Tape 1: Most seems to be intro footage shot on the first day arriving.
It includes a meet and greet with the Preservation Society.
Notably there is an awkward novice looking Parker. There is a brief interview with him where he mentions the house having been destroyed and restored several times throughout its life and he goes into some mundane details of being excited to be part of the next restoration and restructuring the society into a sustainable foundation model to prevent the Ellis Estate from falling into disrepair again.
William Chambers is thanked for being a financial contributor.
Lots of the group goofing around, occasionally pranking each other by jumping out of places at each other.
Tape 2: Mostly footage of them setting up in the house.
Their "base" of operations seems to be the parlor and using the dining room as something of a camping/living area.
This tape also contains footage of a late arriving Melinda and Gerald.
There is a 3rd woman with them, later referred to as Patricia.
The group is sitting in a circle on the floor talking. In the background Melinda, Gerald, and Patricia are sitting around a table appearing to be in a hushed discussion. The group are passing around photographs. The camera zooms in on one to be a black and white photo of an army tent set up in the yard. A group of men in fatigues are entering the tent carrying "scuba" gear. (Air tanks and masks)
Tape 3: This tape mostly contains footage of the group discussing the history of the house.
Notable Moments:
William Vandermeer, an alchemist, conducted multiple experiments here.
Emma Vandermeer apparently hung herself in the yard.
They say William Vandermeer tortured people in the basement and his notebooks supposedly detailed drowning people in a diving suit.
Frank Vandermeer's body is suppose to still be in a well on the property. (While there you saw no indication of a well.)
The tape also contains several nonvideo portions with only audio likely meant to be cut in:
The audio sounds like portions taken from a radio or news report or meant to sound like it did.
"After killing his family, the father hung himself with a garden hose they had in the garage."
"This brutal killing took place while the family was gathered at home on a Sunday afternoon. The day of the crime, the father went to the trunk of his car, retrieved the rifle, and shot his wife as she was cleaning up the kitchen after lunch."
"The girl was found shot once in the chest from point-blank range. The mother, who he shot in the stomach, was pregnant at the time."
"Several days before the murders, neighbors say they heard the father repeating a sequence of numbers in a loud voice."
"204863"
Footage of the group playing with a Ka-Bala board. (Sort like Ouiji board but it uses a marble on a circular track and/or a center spinner piece to select letters/numbers/zodiac signs/or cards placed around it. Looks a bit like a sundial.) They ask the spirit, "where are you now? The spinner stops pointing behind Xiong. The camera moves up rapidly from the board to focus behind her and reveals Tom standing behind her.
Someone off camera says, "guys, behind him..."
Behind Tom is the grandfather clock.
The camera moves with the group as the approach the clock and there is some argument about who will open it.
Opening the clock reveals a taxidermy fish. There is a collective sigh of confusion and someone says, "shit for a minute there I thought it was pointing at Tom." The camera pans around the group and he is nowhere to be seen. Someone says, "Where is he?" "Where did he go?"
Tape 4
Tour of the house:
The house is far more run down but far more furnished than it currently is.
The sewing room in the attic is fully of cloth, a cutting table, and dozens of mannequins.
They mention that this is where one of the spots are that the child can supposedly be seen.
The Kitchen they mention is wear Ms. Crawford put her hand in a blender.
As they walk through the house they theorize that the house itself is not haunted but rather the grounds themselves and that it is perhaps due to all the experimentation that has occurred there.
Footage looking out a window from the attic to the yard. Kaci is just barely in frame. She says, "James Wilthorpe sowed pig heads onto kidnapped children and had wild boar chase them around the yard. He would stand at the window and record the paths they ran. He said one out of every nine ran the same path. He conducted his tests over and over again until he was arrested and they say he never understood what he had done wrong."
Tape 5
Contains footage of them searching Bedroom 1 upstairs. They swear they saw a child run into the room.
Contains footage of Reese screaming about the upstairs not being the same upstairs as it was before. He described running along a hallway being chased and stairs that come back on themselves.
Contains footage of a very shaky camera trying to hold on the body of Ross who is laying lifeless on the ground bleeding from a massive head wound.
Contains footage of Tom and Cohan trying to calm themselves down. Cohan repeatedly says, "it's trying to separate us, it's trying to separate us." The room they are in looks much newer and not run down. The corner of the room has floor to ceiling bookshelves. There is a globe, several large wing backed chairs, a small circular end table between them.
Contains footage of Tom speaking into the camera saying, "you have to stay together, you have to stay together."
Footage of is just the stairs but someone is yelling, "Forget the tapes! Run! Camera falls over, some feet are visible, and the cuts off.
Footage of the bathroom upstairs. The camera is focused on the tub and someone is saying, "I'm telling you she was right there, in the tub, covered in blood, she sat up and was sort of hanging over the side."
B Roll Tape
Totally dark but obviously recording though nothing is visible. Can hear a scratchy voice: "I was wondering... are you married? I'm not surprised...You're still clinging to the single life huh?... well you're young, why not enjoy the single life while you can? It's always nice to have family around, that's what I always say...Maybe then you can have a picnic, if it's nice out.."
"So listen do you have any kids? How is your father's health? does your father work? Did you notice that you and your father's birthday are
in the same month? They may be more alike then you think."
"I was wondering, how is your health these days? Well it won't be long now regardless."
"You... realize you're talking to a fish, right? "This may get ugly... you may want to look away."
Every so often you can hear someone close to the camera whispering "are you hearing this?" Usually followed by a shush or "quiet."
Footage of the group sitting around the Ka-Bala Board rolling the marble over and over again.
Footage: Heavy breathing, camera shaking around, turns and focuses on what appears to be a woman with a massive abdominal wound.
Pickup Shots Tape:
This is a mostly extra footage tape and apparently shot before entering the house. It seems to mostly serve as transitional pieces and cut to's for storytelling purposes.
It includes footage of a picture of who William Vandermeer dressed in a diving outfit outside the house.
There is footage of a young girl (about eight years old) dressed in 70s era clothing talking about seeing a "shadow man" in the house.
External footage of an asylum.
8mm style footage of things being carried out of the house. Visible in the footage is a desk being carried by two men that looks remarkably similar to the desk Lucien got from the auction.
Footage lifted from some other source - A man introduced a former military intelligence officer talking.
"Once of course we realized we could move to these different places, everyone was interested. How do we control it? We don't know how sir. Well you better figure it out. Yes sir we will sir..." Fade Out and Fade In. "There was room, nobody was allowed in the room. It was kept under constant guard. One day I ran into one of the guards off the base and I asked him whats in the room and he said, "the sphere." And he said, "scientists would go into this room and then come back out..."inspired." I asked him, what do you mean, "inspired." He pointed up, then pointed down."
Footage lifted from another source - Man introduced as a former military scientists: "We had the Russians on the run for the neutron bomb but the real story, we had teams going into these alternative dimensions constantly looking for artifacts. They'd bring them back and our job was to study them, document them, then archive them in the warehouse."
Off camera: "I'm picturing something like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark."
Scientist: "It was exactly like that. When I saw that I ran out of the theater and called a coworker and just said, "how do they know?" I thought there had been a breach."
Former military intelligence officer again: "The question became not how do we penetrate through, but how do we bring these places to us. Maybe if we can't go there, we can bring them to us, or meet them in the middle and that's when we got shutdown and DARPA took over, well it was ARPNET then which really stands for Dimensional Analysis and Reconnaissance Research Agency."
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