137. Lost Media You'll Never See: The Nickelodeon Tapes, Children's Program Hijacks and more

Head to https://www.tryfum.com to start with Zero. Go to https://kachava.com and use code HSP for 15% off on your subscription for a limited time Lost media, TV urban legends, and the moments kids’ networks never wanted you to see. This episode investigates the rumored Nickelodeon “destroyed tape” from Legends of the Hidden Temple, real broadcast signal hijackings (including the infamous Handy Manny incident), and a haunting stop-motion short known only as “The Butcher.” From grueling game-show sets to vanished DVR recordings, we dig into how media disappears and why people won’t stop looking for it. Show Notes: https://www.heartstartspounding.com/episodes/childrenlostmedia Subscribe onPatreon https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspounding to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society and enjoy ad-free listening, monthly bonus content, merch discounts and more. Members of our High Council on Patreon also have access to our weekly after-show, Footnotes, where I share my case file with our producer, Matt. You can also enjoy many of these same perks, including ad-free listening and bonus content when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts . Follow onTik Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@heartstartspounding?lang=en andInstagram https://www.instagram.com/heartstartspounding/ for a daily dose of horror.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:00Kaelyn Moore?

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• 1:44Kaelyn Moore?

  built on a reputation for quality and reliability. So when it's time for your next Toyota, you could trade in for more. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places. Deep inside the archive room of the Kids Network Nickelodeon, there was an urban legend that floated around for decades. If you work in the archive, your job is to catalog Every episode, every sketch of every cartoon, every roll of film from every kid's show the network has ever aired. These archives truly have everything. But the urban legend was that there was one tape that had been destroyed because execs at Nickelodeon never wanted anyone to see it.

• 2:26Kaelyn Moore?

  It's not from a cartoon, it's not from a sitcom, but one of the many game shows that the network had at the time. The legend said that something bad had happened during filming to a pre-tuned girl that was competing in the game show. Whatever it was, it was bad enough that the network had the tape permanently destroyed. And for decades, this rumor floated around from employee to employee. And sometimes, an archivist would go through the old tapes and try to find what it was that people were really talking about. But no trace of this event was ever recovered. However, in 2013, a man named Kirk Fogg sat down to give an interview.

• 3:07Kaelyn Moore?

  Twenty years prior, he was the host of the Nickelodeon game show Legends of the Hidden Temple. And in this interview, he hinted at the fact that this tape wasn't just an urban legend, that he was there the day the incident really did occur, and he knew exactly why the network had destroyed the tape. This is Heart Starts Pounding. I'm your host, Kayla Moore, and today, I want to tell you about the tape that Nickelodeon never wanted anyone to see. But I also want to tell you about a few other pieces of lost media. Now, lost media refers to any audio, visual, or other type of media that was once publicly

• 3:46Kaelyn Moore?

  available or known to exist but is now believed to be lost, missing, destroyed, or irrecoverable in any format. Sometimes, a fire burns down an old film archive and all the films are destroyed. But more often than we realize, pieces of media are intentionally lost so that no one will ever have access to them in the future. Not that that would ever stop us here at the Rogue Detecting Society. Our own archives are full of things that other people have tried to bury. So, we're going to try to get to the bottom of this today. But before we do, we are big fans of books here, as you probably can imagine. So we are at the urging of a Patreon High Council member, Samantha, going to finally be

• 4:30Kaelyn Moore?

  starting a Heart Starts Pounding book club. We're setting up a special chat in the Patreon for members and we will be announcing each month's book in our monthly Rogue Detecting Society email. So if you want to sign up for that, you can go to heartstartspounding.com and use the form. I'm going to link it in the description of this episode. So shout out again to Samantha for organizing that. If you are already a Patreon member, you can look out for more details. But for now, let's dive back in.

• 5:01Kaelyn Moore?

  It's when your heart starts pounding.

• 5:05Kaelyn Moore?

  In 1993, Nickelodeon was on its way to becoming the preeminent children's network worldwide. I know many of us were raised on this version of Nick shows like Are You Afraid of the Dark? Clarissa Explains It All and Pete and Pete. Eventually, the network decided it was time to branch out into game shows. Adults had Jeopardy and The Price is Right, so they wanted producers to figure out what a kid's version of these shows looked like. Nickelodeon signed a deal with adult game show producers Stone Stanley Productions in the hopes that they would come up with some kid-friendly ideas. 90s Nick proved that children loved mayhem, but these producers really thought that kids gravitated more towards spooky

• 5:47Kaelyn Moore?

  and honestly upsetting content. The producers at Stone Stanley pitched a game show that was sort of Jeopardy, sort of American Gladiator, where kids would try to make their way through a haunted house obstacle course while answering trivia questions. Also, adults in scary costumes would jump out and grab at them, trying to keep them from making it all the way through. Naturally, this sounded a little too intense to the people at Nickelodeon, so they asked Stone Stanley to tweak the idea to be less scary. The company then changed the setting from a haunted house to an ancient jungle temple. They swapped out the monsters for temple guards, and honestly, other than that, they kept a lot of the idea the same. But that is how the game show Legends of the Hidden Temple was born. And soon it went into production.

• 6:33Kaelyn Moore?

  Even with these tweaks, the show was still terrifying for kids. And immediately, it seemed like it was going to be too intense for the young players. The game worked like this. There were six teams of two. Each team had one boy and one girl between the ages of 11 and 15. These kids were usually cast from the local middle school. The whole show took place on a soundstage that was meant to look straight out of Indiana Jones, and it was all taped in front of a live audience. This audience was mostly adults, and they would react to the kids as they made their way through these various challenges. And according to host Kirk Fogg, it was during filming of one of these challenges where the alleged incident happened. He remembered the day like it was yesterday.

• 7:16Kaelyn Moore?

  It had been a long day of filming, and there was a young girl, the one from our opening urban legend. Her name and age have been lost to time because she was a minor during taping. But she and her partner made it all the way through the show to the final challenge of the day. They beat out every single other team in the physical challenges. So by the time she made it to this round, she was very exhausted. The lights inside the studio were getting really hot. The live studio audience was screaming and cheering. And that included her parents, who were watching and hoping for her to win. But it also included the parents of all the other kids that had already lost. And they were hoping that she would trip and fall or get captured by a temple guard.

• 8:00Kaelyn Moore?

  She was breathing really heavily, and her face was already starting to turn pale. But it seems like the producers urged her to continue on. And so the lights in the studio dimmed. The main set piece of the show, which was this Easter Island-style head named Olmec, read out the instructions for the challenge, and then a woman's voice read the potential prizes over an intercom. Kirk then readied the girl and had her put in her mouthguard. And then he called out, "On your mark, get set, go."

• 8:32Kaelyn Moore?

  The girl started to run through this maze, climbing various ladders, solving the simple puzzles, and pushing her way through blocked doors. For how exhausted she looked, she was making really decent time, and she even got past some of the temple guards. According to Kirk, she stumbled forward into a room that was called "The Pit of Despair." It was a 20-foot-tall room with a pit of green, plastic balls in the middle, and high walls stretching up all around it. The contestant was meant to use some handles on the walls or a rope ladder to climb her way into the next room. But for our contestant, the prospect of this was just too much. She had already been through such a long day of filming, and now she knew that the temple guards

• 9:16Kaelyn Moore?

  might be waiting for her at the top, and it was just too much to take. So, the girl started sobbing in the middle of the ball pit, with all the cameras rolling. Kirk would go on to say that the producers actually saw this as a good thing. They must have liked the drama of all of the crying. But this girl was winded, she was nervous, and also, her stomach was full of pizza, which was the only food that was available on set. And before she knew it, her stomach did a flip, and all of that pizza came spewing out as she projectile vomited onto the green balls in the pit of despair. The crew was shocked, and they immediately had to cut filming.

• 10:00Kaelyn Moore?

  Now, I know what you may be thinking. A kid getting overwhelmed during filming and throwing up after running around, maybe doesn't seem that dark. But the reality of this situation is that the show was much more physically taxing on the child contestants than anyone at Nickelodeon was willing to admit. And now, they had proof of that on camera. Let me explain to you kind of the dark history of this show. The reality of Legends of the Hidden Temple was that they did push their contestants way too hard. It was also made as cheaply as possible, so that meant that the crew shot four episodes a day. Child contestants who made it all the way through to the final

• 10:42Kaelyn Moore?

  challenge had been there for between 12 to sometimes 18 hours, depending on how shooting went. And they were shooting really physically taxing challenges while they were there. Challenge one was called "The Moat." The six teams worked hard to cross a narrow swimming pool that was obscured by some obstacles. Sometimes the kids had to swing across a rope or balance on some floating steps. And the last two teams to cross this pool were eliminated and they went home with a lackluster prize. I remember one of the prizes literally being cans of tuna one time, and these were presented to the kids completely seriously, like it was a huge honor. But the moat challenge was not easy at all. Cracked actually has

• 11:26Kaelyn Moore?

  a really good article about this, where they interview former contestants. And one of them shared how horrible this challenge was. This contestant remembers other contestants spitting up water, trying to keep breathing while they crossed the pool. And when it was her turn to go, she innocently turned and asked a producer, "What happens if we drown?" And he just looked at her and started laughing. Challenge two was called "The Steps of Knowledge." This was the only non-physical challenge that they had, and it was here that the remaining four teams would answer questions to test their memory. Only two of these teams would then advance to the next round. The third challenge was "The Temple Games," and this level was really three different

• 12:10Kaelyn Moore?

  challenges that tested the kids' agility. It could be climbing up a wall, or army crawling through an obstacle course. The point was, in order to win these challenges, you had to be strong, you had to be fast, and you had to have endurance. And so, this was the part of the show where kids started getting really tired. I mean, even in some of the footage, you can see kids huffing and puffing. Some have to take a pause before answering questions. Others are really banged up. They have bruises and cuts that are starting to show up on their skin. And as I was a kid watching, I thought it was just fun and exciting to see how hard these kids were pushing themselves. But now, as an adult, when I go back and watch these

• 12:54Kaelyn Moore?

  episodes, it's kind of upsetting. And these episodes were shot in a very go-go-go manner, meaning there wasn't really time for the kids to have breaks, or water, or to compose themselves. And on top of that, the kids had already gone through hours of prep backstage before the filming even began. And that meant that these were really long, grueling days. By the end of this third challenge, only two teams would remain. The final two contestants from the winning team, one boy and one girl, would make their way over to this final challenge called the Temple Run. The Temple Run was an obstacle course, and it was also a maze. It was designed to feel like

• 13:35Kaelyn Moore?

  a jungle gym set within the adventurous world of Indiana Jones. And it consisted of 12 rooms with locked doors. The kids would have three minutes to figure out a path, one at a time, to find a hidden artifact somewhere in the maze, all while they were being chased by adult men dressed as temple guards that were hiding in these rooms. And these guards caused many of them to scream out in horror. They even caused some kids to cry, which they left in the footage. Most teams would prove unable to complete this task in the allotted three minutes, and it would actually later be revealed the Nickelodeon producers restricted the amount of teams that could win for budget purposes. See, if you won the whole show, you got way more than

• 14:19Kaelyn Moore?

  just a can of tuna. These winners got a series of prizes that included vacations for their families, so the games were rigged. The temple was intentionally treacherous and confusing and scary, so that no more than eight teams would win each season. With all of this in mind, you can see why the young girl was so overwhelmed. But that leaves me wondering about the footage from this incident. Did it ever see the light of day?

• 14:48Kaelyn Moore?

  Host Kirk Fogg told the story of this incident in an interview in 2013. Lost media hunters online started trying to track down this footage. There are all of these Reddit posts from over the years asking if anyone has it, but it's never revealed anything. The reality is Nickelodeon most likely destroyed this footage. It makes them look really bad. It opens them up to liability and it was probably very embarrassing for that girl. But also, I will add here, this was not the only time that something like this happened on a Nickelodeon show. Hidden Temple was preceded by another really popular game show that maybe you remember, Double Dare. It was a pretty similar show with physically challenging obstacle courses for kids.

• 15:33Kaelyn Moore?

  And the host of that show, Mark Summers, told the AV Club about two instances where kids were seriously hurt on camera. In one, a boy actually neglected to tell producers that he had a condition known as brittle bone disease. And during taping, he fell off of an obstacle and he shattered 17 of his bones, including one that broke right through the skin on his arm. And Mark Summers said that he literally had to look away to keep from throwing up while they were filming. Another time, an otherwise healthy boy fell backwards and he hit his head. He ended up being okay, but his dad was a lawyer and he threatened to sue the network

• 16:17Kaelyn Moore?

  unless the show gave his son the prize of a big screen TV that would have otherwise gone to the winning contestant. And according to Mark Summers, the hosts quickly complied. They really did not want to get sued for this. So we can see why Nickelodeon would not keep footage of these types of incidents, scenes that would maybe get them sued. And since the episode never aired on the network, it's not like anyone is out there with a VHS recording of it. But there is plenty of lost media out there that did actually air and disappeared only after the fact. In some cases, it's content that was purposefully transmitted into select homes, often with malicious intent. Right after this break.

• 17:05Kaelyn Moore?

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• 17:48Kaelyn Moore?

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• 18:06Kaelyn Moore?

  Let's move now from the nostalgia of the 1990s to the nostalgia of the 2000s, specifically the year 2007. We're also going to move age groups and networks as we move from a teen show on Nickelodeon to a show for preschoolers on the Disney Channel. Now, the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon were equally big deals by this point, and they both had early morning preschooler programming called Playhouse Disney and Nick Jr., respectively. And while Nick Jr. had the very popular and successful Bob the Builder, Playhouse Disney had something called Handy Manny. Handy Manny was a CGI repairman with talking tools. His show actually premiered in 2007 as Disney ended some of their other big preschooler programming shows like Bear in the Big Blue House.

• 18:51Kaelyn Moore?

  And the show was actually pretty popular. So a lot of parents trusted that they could just turn it on and let their kids watch while they did other stuff around the house. Only this month, in one quiet New Jersey community, Manny would lose that trust in a very major way. So Lyncroft is a pretty picturesque subdivision. Of New Jersey and about half the community at the time was made up of families with children. So plenty of kids in Lynn Croft were sitting in front of their TVs one morning in May of 2007, all watching Handy Manny fix things with his tools. A little boy who we'll call Aaron was one of them. His father, Paul, could hear the TV playing from the next room over, the cartoon sounds, the music.

• 19:36Kaelyn Moore?

  But then he heard something that was definitely not part of a kids program. The father ran into the living room to find that somehow on the screen, an adult film had started playing. Now, naturally, Paul freaked out and he hit the remote as fast as he could to change the channel. But when he pulled up the TV guide, he realized that the channel was still set to Disney and Handy Manny was still the program that was supposed to be on. The little boy had no idea what he was seeing. He was far too young to understand. And Paul probably turned it off so quickly that it didn't even register what was happening. But Paul could see out of his window the entire neighborhood of other families with young children.

• 20:21Kaelyn Moore?

  And he wondered if all of them had caught what was happening in time. See, this signal hijack wasn't just unique to their home. It was happening all over Lynn Croft. And from what we know how parents described this event, after just a few minutes, the program switched right back. And once again, Manny was on screen fixing things with his tools as if nothing ever happened. But parents who caught what happened were not willing to let it go. And so they started calling Disney to get some answers. And at first Disney really took this seriously. Obviously, the callers were not making this up. There were a ton of parents that had called in with this complaint. And right away, that actually helped narrow down the problem. If it had been Disney themselves airing the adult film,

• 21:05Kaelyn Moore?

  then you would expect every household in America to have experienced the signal intrusion. Instead, it was just this one small neighborhood in New Jersey. So that meant somewhere along the cable distribution line, someone in Lynn Croft had altered the Disney Channel's signal. The cable provider for the air- Area was Comcast. So Disney started just pointing the finger at them, saying that they were responsible for this. In turn Comcast promised that they would launch an investigation. But as days turned into weeks, the company didn't really seem to be revealing anything. Paul, the father of the young boy who saw the adult film, was interviewed by the New York Daily News. He was pretty distraught, understandably, and he was frustrated with Comcast for scaring

• 21:48Kaelyn Moore?

  his son, though he also admitted that he could have scared his son because he was so horrified, he just started screaming and that maybe freaked him out. Comcast did make a formal apology to Paul, but there was never any explanation provided for what happened. And as it turned out, this was not just an isolated event. Hijackings had been happening all over the country. Just earlier that year, in March of 2007, there was a similar signal intrusion in the Phoenix area. The Ion Cable Channel, which was a health and wellness channel, was also interrupted by an adult film. And two years later, a two-hour drive away in Tucson, there was an extremely

• 22:33Kaelyn Moore?

  high-profile hijacking of the biggest television event of the year, the Super Bowl. Viewers watched in real time as the feed cut from the game to the image of a woman taking a man's pants off and exposing him to the entire audience. And once again, there were a lot of kids watching that as well. And then in March of 2010, in Raleigh, North Carolina, the cable feeds for two different children's channels were replaced for two whole hours by the Playboy Channel. It does seem in this instance that it was just the preview screen that was up, so luckily, kids did not see anything explicit here. But perhaps weirdest of all, in 2012, also in North Carolina, Disney Channel once again fell victim to another signal intrusion. And this time,

• 23:18Kaelyn Moore?

  the interrupted program was not Handy Manny, but it was actually the original animated Lilo and Stitch. As usual, the interruption was an adult film, and once again, parents freaked out. A local news station Actually was able to interview a mother who happened to record the whole thing on her DVR. So she was able to replay it for the reporters who realized that the adult film had played for six whole minutes. And so, of course, this mom wanted answers as to why this had happened. She wanted to know why her kids had been exposed to this while watching the Disney Channel. And once again, the cable network involved had no good explanation. It was like it was an epidemic at the time, all of these hijackings.

• 24:00Kaelyn Moore?

  There likely were many similar situations that either went unnoticed, unreported, or were intentionally swept under the rug. And you might be wondering how this could happen so often. And actually, the explanation is pretty simple, if not a little technical. But basically, all of these hijackings happened in one of two ways. Either the signal was intercepted and overridden by an outside party, or it was just someone within the local cable station who switched the feed. In the days of broadcast, it was somewhat common for hijackers to override a TV station signal by placing a transmitter of greater strength between the TV station and the targeted homes.

• 24:41Kaelyn Moore?

  But in the days of cable, someone would have to physically splice the cable line to hijack it from the outside. That's not that easy to do, but because there's a recording of the 2012 incident, journalists could see that the family did lose the Disney Channel signal for a moment before the adult film came on. So they do think that that is likely what happened. However, there's also a lot of bad actors at cable stations, and oftentimes that is the correct explanation. The 2007 ION incident and the 2009 Super Bowl incident both had similar culprits. They were employees at the cable companies who did it for whatever reason. The Super Bowl culprit actually faced criminal charges, but just got off with a hefty fine.

• 25:26Kaelyn Moore?

  And the ION culprit was fired. And in general, cable companies seem to prefer firing that employee and just moving on because if they were to bring up a big court case about it, it would bring even more negative attention to the event. But no one ever got any answers. To how the Handy Manny signal intrusion happened. There was never any investigation and any recording of the event seemed to have vanished. And remember, having a recording as uncomfortable as it might be for parents can actually be really useful for an investigation, which can in turn ensure that it doesn't happen again. But with Handy Manny, those tapes all just disappeared. But that hasn't stopped people from looking for them.

• 26:09Kaelyn Moore?

  Many of these incidents have been given kind of a new life online over the last few years as lost media sleuths have tried to find the recordings of the broadcasts. There's Reddit posts from 2017, 2022, and 2023 looking for footage of the Disney Channel hijackings. And in 2023, Reddit users thought they found the lost footage when a video titled, quote, "Disney Channel Hijacking 2007" was uploaded to the Internet Archive. But this was not meant to be. That user later came forward and said that the video was fake and that they had been misled. I mean, this type of video would be so easy to fake.

• 26:49Kaelyn Moore?

  Anyone could splice an adult film into a regular clip of Handy Manny and say it was that. The Lilo and Stitch interruption is actually shown pretty well in the 2012 News Report, though of course, the explicit scene in question is blacked out. However, I will add, the news station forgot to edit out the credits of the adult film, and those credits do start to play at the end of the clip. So some sleuths have actually been able to guess what the signal intrusion would have looked like. As for the Handy Manny hijack, internet sleuths might never be able to find that one. As we've covered on this show, when the mouse wants something gone, it can be gone, essentially wiped from the face of the earth. And it's kind of too hard of a thing to look for.

• 27:31Kaelyn Moore?

  Typically, lost media is actual, unique, missing content rather than a specific television feed from a specific time. This recording would have to come straight from a DVR from a parent. And those people seem to all have deleted the broadcast, or they turned it over to someone else who deleted it. Me, personally, I'm more interested in the unique lost media, like unusual, disturbing, or otherwise memorable media that worms its way into your head and won't let you forget it. And our next story features exactly that. A short film that haunted a man for his entire life.

• 28:14Kaelyn Moore?

  This episode is brought to you by Bigelow Tea. By now, you should all know that I'm obviously a very curious person and I'm also a big tea drinker. So I've always heard about this tea called Bigelow Constant Comment. It's been around forever and people absolutely love it. I realized I had no idea what it actually tasted like. Obviously, I had to investigate and now I'm obsessed. Constant Comment is this incredible black tea with real orange rind, cold-pressed orange oil and sweet spices. The best way I can describe it is it's like Christmas in a cup, except you get to drink it all year long. Then I learned the story behind it, which made me love it even more. Constant Comment was created by Ruth Campbell Bigelow and her New York City kitchen in 1945.

• 28:57Kaelyn Moore?

  She shared it with her friends and everyone kept talking about it. And all of those "constant comments" actually gave it its name. The recipe is still a Bigelow family secret over 80 years later. So this one is a mystery worth investigating for yourself. Bigelow Constant Comment: Curiously different, impossible to forget. This episode is brought to you by Primally Pure. I feel like every time I run out of a product in my bathroom, I have this moment where I go, okay, do I just order the same thing? Or do I finally make a better swap? And that thinking is exactly what got me into Primally Pure. They're a female-founded brand that keeps it really simple. Fewer, better ingredients and nothing you can't pronounce. I just got an order from Primally Pure and I am obsessed with their lip oil.

• 29:40Kaelyn Moore?

  I also got eucalyptus and lavender body butter, which has spa vibes for sure. If you want an easy starting point, their Clean Start Bundle is a great place to start. For under $50, you get three everyday essentials. Their best-selling aluminum-free deodorant, a mini body butter and the lip oil that I love. It's also a really thoughtful gift if you know someone who's been wanting to clean up their routine. Use code HSP to get 15% off your Primally Pure purchase. That's www.p r i m a l l y p u r e dot com and use code HSP at checkout for 15% off your order. This episode is brought to you by C. Joe. A new season always makes me want to reset things, my space, my routine.

• 30:22Kaelyn Moore?

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• 31:07Kaelyn Moore?

  Go to sijohome.com and use code HSP to get 20% off your first order. That's S I J O H O M E dot com and use code HSP for 20% off at checkout. Sometimes the memories of things we viewed as children get jumbled as we get older. We mix up details, sometimes we combine experiences, remembering things that never really were. What happens though, when you know you saw something you shouldn't have when you were young, but you just can't put your finger on where or when it happened? What happens when the distant memory of the horror still echoes in your mind well into adulthood?

• 31:49Kaelyn Moore?

  We've mentioned the subreddit, our tip of my tongue, on this podcast before. It's a subreddit dedicated to helping people figure out the name of a movie, a song, or another piece of pop culture that they can't quite remember. And it's usually pretty positive and chill on the subreddit. So, one disturbing new post in 2019 really caught everyone's attention. It was from a user with the ominous name Many Legs. He was looking for information on a film he saw on Nickelodeon as a kid while living in Brazil in the early 2000s. One that stuck with him forever. I'll go ahead and read you the exact description of this piece of lost media. Quote, "The opening scene is the title of the movie in white and a black background." I believe it was called The Butcher.

• 32:34Kaelyn Moore?

  The film is black and white, and there is a hand with a butcher's knife butchering animals made out of real bones. I believe all the animals are small ones, like a bird, rabbit, dog, etc. The video had no dialogue, only music and maybe special effects. In the end, the skeleton animals rebel against the butcher. I'm not sure if only the hand of the butcher is shown, but I believe so. I also believe that his hand is a real human hand. Can't confirm it, though. I also remember seeing bones inside of glasses, and I believe the animal bones fused together at some point, making an abomination. This film had severely disturbed the poster as a child, and he was wondering how something

• 33:16Kaelyn Moore?

  so gruesome could have ever been shown on a kids' network. Other users jumped in right away. They were totally caught up in this mystery. People started commenting things like, "Damn, South American Nick sounds intense." But there were other comments coming in from users who remembered something similar airing on the network. Quote, "I really hope we find this because I vaguely remember this as well. I hope it's not a Mandela effect. I can remember it as well, or maybe I've seen a video about it once. I very vaguely remember this. Could be just the Mandela effect in action, like someone else commented. Please notify me whenever it's solved. I want to know too." So then, the thread really got to work trying to solve this mystery.

• 34:00Kaelyn Moore?

  And what happened next was almost as disturbing as the post itself. Because people started suggesting short films that might fit the description, which really opened up a dialogue about just how many disturbing videos had been shown either to children or on kids' networks. One of the first suggestions as to what the missing short could be was called Lupo the Butcher. It's an early cartoon from the creator of Ed, Ed and Eddie, Danny Antonucci. It's pretty shocking. It features an eerie-looking butcher who's having a temper tantrum while cutting meat. And eventually, it leads to him cutting a finger off. And then, he cuts himself up until all that's left is his head.

• 34:41Kaelyn Moore?

  End of the short features, just the credits rolling as just the butcher's head is slowly crawling away and screaming. However, this short was in color, it's hand drawn animation, very similar to Ed, Ed and Eddie, and it has no animals. So it doesn't really fit the description of the film that many legs was looking for. Someone else suggested the short film Orokuro, which shows a small stop motion skeleton animal on a desk, interacting with a bunch of other strange objects. It's also in black and white, but ultimately it's not quite as creepy or as gory as many legs is describing. And it's far too recent. It was released in 2011. Someone else suggested Strange Invaders, which they remembered playing on Nickelodeon at one point.

• 35:26Kaelyn Moore?

  This is actually an Oscar nominated Canadian cartoon short about a couple dealing with an alien baby. It's kind of creepy, but it's mostly cute and fun. It's not black and white. It's not stop motion. But many legs did remember seeing it and it had him wondering if it could have some connection to his butcher short film. So from here, he kind of started going down a rabbit hole. He found that Strange Invaders was distributed by the National Film Board of Canada or NFB. So he wondered if they would also have a copy of the film that he was looking for. So many legs next posted to the R. Lost Media subreddit and that post actually caught the attention of the NFB.

• 36:08Kaelyn Moore?

  And they searched their archives, but in the end they couldn't find anything like he was describing. So then another person suggested a movie called Alice from 1988. It's a Czech movie and it's this very dark and disturbing surrealist take on Alice in Wonderland. It features many scary stop motion creatures. There's also a little bit of decapitation in it. And it seems to have scarred a whole generation of Czech children, but that was not the film he was looking for. All of these ended up being dead ends. But then he did catch kind of an unexpected break. A new user reached out with a film suggestion. The name Butcher's Hook. Now, immediately, this short film seemed to check more boxes than anything before it.

• 36:53Kaelyn Moore?

  It's a six-minute-long short film from 1995, described on IMDb as, "A short film exploring the imagery of medical and scientific experimentation." The film is mostly in black and white, and the animation is stop-motion, just like the original poster suggested. And let me tell you, this thing is disturbing. It's a surrealist film that's supposed to show a taxidermist working with his animals. We see dead rabbits in a jar of formaldehyde and a bunch of gross squelching noises play underneath. We also see more animal carcasses and bones contorting and rotating,

• 37:33Kaelyn Moore?

  all being watched by an eerie shirtless man who is supposed to be the taxidermist. Now, the short does have some color elements, but it features a lot of animal bones in black and white and stop-motion animation. Before long, the taxidermist is somehow sucked in by the animal skeletons, who then turn his body into a skeleton. He screams and he panics until his skeleton body is consumed by a root system, and then a tree grows out of him. The circle of life, I guess. The film is by a British filmmaker named Simon Purcell, who made a variety of experimental shorts like this before graduating into features. Butcher's Hook came out in 1996, which also fits the poster's timeline decently well.

• 38:18Kaelyn Moore?

  But there were still a couple of issues. One, it's a taxidermist, not a butcher, even though the title suggests that it would be a butcher, which I can see how that would maybe scramble someone's memory. There's also no chopping of bones. But most importantly, something this disturbing was unlikely to have ever played on Nickelodeon, even in Brazil, which is, maybe there's darker things happening there than we realize. But Nickelodeon has had some weird stuff over the years, but not- Nothing quite this graphic, but Many Legs took his investigation even further and he actually reached out to the filmmaker to see if the film could have somehow ended up on Nickelodeon. He never received a response back. However, he could always count on the other Redditors to

• 39:03Kaelyn Moore?

  lead him back on the right path. In an update post in 2020, Many Legs learned of a separate animation network that played in Latin America at the time, Locomotion. They mostly showed a lot of anime, but they also had a strong library of experimental short films. The network is long gone and Many Legs didn't know who to contact to try to learn more about their programming, but based on some of the other shorts that they showed at the time, Butcher's Hook could have definitely have played on the network. And it's a lot more likely that it was on that network than Nickelodeon. Given how animation channels tended to be grouped together in cable lineups back in the day, it seemed possible that Many Legs could have simply switched to

• 39:47Kaelyn Moore?

  the Locomotion channel, seen the short, and then later misremembered it as being on Nickelodeon. Or it could have been some sort of signal hijacking situation like we've already talked about. Only, instead of playing adult films, the hijacker chose to play an experimental British film because maybe the hijacker was a cinephile. I don't know. Unfortunately, the poster had to just settle for never really truly knowing how he saw this. And he does say that this does continue to haunt him to this day. We all have those things that we've seen as kids that really stick with us. For my sibling Leo, it was an actual Nickelodeon short called Attack of the Giant

• 40:29Kaelyn Moore?

  Vulture that really bothered them for years. It was this creepy film that was actually made by little girls and it was about a puppet vulture who follows them around and tries to eat them. And in the end, they kill and eat it instead. Leo had nightmares about this short film for no joke, two years. And I found a thread on Reddit from other people who were also traumatized by this film and couldn't find it for the longest time. If any of you guys remember this short from your childhood, please let me know. Let me know because we can't be the only one that had our family almost destroyed over this. I think when you're a kid, you maybe can't make sense of certain special effects like stop motion or puppets and that can really scare you. Back in the day when things might just air briefly

• 41:11Kaelyn Moore?

  on TV and then never be seen again, it left you feeling like you were crazy. Like this weird thing that you saw might have been some horrible hallucination. Another example of this is Mr. Meaty, which was a Canadian puppet show that was distributed by Nickelodeon in the US. It's a perfect example. Before it went to full series, it would just show up in the form of little shorts that played in between full-length shows. The show was really known for its creepy puppets who encountered these horrible situations while working at a fast food restaurant. In different episodes, they fried and ate their own hands. They discovered a giant tapeworm living inside of one of their stomachs. One of them even dated a girl made of roast beef who looked like she had

• 41:53Kaelyn Moore?

  no skin and oftentimes they fought with their half-dead cryogenically unfrozen boss. And if you just happened to catch one of these storylines with no explanation, right before you were sitting down to say, "Watch Clarissa Explains It All," you might feel insane. But these memories do really stay with us, as that Reddit poster illustrated. I truly believe that he did see something he was never meant to as a child. I just don't know if it really aired on Nickelodeon. But his memory is so vivid and he remembers so many details about the film. So whatever he saw was truly terrifying and no kid should have ever seen it. But now there's entire communities online that are dedicated

• 42:36Kaelyn Moore?

  to finding lost media. And I want to continue to make these lost media episodes to share some more of them with you guys because I find them so interesting and eerie. So let me know if that's something that you guys want to hear more of. And I think sometimes revisiting these things can really help us process them or help diminish their power over us, which is why, actually, this week in our Footnotes episode, which is available to the High Council tier on Patreon, you can join Leo and I as we revisit. Attack of the Giant Vulture. We want to go through the short film, which was actually considered lost media for a very long time. And we want to see if it's still as disturbing as we remember. And I want to hear from all of you as well.

• 43:20Kaelyn Moore?

  Do you remember seeing something as a child that you just can't put your finger on? Or have never been able to find again? Let me know in the comments wherever you listen, because you never know. It just could be in our next lost media episode. But for now, that is all I have for you this week. Join me here next week as we're going to start easing our way into spooky season. I promise you're not going to want to miss it. I will see you all then. And until next time, stay curious.

• 43:51Kaelyn Moore?

  Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kaelyn Moore. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Our associate producer is Juno Hobbs. Additional research and writing by Greg Castro. Sound design and mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jordan, and the team at WME and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out hearts start pounding.com. This episode is brought to you by our partner, Vistaprint. If you run a small business, you know that there's a moment where you go from just doing the thing you love to realizing you need stuff, like physical stuff. Custom merch for an event, branded apparel for your team, business cards that actually look professional. That was definitely me with Heart Starts Pounding. What started as a podcast I made in my closet turned into something that had merch,

• 44:36Kaelyn Moore?

  had mugs, had stickers, had all of this stuff that I needed to get made. And Vistaprint made it so much less overwhelming. They are a true print expert. Premium quality products, fast turnaround and design tools that actually make sense. I actually got custom mugs made from Vistaprint and they are gorgeous and very, very good quality. The quality feels expensive without having an expensive price tag. There's a reason over 17 million businesses trust Vistaprint with their print needs. Vistaprint, print your possible. Right now, new customers get 20% off with code new20 at Vistaprint.com. That's 20% off at Vistaprint.com using code new20. Do you want more darkly curious stories in your life? Sign up. For our Patreon for free and get access to a rotating shelf of bonus content,

• 45:20Kaelyn Moore?

  our weekly Rogue Detecting Society newsletter and the HSP Book Club. Paid members also get monthly bonus episodes and archive access, which I think is more than 40 episodes at this point. You also get a cool jinx sticker after your first three months. And you can check it all out with a free seven day trial. Link in the bio or go to patreon.com backslash heart starts pounding. But whatever you do, stay curious.