Recovered media // Case file 07

Someone left the camera running.

In March 1994, a courier crate marked MAGNETIC MEDIA — DO NOT X-RAY arrived at a county records office. No sender. Inside: seven VHS tapes, a water-damaged notebook, and 41 hours of footage nobody remembers filming. STATIC//SIGNAL is the archive. Watch it in order. Or don't.

Play tape 01 Open evidence file

07TAPES

41HOURS

05LOCATIONS

113FRAMES FLAGGED

REC

CAM 02 — EAST CORRIDOR

02:17:44:00

CH 03

Magnetic media playback unit MK-II

Exhibits A–F

The evidence board

Every item below was photographed exactly as found. The connections were drawn by the original archivist. We did not add the string. It was already there.

EXHIBIT A — east corridor. Door was closed on the previous pass.

Exhibit B

It counts the doors. I watched tape two again and it counts the doors before every cut. Fourteen, then thirteen, then fourteen again.

Do not answer on the third knock. — M.

EXHIBIT C — Hollis Park, 03:11 a.m. No wind that night.

Exhibit D

TAPE 4 IS WRONG. The timecode runs backwards between 12:04 and 11:58. I checked the deck. I checked a second deck. It is not the deck.

Checked twice. Filing anyway. — R.V.

EXHIBIT E — the set was unplugged when officers arrived.

Chain of custody

03/07/94 — Intake, Dock B	D. OKAFOR
03/09/94 — Transfer, Vault 3	R. VANCE
03/14/94 — Viewing, Room 2	M. HALE
03/15/94 — Viewing, Room 2	M. HALE
03/15/94 — Viewing, Room 2	[BLANK]

Board photographed 03/16/94 — Vault 3 Exhibits B and D handwriting: unmatched

Shelf 09 — Magnetic media

Tape log

Seven cassettes, catalogued in recovery order. Select a spine to read its intake card. Tape 07 remains sealed by order of the records officer.

The Courier Crate

47 min — SP — playable

Unboxing footage shot by intake staff. Ordinary for thirty-nine minutes. At 39:12 the camera pans past a window that faces a wall, and for six frames the window faces something else.

Intercepts — March 1994

Recovered transmissions

Three audio fragments were found on the same shortwave logger, timestamped the week the crate shipped. Transcribed as heard. Gaps are gaps.

Logged 03/02/94 — 02:47 local SIGNAL 61%

02:47:10V1: — confirm you're seeing the corridor lights.

02:47:18V2: Seeing them. They're on a count.

02:47:31V1: On a what?

02:47:44[SIGNAL LOST — 00:19]

02:48:03V2: — fourteen. It's always fourteen. Don't count back.

02:48:12V1: Copy. Heading to the east stair.

02:48:20[END OF FRAGMENT]

Records division

What the archive holds

0Tapes recovered

0Hours of footage

0Locations identified

0Frames unexplained

Watch it the way it was filed

STATIC//SIGNAL is an episodic found-footage mystery. Each tape is a playable chapter: you scrub, pause, and frame-step through recovered footage, cross-reference the evidence board, and file your own annotations in the margin of the case.

Nothing chases you. Nothing jumps at the lens. The tapes only ask that you pay attention — and the archive keeps track of what you have already seen, even when the timecode disagrees.

Chapters one through three are open now. The reading room adds one tape per month until the crate is empty.