came across this video posted randomly online recently, and after looking around found this much earlier upload. if this were real there would've been a huge blowup and investigation, but it's a supremely well made fake. i honestly don't know enough about visual media from the time period to even critique it, but the acting is accurate to eyewitness accounts. good job.

I personally believe this to be real, but nevertheless, I think it’s ironic that she says:
“in living color, you are going to see another first – an attempted suicide''
Yet this footage is in black & white.

Found a YouTube video outlining this, and according to my research into the matter, this dosnt seem like the original? The audio (might just be from the uploads, so I'll give it that) is rather static-y, and the video seems to be remade. Now, that being said however, the overall setting DOES seem to be on point with the original incident, so honestly I'm not too sure where I stand on ths matter. Regardless, even if it is fake, it's very well done, and if it's actually the original, thanks for uploading because from what I've read there was only one or two tapes that were ever released, and it would be crazy difficult to find

Folks, this informative video should help satiate your curiosity:

https://youtu.be/D9xeZqHuKG8

Apparently, there is the original tape and one copy. Her family has the copy and the station retained the original which is now in the hands of, as I understand it, an attorney.

The Chubbuck tape has been sought like mad for decades. The only other tape that people are so fascinated with of this "genre" would be the audio tape of Timothy Treadwell that was accidentally recorded as he was screaming in agony and horror while being eaten alive by a brown bear. The only two people to have heard the audio tape is the great filmaker and documentation, Werner Herzog, and the woman that Treadwell left his estate to. The tape is in her possession and it is stored in a bank safe deposit box. The whole story: https://youtu.be/VBGFONxNpVQ

Although really well done this is not the original video.

That anyone would post such a statement about the young woman's last moments being some hoax or faked suicide is beyond disrespectful and just plain arrogant. This case is a publicly reported and law enforcement investigated suicide. The comment below mine has to be written by someone with no knowledge whatsoever about criminal justice, the legal system, law enforcement obligations, and not even the slightest amount of knowledge about medicolegal death investigations. In other words, that comment comes from genuine ignorance. I happen to be a former major crimes detective, homicide investigator, and deputy medical examiner. This case happened and there is at least one copy of the clip that has none of the flaws this VHS tape has.
I could spend the rest of the day writing about death investigation, crime scene analysis, evidence collection, death scene processing, photography and report writing along with every single remaining aspect of investigating suicides, homicides, and accidental deaths, but it wouldn't be worth the effort to try and convince a single individual who has formed a (baseless) conclusion that they're going to pretend is the only reasonable outcome despite the case facts that anyone can purchase using a FOIA request submitted to the investigating law enforcement agency. There is also no point in debating the fact the clip is in poor condition, because if anything is beyond persuasive argumentation it is the terrible quality of the tape. In any case there is no legitimate purpose in publicly declaring "faked suicide" the premature death of anyone suffering from personal issues leading to drastic and permanent decisions. They do have surviving family members and other loved ones who have been deeply traumatized by the suicide. I have investigated many such cases, and many other deaths that weren't suicides. Yet, none of them prepared me for the suicide of my own son two years ago.

He had his own reasons for murdering himself, but what those reasons were he shared with absolutely no one. Not a note left anywhere, and the permanent mental imagery of him on the floor of the same bedroom I slept in as a boy. When you hear people say their child's death hit them like a baseball bat to the gut I can say without any hesitation it is like that and so much more.

The comment below that brings up how people can usually tell the difference between authentic and a rushed job, and the incorrect VHS distortion of this clip imply it’s a hoax. I noticed something wrong with the distortion, myself, except it’s about the audio not the video: her voice is so distorted you can hardly tell what she’s saying at all, so you’d think that’s the tape itself having some kind of problem, but if it was the tape being super old why does the sound of her head hitting the wood of the desk sound almost crystal clear as if it’s dubbed over the rest of it? Her voice sounded processed like crazy, but that “thump” sound didn’t get all garbled. So either the audio being obviously faked ruins this clips claim for being real, or else the incredibly unlikely chance that when Christine’s voice was broadcast live her mic sounded THAT unintelligible anyways, (yet the station never mentioned this happening) while some second mic without any problems picked up the sound of her head hitting the desk, and this footage is simply because both audio feeds were mixed together live. There’s pretty much no chance it happened that way. If you close your eyes and listen it sounds like someone talking into a distorted voice fx box and dropping a heavy book on a desk. If the sound was that bad because of the tape being old and damaged that knock would be equally as glitchy. I rest my case.

I don’t care if you say you don’t believe me unless you can explain why, and hopefully after reading this no one passes this clip around still saying it’s real, Don’t be that guy.


And just for the effort of whoever made it, I’d still say it’s a 4 out of 5 even though it’s faked.

After noticing the dialog in the comments section of this one going back and forth on both sides, here's the take of someone truly neutral:

Actually, this is not a take.. it's just a fact: it's not real. There is confirmed audio of the event that has been verified, and the video shown here matches almost none of what was in the authentic audio of the event.

Furthermore, you can tell the vhs layer is an alpha layer / video edit, and not true scan lines from authentic old vhs footage. You can tell the difference between rushed imitations of old things, and verifiably old footage.

So I'm very sorry to those who thought this was real. But, its not. That's a fact.

Pues el video nose sabe si es real o no. Concuerdo con algunos comentarios de arriba, que si la cinta es de algùn metraje o recreación que dieran la fuente y de donde fue realizado. Si de algún documental o reportaje. El video parece real, pareciera que alguien lo grabó con una cámara muy antigua y por eso se vé en b/n muy desprolijo. La caída del cuerpo de la muchacha es tan y muy real, es que alguien vivo nunca podría caer así, es peso muerto y caen como piedra. Lo otro porque la familia no ha negado o hablado sobre este video, si es q es falso o no, creo que si salen a desmentir o no el video más polémico va a ser y prefieren dejarlo en la duda para dejarla descansar en paz. Al parecer hay un audio liberado del momento y se escucha más claro que este video, y ancajan igual, la voz es igual, el golpe al final, muy igual. Solo que el de este video el audio está de mala cálidad. En fin por ahora está en la duda, si es falso ufff que bien les quedó .

If this video is fake, so where is this video from??

The arguments about this being fake are, so far, really quite tenuous.
One guy from the original station claims it's fake. What about other staff that witnessed the event that day? Why have none come forward?
The people who would definitely know whether or not this is fake would be: (a) those working at the TV station on that day, (b) viewers who witnessed the event live on TV (many would still retain a good memory of it), (c) surviving family members of C. Chubbuck - they would have had access to the original tape.

Until these people come forward to say something...the evidence that the footage is fake remains insufficient.

That the footage is highly sought after does not imply that this is fake. Has to be proven to be fake.

The tv station could be covering up a leak by saying only one camera was filming on the day. This could be footage from another.

Authenticity of this footage is still not resolved.

footage of her public suicide has become one of the most mysterious and sought-after pieces of film in the world.

Fuck...
This is really creepy

Yeah, it didn't happen, but still... pretty rad.

Though eerie and otherworldly, I would suggest that this seems obviously faked due to the total lack of reaction in the environment around her.

Although studio staff would be conditioned to remain totally silent during broadcast, it stretches credulity to imagine that not one single person in the studio would have screamed, groaned, shouted "stop" "don't" etc when she pulled out a firearm, and especially after she fired it at her head.

Bud Dwyer's suicide gives a realistic reaction to someone pulling out a firearm suddenly in a room full of people, and then using it to horrifying effect. No one can ever know in that moment if the person wielding the weapon is going to try to kill persons in the immediate area.

If by chance it actually happened in total silence as depicted here, it would seem that that in itself would be noteworthy in the record of the events after the fact.

From what I understand this is a copy of the original 2 inch Quad color videotape dubbed to a half-inch black & white format, I'm guessing. It looks bad because the reel of videotape was not stored very well. (unlikely) Tape was played back on a somewhat still working open-reel VTR that needed maintenance... (likely)

Could be very well real, These pricks in the comments saying "its fake bro lawfirm has it" are some of the dumbest people within the community and the reason so many things are still lost. With the possibility this could have been leaked and all the evidence supporting that this is real, These dickheads assume its fake because some old ass dude with a crappy memory said its fake, Or because a lawfirm at the time thought they had the only remaining footage. The only person i've ever seen cover the christine chubbuck suicide as if they actually gave a damn about the topic was SSTEAS and he is in prison for being a pedophile.


TL:DR Anyone who says this video is fake cause of the lawfirm stuff doesn't know jack shit and is way too ignorant and irrational to even talk about anything

Totally fake, but still well made. It's easy to tell because of the convenient distortion and lack of blood. The original footage is locked away by an unknown law firm.

This is fake. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z8UBb1QX1s

i just wanna say i can use this video for horror reasonings, i don’t care if it was fake, it was very well edited and i like that a lot.

this is fake

While the original footage of Christine Chubbuck's suicide does exist (the TV station's master tape is held by a law firm), this isn't it.