The Wyoming Incident

Videosonic
Company type	Home video company
Founded	1983
Headquarters	Greece
Brands	RCA/Columbia Pictures International Home Video, Columbia TriStar Home Video, Orion Home Video, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

The Wyoming Incident (or The Wyoming Hijacking) is a lesser known case of television broadcast hijacking/hacking/ARG. It is unknown if it actually happened, or if it was all fake.

According to many people, a hacker managed to interrupt broadcasts from a local programming channel (believed to serve several smaller communities in the county of Niobrara) and aired his/her own video. The video contained numerous clips of disembodied, human heads showing various emotions and "poses". The camera position changed often (usually every ten-to-fifteen seconds) and the video was often interrupted by a "SPECIAL PRESENTATION" announcement. This clip is taken from one of these intervals.

The video is mostly locally well-known, and would probably not even be that popular if it were not for the effects it had on the few residents who watched it for an extended period of time. Complaints included vomiting, hallucinations, headaches, etc. While some believed it was paranormal, specialists have determined that the cause of these afflictions were frequencies played regularly throughout the broadcast. In this clip, the frequency being played is somewhere between 17 and 19 hz. This range of frequency, when played for long periods of time, causes the eyes to subtly vibrate, sometimes inducing visual hallucinations.

This video is significant in that is one of the most recent television hijackings. Such actions were rare even in the '80s (search for Chicago Max Headroom Incident) and are even more rare today. The hacker has not yet been caught, and all attempts to trace the video have proven futile.

History

It's not known who, when and why the video was created, but there is still a few sources about the video, and what it is. In fact, some believe that the whole thing is fake, but the mystery remains unknown.

However, the history of the Wyoming Incident is still present...

There wasn't much talk from the incident until January of 2007, where someone posted a link to the video and asked others what the video was. Responding users couldn't provide a proper answer, and they all said that it reminded them of the Max Headroom Incident and The Ring.

Then, about a month later, a user named Lyraninthedark posted a link saying "I found this on you tube this morning.", which was uploaded on February 5th, titled "Weird Video I Found", which turned out to be the second video of the Wyoming Incident. However, it might've either been a coincidence or that the user who found the video actually uploaded it (proof can be seen as the account was created on the 4th of February, then the video was uploaded a day later, then the user commented about the video a day later after the upload.

Then, on February 14th, a new user called youcanwatchnow posted a link to a video that was uploaded on Google Videos titled "Danny's Collection 3". It had a description that read:

"My brother had quite an interesting collection of underground bizarre videos. This video (which he only called "3"), was his favourite in his entire collection, despite running only about a minute. He never wanted it uploaded on the internet because he was sort of selfish when it came to his rarer videos.

He liked the idea that he was one of the few people who had seen this. I found it a year after his death (I had pretty much forgotten about it), in a box full of his I guess he'd just recently burned to DVD. I have no idea who made the video and only a vague idea as to where it came from. My brother came back with it one summer after visiting some friends up around Yellowknife."

Turns out, it was another video that was basically the same as the previous 2, now with different shots of the heads and faces and more text which read "WHAT HIDES IN YOUR MIND?" and "WE HAVE ALREADY SEEN IT".

Then, a day later, another user called viraldetector77 mentioned that someone wrote an odd comment on the video. The person called Iliketoread posted a year-old blog that was written by a man who apparently was the owner of the original video titled "The Wyoming Incident".

In that blog, the man going by the name Gregory Miller mentioned Daniel Cable as the potential new owner of a different video. Users visiting the blog found it to be the personal diary of an obsessive man driven insane by ownership of the 4th video. At the height of his madness, he mentioned that human lampreys, which feed off of our essences.

Then, a figure named Vedius Pollio and 2 men, one named Donald Wilson and the other named Robert Vreugdenhil, all of then associated with Daniel Cable. Vedius Paulus was apparently a friend of the ancient Roman emperor Augustus, who owned a lot of slaved and had a pool filled with lampreys on his villa property. Whenever a slave angered him, Vedius would have the slave thrown into the pool where the lampreys would eat them alive.

Users who investigated with the Donald Wilson lade came up with an obituary from Niobrara Country, Wyoming, which was the same place that was affected by the Wyoming Incident broadcast. He had died at the very start of 2006, 7 months before the video was uploaded to Google Videos. Donald Wilson had been living in the town of Casper, Wyoming, at the time of his death, where he and his family had been living ever since 1979.

A search for Robert Vreugdenhil, the vital name on the blog, brought up a name by the exact name living in Casper and a phone number.

Despite their collective fear, a user named Esteed called the number and recorded what he heard. Esteed said at best when he described his experience after the call:

"It was after when I realized that I had just listened to a recording of someone flatlining."

Viraldetector77 comes back just over an hour later informing the thread of a new blog post, which had a link to an old message board, The Happy Cube. Nothing had been posted since 2004, but recent activity had shown a new user had joined that very day: Iliketofix.

Trivia

The Wyoming Incident also became so well known that there's even a video game about it called The Wyoming Incident: ReWIsited.
It remains as a mystery so big that some people claim that the whole thing is fake.

Videosonic

Videosonic was a Greek home video company that released programs made by RCA/Columbia International Home Video/Columbia TriStar Television/Sony Pictures Home

Entertainment and Orion Video. It was one of the largest VHS companies in Greece.

History

TBA.

WIP