now again, going back to my research about how it wasn't until like the mid 80s and even then it still transitioned later depending on laws in the UK and everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: That real skeletons were more readily available and cheaper to get than the synthetic fake ones just because of the process of making those.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's not really a premium for having a grave robes skull, like maybe the jewelry the person was wearing, I understand grave robbing for those things, but for the actual bones.
[SPEAKER_01]: When it's cheaper to get a real skull than a fake skull, what's the benefit of going through all that trouble risk getting caught and going to jail to get something that's not as in demand.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like as
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's say if they were breaking into a store to steal a fake skull at that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, I'm kind of rambling, but I feel like the value proposition that they're talking about at this era in like the early 90s is just not there because real skulls were too readily available in the classroom.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they didn't have the premium that they would say now when now that stuff's illegal.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just something that's not there.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's why I think I'm on this.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think they graverobbed because they're crazy kids.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think the video and the details are a hoax.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's one of the many reasons I think that because your kids,
[SPEAKER_03]: In a period of time where if there is a black market for stolen bones, how the hell are you finding that there's no like there's no like there's no like he talks about a magic shop, but it's like how many magic shops can you walk into with a dirty skull and be like hey
[SPEAKER_01]: It's got to be magic.
[SPEAKER_01]: He must be talking about magic with a K, not a C. It's like we're up doing all kinds of magic and card tricks.
[SPEAKER_01]: And our magic shop would not be the place that would take us whole to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my point.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's have like some, you know, a cult magic shop.
[SPEAKER_01]: And but there was always like, you know, that weird older person or someone new, older brother that had connections to weird stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, I feel like there's probably,
[SPEAKER_01]: an easier way to get to that weird underbelly being in New York at that era.
[SPEAKER_01]: And these kids seem like they might have that weird older brother or just that like that like Van Wilder guy who's too old to be hanging out with the younger kids that like buys them beer, cigarettes or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's going to be someone like I that knows a guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not totally out of the realm of possibility, but yeah, it's a good point of like where are they doing that enough to just keep doing this or was it a one or two off thing that they
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so there you go.
[SPEAKER_03]: We solved it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Obviously we solved it.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, we know who did it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was close.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was really not case closed.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, the mystery goes on and that's part of the fun of these things.
[SPEAKER_03]: And thank you Bill.
[SPEAKER_03]: We talked for a long time about this.
[SPEAKER_03]: There are more details to this story.
[SPEAKER_03]: I will have links in my show notes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Also, you can just Google it.
[SPEAKER_03]: There are a million different rabbit holes.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can go down.
[SPEAKER_03]: We will never have enough time to go into all the theories or details of it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you can also watch the video.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a few different copies of it on YouTube, and people analyzing it on YouTube and things like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: So check it out if you like weird things.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, go ahead.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was gonna say one thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before we go, I just want to, so sadly my wife's best friend, Sarah love it, passed away recently.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was actually a guest on your podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I just want to, as a way to sort of dedicate this episode to her, I want if people can go back and listen to that episode, it was called, I'm probably gonna say this wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: Butchering Burlin Beger.
[SPEAKER_01]: So please just go and listen to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also Sarah was a host of her own podcast, which was ABC series of, yeah, was a death or murder or true crime.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll give, I'll give some links.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but yeah, go back and listen to the study of strange episode with her.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, she was an amazing person and sadly we lost her, but she lives on in
[SPEAKER_01]: the world of true and audio form.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, she does.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, she's a wonderful person.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love her podcast.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she was a great guest and it's Carl Grossman, just to clarify.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I'm okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know Jimmy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've just seen with a B.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's right, because like, strong.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the it's the letter we don't have in English.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: So sometimes in English, I think you spelled with two S's or something like okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, no, thank you for bringing that up and I appreciate that and I will provide links to
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll do an episode where we try to recreate the skull from this video.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just good.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's probably not my real.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that'd be a funny one.
[SPEAKER_03]: That actually would be pretty cool.
[SPEAKER_03]: That would be cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Especially if this becomes like a bigger thing online.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll cool.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, you know what?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, go ahead.
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is like...
[SPEAKER_01]: I just, I forgot to mention earlier, did you see that someone made a sequel short film of the, oh yeah, someone, someone recently made great robbing for Moron's too, it's not.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I did.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't see that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's a guy sitting by a fireplace, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds like it's supposed to be like an interview in the guy years later.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's not.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's definitely a big thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can cut all this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was just thinking like if we wanted to do a pickup to talk about that, but I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm gonna keep that in because I'm sure I'm gonna get a message of someone be like, no, but there's a second one with an interview.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, it's, there is, and it's fake.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not, it's got him.
[SPEAKER_03]: But, but I do think it's fun that people did that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, pretty cool.
[SPEAKER_03]: Cool.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, well, thanks, Bill.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll talk to you soon.
[SPEAKER_03]: you've just listened to a study of strange, consider helping us keep the lantern lit, illuminating the unexplained by subscribing to our sub-stack, just head to the support tab at a study of strange.com.
[SPEAKER_03]: Until next time, stay curious and stay strange.