[Nathan, telepathically:] Hello. My name is Nathan Barnatt,
former grave digger from New England
and you're watching Grave Stories,
a show that takes a look at some of the most intriguing,
strange, dark, and mysterious real-life events
to occur on our planet.
And sometimes, off our planet.
Some of you may know of my Grave Stories podcast,
where I read true ghost accounts.
Well, I thought it was time to take the show to YouTube
and add a little twist. On the podcast,
I will continue to read true ghost accounts,
but here, on YouTube, I'll take a look at all things strange
and do my own research. Now you might be wondering,
why am I on the Dad channel? Well, let's just say
I once misunderstood this facility. I didn't truly know
what was going on. I thought I created Dad,
like all my other characters. Just another unique personality to play.
A genius performance in an extraordinary story.
A simple award-winning web series to do as I pass the time
waiting to become a gargantuan Hollywood celebrity actor
like my pal, D'Wayne D'Johnson, but I was wrong.
I didn't create anything. They're responsible
and I'm just happy to be here. I'm happy inside this warm, cozy device.
It soothes my nostalgia and keeps me safe from the scary future
and of growing old. Now, I'll be eternal.
Just like Dad. So, there ya go.
Expect to see a lot more of me over here,
because there's many topics I'm going to cover.
I absolutely love spooky mysteries.
Some of my favorite channels are Inside A Mind, Nexpo, Tin Foil Tom,
Loey, Night Mind, and NightDocs. So I figured I'd take a swing
at exploring some of the things I already spend hours looking into,
so that you, too, can obsess over the unknown.
Thanks to Tin Foil Tom, who helps me research and write these videos.
I hope you all check out his channel.
Now, before I begin this episode,
I need to make sure to protect myself from those who may not appreciate
my spilling of the top secret beans.
Some of the things I'll talk about in this series may make
certain organizations unhappy. Now, in order to protect myself,
I'll hide my hide my identity. So please everyone,
start watching the video...
[Anon:] now. If you watched before this point,
don't. Then, you won't know who I am
and my life will be okay. Great. Thanks.
Now, lets begin!
(CREEPY THEME MUSIC)
When you think of "Found Footage," a few movies might come to mind.
VHS, Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield,
and what some consider to be the originator of the genre:
The Blair Witch Project.
Or even The War of the Worlds, the 1938 radio broadcast
from Orson Welles that fooled the world into thinking
alien were attacking and taking over the planet.
After that broadcast introduced a new format of telling stories.
Maybe even inadvertently inspired people like Andy Kaufman
and mockumentary film makers. Or ARGs
who dabble who dabble with mixing reality with fiction.
But speaking specifically about found footage filmed
story-telling, most of us think of the Paranormal Activity films
and The Blair Witch Project, Blair Witch being the one
that started it all. Well, there was actually one that came
before The Blair Witch Project. A classic of the genre
that came out a full decade before Blair Witch,
a film that some consider so frighteningly realistic
that it became the stuff of internet legend and urban lore,
until it came back into the mainstream thanks to things
like DVD and Blu-Ray. Tonight, we're discussing
the cult classic found footage film,
The McPherson Tape.
The story of The McPherson Tape is a terrifyingly
realistic portrayal of a family being forcibly abducted
by a group of aliens invading Earth.
Like I referenced earlier, I feel it is a mixture of
The War of the Worlds and Blair Witch.
Writer-director Dean Alioto even said his goal was to make
War of the Worlds on videotape.
To some, The McPherson Tape is considered one of the most important
pieces of evidence ever captured about UFO-related activity.
But many still consider this film to be the genuine article,
a real UFO encounter, now being covered up
by forces outside the film. Here's the setup:
It's October, 1983, and the McPherson family has gathered
in a semi-remote cabin in Connecticut to celebrate
young Michelle's fifth birthday.
Mikey is the wannabe film-maker of the family
and he brought his VHS recorder to capture the event
and he rolls for the duration of the events in the film.
Shortly after Michelle blows out the candles on her cake,
the family realizes that the house has lost power
and they soon learn, they may not be alone in the woods.
As they investigate, all hell breaks loose
as the family is caught is a struggle for survival
against a group of extraterrestrials.
To the audience in the 1980s, these events were terrifying
because no one even knew this was a movie.
And for some time, folks in the UFO community
thought this wasn't a horror movie, rather, a documentary,
even to this day. There are some interesting circumstances
that lead to this case of mistaken film identity.
Dean Alioto knew he wanted to be a director and
fresh from dropping out of film school, Dean was hungry for a project.
Dean had this to say to Slash Film about how
funding for his first feature came to be.
[quoting Dean:] "I met a producer who said he wanted to invest $6500.
I kind of laughed it off and said, 'the only thing I could do
for that money is a home video.' At the time, I'd been reading
this memoir call Communion by Whitley Strieber
who described his own abduction by aliens. So I decided
to take the abduction storyline and embed it into a home video."
Dean didn't want to make his feature debut on VHS, but 16mm film was expensive
and he was on a deadline. So, with $6500 in hand,
Dean set course into the unknown, found footage realm,
the final frontier. Production went smoothly
and for a no-budget production, things looked great.
Part of what sells the film so well, is the dialogue. It's all improv.
[Michael:] We were pretty worried, you know, being this close to Halloween,
what she would look like, when she came out.
But she's taken after Mom, so that's OK.
[Ma:] Aw! It's almost you gotta best, best from both of us! [Jason:] hey!
[Anon:] Alioto wrote a 10 page beat sheet, but everything else was done in camera,
on the fly, in real-time.
The chemistry was fantastic between the cast members
and lends to the authentic feel of the production.
In a stroke of genius, Alioto himself, playing the family member
recording the events in question, could direct the other actors
with hand signals and shouts of terror.
He said in the Slash Film interview, "I thought I could just cue people
by screaming, 'Oh my god! What is that?' and pan the camera over
and everyone would know to go to the next scene."
Once things wrapped, Alioto pitched his film to anyone who would listen
but no one was interested. Something that's important to remember
is this was before The Blair Witch Project exploded in the 90s.
No one had ever really seen anything like this before.
He was truly ahead of his time. Eventually, Dean did find a distributor
for the film to get it out to the home video market.
He sent his masters and artwork was created.
The film wasn't going to get a major theatrical release, but,
at the very least, it was going to be seen in video stores across America.
Or, so he thought.
That's when Dean got a tragic call.
[Dean:] It, uh, ended up getting uh,
getting distributed, and, so kind of
happy ending except the
distribution company burned to the ground.
Literally. And so, um, [Interviewer, laughing:] Wait a minute!
[Dean:] it was [Interviewer:] Just before you move on, what type of
process was it in at the time?
I mean, when you say it burned to the ground,
did it burn down with some original
footage or something?
[Dean:] You know flames and fire? That's what happened.
It literally burned to the ground. I'm not saying that the,
that the guy who owned the distribution company set it on fire
for insurance reasons. It wouldn't be the first time that that happened
but, um, anyway, that was it. So I lost my main master and all my artwork.
And I thought, "Alright, well that's it, time to move on."
[Anon:] Dean thought all was lost with his film.
His masters and his artwork were gone.
Literally burned to the ground. But then he received a call
that would change everything for the hungry young film maker.
[Dean:] So, flash forward uh, uh, a few years later
and I get a call from this guy, uh, named Sean David Morton.
And Sean is saying that he represents
um, people who are interested in this film. He tells me
he says, "Do you know anything about this 'found footage'?"
Which is the first time I'd ever heard this. I think we're talking about
maybe 90, 92, around there, maybe 93.
Um. And um, he says that, I guess a few screeners
were pass-- got out to some Mom and Pop video stores
before the company burned to the ground.
Apparently some copies of the film had been sent to video stores.
And someone within the UFO community had passed it around
with the end credits edited out
to appear as a real-life UFO encounter.
Not only that, but it had top UFO researchers
and a former US Army Lieutenant Colonel Donald Ware
convinced that this was all true.
[Donald:] It did not have the appearance of being a scripted production.
[Anon:] Not only that, but someone in Hollywood was calling.
Speaking with Slash Film, Dean said,
"The guy that told me all this then said
that there are some TV shows that want to do a story on the movie
including Unsolved Mysteries, Hard Copy,
and a Fox show called Encounters.
I told him the first show was out because
this mystery was pretty much solved. But we went with Encounters
and they did the 7-minute segment on the world's greatest UFO hoax
for their program in the early 90s.
I went on national TV and debunked my own movie."
Dean eventually did find some success in Hollywood.
He did a bigger budget adaptation of The McPherson Tape
for the UPN Network in the late 90s
under the proper name Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County
which on its own caused another stir
as folks, including leading UFO researcher Stanton Friedman,
thought this production was true.
Deja vu. [Dean:] Then about 2 years later
I'm working on the Stephen J. Cannell crime series.
And the head writer of the show, Paul Chitlik,
says to me, "I heard about this video. I want it, I wanna see it."
He watches it and he says, 'I dig it. I can get us a TV movie deal with this.'
And I flippantly said, 'OK Paul.
Um, you can, you know, uh, write the script.
I'll have a story-by credit and
I'll direct it and we'll produce it together.'
[Anon:] Again, the way Alioto presented the film was
without disclaimers that this was, indeed, a film.
It also followed a real documentary called Real Vampires Exposed
doubly causing confusion. Was this a documentary
or a movie? Again, this bigger budget remake of Alien Abduction,
the original title of The McPherson Tape, still predated Blair Witch.
So the style mislead viewers into thinking
this was, indeed, a real-life event.
But by this point, AOL chatrooms and message boards
had become commonplace. And while debate raged on for a while,
it was at least made known it wasn't real,
and was, in fact, a studio production.
The head of TV and movies at the network said,
"This garbage will never air on my network again."
Alioto had a 3-movie deal, but after that first airing,
they fired him. Again, he was way ahead of his time.
Just look how popular the found footage format has become now.
I feel, they work now because the audience is in on it.
When they were being fooled, it was hard to be invested
and follow people talking over each other and watch shaky camera work.
The only people who'd enjoyed it were the UFO marks,
the ones who believed in it and wanted it to be real.
I'd definitely be one of them,
but now that we are all in on it, we can enjoy the format
and go along for the ride.
And who knows? Maybe it was real
all of this is just what the government made Dean say
to cover up the true story of that poor McPherson family.
Dean later directed various TV shows from multiple different networks.
He's even made a few more features
but nothing will ever quite dig up as many bones as his first feature
or even his second, The McPherson Tape, also known as Alien Encounter
which finally got the credit it deserves
with a proper release in a screening at Fantastic Fest in 2019
in front of a packed audience. And this time,
nobody cut Dean's name out of the credits.
Regardless, this is an important piece of horror film legend.
And who knows? Without The McPherson Tape,
we may never have had The Blair Witch Project.
One thing's for sure, if it wasn't for Dean's movie,
we wouldn't have this video you're watching right now.
So how about you drop a like on the video
to show appreciation for Dean, aliens, VHS tapes,
Dad, The Server,
and Them.
Thanks for watching, everyone.
My name is [garbled] and you've been watching Grave Stories.
Until next time, please check out my podcast under the same title,
Grave Stories, where I read true ghost accounts.
You can find it on all podcast applications and websites.
Thanks for watching, everyone.
Goodbye.
(OUTRO MUSIC)