Laura Wright 
Watch the tape.
Then wait.
Depending upon which version of the story you hear, you may have seven days left to live.
Or perhaps only two.
Modern horror audiences immediately associate the idea of a cursed videotape with The Ring. The enormously successful supernatural film introduced millions of Western viewers to the terrifying concept of a recording that kills anyone unfortunate enough to watch it.
But the idea of a deadly videotape did not necessarily begin with The Ring.
Long before audiences watched Rachel investigate a mysterious recording, stories circulated about videotapes containing things that were never meant to be seen.
And according to one particularly gruesome urban legend, a group of curious girls learned exactly why one tape should have remained on the shelf.
The Ring and the Cursed Videotape
Supernatural movie fans will immediately recognize the premise.
In The Ring, journalist Rachel investigates the deaths of people connected to a mysterious videotape. Anyone who watches the strange recording receives a warning that they will die in seven days.
The movie helped introduce a large American audience to the style and atmosphere of Japanese supernatural horror.
One of its most memorable elements was the videotape itself.
There was no monster waiting beneath the bed.
No haunted mansion had to be entered.
The victim merely had to watch something.
Once the images had been seen, the countdown began.
Yet the concept of dangerous or cursed recordings had appeared before The Ring, both in fiction and in urban legend.
The Cursed Videotape
One version of the urban legend begins with a group of high school girls having a slumber party.
They decide to rent a movie.
Unable to find anything that interests them, the girls ask the woman working at the video store for a recommendation.
She tells them she knows exactly what they should watch, provided nobody else has already rented it.
While the clerk searches for the movie, the girls notice something else lying on the counter.
A blank videotape.
There is no commercial label.
No movie title.
Nothing to indicate what has been recorded on it.
Curious, they ask about the tape.
The employee tells them it contains a homemade movie.
It is not available for rent.
That should have ended the matter.
Instead, it makes one of the girls even more curious.
The Stolen Tape
The saleswoman cannot immediately locate the movie she intends to recommend, so she steps into another room to search for it.
While she is gone, one of the girls takes the homemade videotape from the counter.
She slips it into her purse.
The clerk returns with the movie, and the girls complete their rental without mentioning what has happened.
Only after returning home does the girl reveal what she has done.
Her friends chastise her for stealing.
But curiosity is contagious.
Whatever is recorded on that unmarked tape was apparently something the clerk didn’t want customers to see.
Eventually, curiosity wins.
The girls put the stolen tape into the VCR.
Then the electricity goes out.
The Television Remains On
The house falls dark.
But two things continue operating.
The television.
And the VCR.
The girls stare at the screen as the mysterious recording begins to play.
What they see is not an ordinary homemade movie.
The recording appears to show a Black woman being burned at the stake.
People surrounding her loudly accuse the woman of practicing witchcraft.
As the flames consume her, she pronounces a curse.
Everyone who watches her suffering will die within two days.
Worse, they will die in the same manner that she did.
The recording ends.
The girls have already watched it.
The Curse Comes True
Within two days, everyone who saw the videotape is dead.
The deaths are bizarre.
One girl burns alive while swimming in a pool.
Another dies while ice-skating at a local rink.
The circumstances may seem impossible, but that is part of the logic of the legend.
Once the tape has been watched, ordinary rules no longer matter.
The curse has found its victims.
And there is apparently nothing they can do to escape it.
Different Versions of the Story
As with most urban legends, the details change depending upon who tells the story.
Sometimes the girls are high school students.
In other versions, they are in college.
Their motive for stealing the videotape also changes.
In one variation, simple curiosity is enough.
In another, the girls deliberately steal the recording because they hope to get the employee into trouble and then blackmail her.
The length of the curse can change as well.
But the basic structure remains the same.
Someone discovers a recording they were never supposed to watch.
They ignore the warning.
They see something terrible.
Then they die.
Did the Legend Exist Before The Ring?
The original article traces versions of the cursed-videotape legend back to the 1970s.
That is particularly intriguing because home video technology was only beginning to emerge during that decade.
The VCR would soon transform how people consumed movies. Instead of seeing films only in theaters or waiting for them to appear on television, people could bring recordings into their homes.
And that created an entirely new object for folklore.
A videotape could contain anything.
Most tapes were clearly labeled.
But an unmarked cassette was different.
Someone could have recorded something privately.
Someone could have copied something forbidden.
You didn’t know what was on it until you pressed Play.
For urban legends, that uncertainty was fertile ground.
The Forbidden Recording
The cursed videotape belongs to a much older type of story.
Human folklore is filled with forbidden things.
Don’t open the door.
Don’t read the book.
Don’t enter the room.
Don’t speak the name.
Don’t look inside the box.
The videotape simply modernizes the warning.
Don’t watch this.
The victim’s curiosity does the rest.
That also makes the legend unusually effective because the supernatural threat requires the victim’s participation.
The tape cannot hurt someone who never watches it.
The girls are warned indirectly when they’re told the recording isn’t for rent.
They take it anyway.
Then they choose to watch it.
Like Pandora opening the forbidden container, curiosity releases whatever was waiting inside.
Cursed Media Before The Ring
The idea that media itself could be dangerous appeared in other fiction before the American release of The Ring.
Christopher Fowler used a mysterious recording in his 1990 novel Rune.
David Cronenberg’s 1983 film Videodrome went much further with the idea of dangerous media. Its characters encounter a mysterious television broadcast containing extreme violence, and exposure to the signal produces increasingly disturbing psychological and physical effects.
Neither story is identical to the cursed-videotape legend.
But all share the same basic anxiety:
What if simply watching something could harm you?
That fear became increasingly potent as electronic media entered more areas of everyday life.
From Videotapes to the Internet
The physical videotape is now largely obsolete.
The underlying legend isn’t.
Today, the mysterious recording would probably arrive through a phone, social-media account, private message, obscure website, or unexplained file.
The technology changes easily.
The fear does not.
We still receive links without knowing exactly where they lead.
Videos circulate without clear origins.
Files are copied thousands or millions of times while their original creator becomes impossible to identify.
An unlabeled VHS cassette sitting on a video-store counter once represented precisely the same uncertainty.
There is something here.
You can see it.
But perhaps you shouldn’t.
Why Cursed Recordings Frighten Us
A haunted house can be avoided.
A cursed cemetery can be left alone.
You can decide not to summon Bloody Mary.
A cursed recording is different because it disguises the supernatural as ordinary technology.
Nothing about a videotape should be frightening.
It is plastic and magnetic tape.
You place it into a machine.
You press a button.
Then images appear on a screen.
The cursed-video legend takes something utterly mundane and suggests that the danger isn’t lurking outside the home.
You’ve already brought it inside.
Worse, once you’ve watched the recording, you cannot unsee it.
The curse does not require you to believe.
It only requires you to watch.
Seven Days
The Ring made the cursed recording famous around the world, but the concept works because it taps into fears much older than VHS technology.
Forbidden knowledge.
Dangerous curiosity.
Images that should not be seen.
Warnings that arrive too late.
Whether the cursed-videotape story really circulated as early as the 1970s deserves further historical investigation. But by the time supernatural cinema embraced the idea, the concept was already perfectly suited to modern folklore.
Technology had created a new way to tell an ancient warning.
Some doors should remain closed.
Some names should never be spoken.
And some tapes should never be played.
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