The Kilauea Recording (2006)

 Original essay by 'Tristan Marshall', forbidden media investigator.

I’m going to splash a content warning up here: if you’re uncomfortable with reading about bad things happening to children, I wouldn’t read on. This gets rough.

Thanks to the likes of The Blair Witch Project, the genre of ‘found footage’ films was all but ubiquitous in the 2000s and early 2010s. You occasionally got a quality piece, such as The Atticus Institute, REC, Trollhunter, or Paranormal Activity, but more often than not you were left with dreck like The Devil Inside, Apollo 18, The Pyramid, and… “Trash Humpers”, a movie that doesn’t deserve proper italics. Some are mistaken for genuine, thanks to the ignorance of the audience or deceptive marketing.

And then we have genuine articles, pieces of forbidden media that are found by some unwitting passerby that document some sort of bizarre event-- or else cause harm to the viewer. You have Lassiter Hotel Footage, the Reykjavik Flare, and the so-called ‘Night March’ recorded in Central China. These have been documented by us, but we don’t feel comfortable releasing information on them at this time.

There’s always one that keeps getting away from us: the Kilauea Recording. Part of the reason I’m putting this up is a plea that somebody can maybe help us find it, because it is dangerous, and is honestly one of the few pieces we’d prefer not to preserve.

The Kilauea Recording, sometimes called the Kilauea Tape, is a thirty-one minute long video stored on a VHS-C tape. As the name might suggest, it was shot at Kilauea, the most active volcano in Hawai’i. Despite the imminent danger of lava that can literally cook you to death, it attracts thousands of tourists every year, as lava flow is largely cordoned off and what is accessible is slow and stable enough that you can be near it with relative safety. There’s probably a few thousand pictures on Instagram of people trying to roast a marshmallow on the lava there or something.

Nobody who’s part of the Institute, or the broader community, knows the full contents of the video, but the context around it is well-known. It’s known to depict an anomalous event occurring near Kilauea in Hawai’i. It was shot by the Sinclair family-- Malcolm Sinclair, along with his sister Matilda, his wife Gwen, and his eight-year-old son Brian. A fifth individual, park ranger Sarah Cameron, is seen throughout the tape, but is largely absent after 00:11:27. It was recorded in 2006 using an unknown model of Sony camcorder.

As the recording starts, we get a shot of the Sinclair family inside the visitor’s center at Kilauea, which is part of the Hawaii Volcano National Park. Matilda is shooting for the majority of what’s safe to view. A shot of the wall shows a clock reading 10:22 AM. They explain that they’re going to scatter the ashes of ‘Grandpa Harold’ in the park, with Malcolm holding up his urn somewhat somberly; this Harold was apparently a volcanologist (or, as Brian adorably puts it, a ‘volcanist’) who studied Kilauea from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Park ranger Sarah Cameron arrives and goes over safety procedures in the park; don’t stray off of marked paths, make sure you can see her at all times, don’t go within a certain distance of any lava flows you see, and if the ground starts shaking, get out of there as fast as you can.

What’s more, Cameron seems to be at least a little familiar with ‘Grandpa Harold’, as she expresses her condolences, saying that she’s more than happy to help put him at rest, and that she ‘owes him for saving her job’.

The first five minutes or so are dedicated to setting out from the visitor’s center, with Brian’s mother demanding he put his toy-- a little well-loved plush dog-- in the car. After being assured there’s water in the car so his plushie won’t get too hot, Brian reluctantly puts the dog away, and is grouchy for a good few minutes, before he gets to see how beautiful it is. Everything is lush and green, but it’s… manicured, is the best way to describe it. Everything is just a bit too orderly for it to be natural. The trail they’re taking is well-worn with trail markers and warning signs, but there’s still enough natural beauty for Brian to genuinely begin enjoying himself.

At about nine minutes, the ground shakes slightly. Cameron goes to find reception for her radio to check what’s going on, and instructs the family to stay put. Brian, being a little kid, immediately goes running off. His mother Gwen follows after, with Matilda more than content to just wait for her to get back. Then, at 00:09:43, a scream is heard, followed by a sickening crunch, and inconsolable sobbing.

Matilda and Brian’s father Malcolm find Brian at the bottom of a drop, his face contorted in pain and covered in tears. His mother’s made his way down to him, and is gingerly touching his leg, causing a shriek of pain. “It’s broken!” She yells. “Call for help!”

Cameron explains she can’t get reception on her radio, and instructs them to wait for assistance as she begins the trek back to the visitor’s center. Following 00:11:27, Cameron is not seen on the recording, until the very end. Brian’s mother begs Matilda to turn off the camera; the recording terminates.

The video picks up what seems to be several hours later; it was morning when they arrived, but the angle of the sun seems to show that it is now mid-day. The camera seems to have been turned on by accident, as none of those on tape acknowledge it being on.
Brian is at the base of the cliff still, being held by his mother, who’s helping him swallow a pain pill. He asks why ‘the lady hasn’t come back yet’, and his mother just lets out an exasperated sigh, looking outwards.

Macolm is heard cursing out a cell phone, and Matilda says to him “Don’t throw the damn thing!”. Further dialog confirms it’s been about four hours since the expedition set out. Malcolm announces he’s going to follow the path back to the visitor’s center, and as he’s searching through the bag for a spare water bottle, he asks: “Where’s the urn?”

There’s commotion as Matilda and Malcolm search through the supplies. The urn was clearly visible on film at the outset, and Matilda picks up the camcorder, presumably to check this. They continue to be ignorant of the camera being on, and an argument breaks out between Brian’s parents, with Brian beginning to cry and beg for his stuffed dog, apparently named ‘Sparky’.

Seeing no better options, they start to set out for the visitor’s center, with Gwen carrying Brian on her back, his arms wrapped around her neck. The path is easy to follow, but after five minutes, they realize they aren’t passing any signposts. They do, however, see a series of figures on the path ahead of them; they’re dark and indistinct, but appear to be wearing something bright red. Brian’s father calls out for help, and all he gets in return is a series of heads turning towards them and tilting in unison.

He approaches them, continuing to ask for help, seemingly ignorant of Matilda’s question-- “Do you smell smoke?”

Following the timestamp of 00:19:13, the recording is unwatchable. I don’t mean that the recording quality degrades or that the data is corrupted. I mean that watching the Kilauea Recording past this point has, to date, resulted in over forty deaths and at least one-hundred severe injuries. All injuries result from exposure to an unknown, extreme heat source; people who have watched for a minute after this point typically suffer from first-degree burns on their retinas. Nobody has survived watching the tape for more than three minutes after this point.

Only recently, with advances in neural networking, have we been able to isolate parts of the recording that are safe to view.

The first, from timestamp 00:20:07, is a series of six frames. These frames show the urn containing Grandpa Harold’s ashes, smashed against rocks, appearing to have been thrown from off-screen. Lava is visible in the background.

The second, timestamp 00:23:55 to 00:24:09, shows an area of dark forest, apparently somehow at night; the neural network that analyzed this video confirms that there have not been any cuts since 00:19:13. An unconscious Brian lying on the ground. His breathing his shallow, and Brian’s mother is begging the filmographer, “Don’t look at his leg, it’ll happen to you too!”

The third, timestamp 00:27:09 to 00:27:25, has the camera largely shooting the ground as the person holding it runs. Their gait is unsteady, as if they are carrying something heavy. A voice, garbled shouts, “There it is!”. The camera swings upwards, showing a tall, indistinct shape, wreathed in frames. Someone screams.

The final shots are from 00:29:03 to the end of the recording. It is morning once more. Four charred bodies are seen in the same area where Brian fell. A team of rangers come onto the scene, stopping in sheer disbelief. Sarah Cameron goes up to the smallest form, inspecting them. She shouts, “Medic!”. A ranger notices the camera and picks it up; the recording ends as we see rangers attempting to treat Brian’s burnt form, as the very act of picking up the camera somehow terminates the recording.

Supplemental:

In April of 2006, park rangers at Kilauea recovered the burnt bodies of three individuals-- Gwen Sinclair, her husband Malcolm, and his sister Matilda. The exact cause of death, beyond ‘injuries sustained from burns’, was never determined. Brian was discovered nearby, covered in third-degree burns but somehow alive. He was life-flighted to a hospital in Hilo, Hawaii where he underwent almost a year of treatment and therapy. He survived, barely.

I attempted to reach out to Brian Sinclair for an interview or even a comment; instead, I received a strongly-worded email from his lawyer. The Law Offices of Schuyler, Baumer and Walker in Omaha, Nebraska informed me that Brian Sinclair is under a conservatorship ‘owing to severe physical disabilities’. Basically, I was very politely told that there was no way in hell I was getting an interview.

I did, however, manage to get in touch with Sarah Cameron, however briefly. She no longer lives in Hawaii, and did not wish me to disclose her location, beyond the fact that the area she is in is also volcanically active.

“Brian didn’t deserve what happened to him. Nobody in his family did. I still stay in touch with him, but it’s hard, seeing his burnt face over a video call, all these years later. Skin grafts can only do so much.”

“I think I know what did this to him, and I’m trying to make sure it never happens again. There’s a way to put out the fire that burned him. I read about how to do it."

She did not elaborate beyond this. 

The camera which created the Kilauea Recording was destroyed, apparently crumbling into ash in the hands of FBI arson investigators. Inexplicably, the tape was in pristine condition, and was digitized for easier viewing. Following a fire at the FBI’s Honolulu office, both the original VHS-C tape and the digitized recording where shipped to the mainland using protocols normally reserved for radioactive material. Its intended destination was in California; however, it somehow was re-routed upon entering the country, heading for a non-existent address in New Jersey.

The data of the Kilauea Recording we have now comes from an upload put on LiveLeak in early 2011, creatively titled “WATCH THIS VIDEO TO DIE AT 19:13”. The video was pulled down by the site’s admins, but not before one of the Institute’s investigators managed to copy it. It was uploaded by the account “wiltedflowers12'', which some of you may recognize as the origin of the infamous “GUTS GUTS GUTS GUTS GUTS GUTS” shock video. What you may not know is that “GUTS X6”, as it is now known, is linked to twenty unsolved murders across the south-western United States.

The Kilauea Recording’s properties persist on copies, as is already evident. And someone is copying it, and attempting to distribute it. Since 2006, forty-seven people have died as a result of exposure to footage present on the Kilauea Recording after 00:19:13; the vast majority of them have been in film processing labs that have obtained copies of the Kilauea Recording meant to be digitized. There’s seemingly no motive behind these attacks, nor any pattern.

The most recent attack was in June of 2021. It destroyed a film processing lab in New York City, where a copy of the tape was sent, along with a request for digitization. The tape itself was pristine, and wisely not watched by NYPD Arson investigators.

Current estimates are that there are at least thirty extant copies of the Kilauea Recording, not counting any online uploads. If you have any information about the Kilauea Recording, please reach out to us. That’s what this blog is for.