10 "True Story" Horror Movies That Tricked You Into Believing Them

The McPherson Tape is a curious movie that never made it to the mainstream in the no-man's land between Cannibal Holocaust and The Blair Witch Project, instead circling through word of mouth and in actual UFO conventions for being a true story put to VHS about Alien Abduction.

The film is all home-video, grainy goodness as a family celebrates Thanksgiving before being taken away by alien figures. Interestingly, The McPherson Tape wasn't actually released as intended - as the master copy of the original movie, titled UFO Abduction, was lost in a warehouse fire which director Dean Alioto then wrote off and moved on from.

The film is actually a bootleg copy of UFO Abduction released with the beginning and end credits cut off to make it appear authentic, discovered by Alioto and then remade into an actual movie with a bigger budget once he heard of its infamous reputation in extraterrestrial enthusiast circles. Those who saw the movie in its original time period claimed its authenticity as it closely follows other reports of other real people that claim to be abducted, a result of Alioto's close research into the topic when making the film.

Of course, once the bigger budget movie was made, the network that funded it couldn't help but meddle. They shortened it from two hours to one and removed the advert cuts to again incite believers into taking it as gospel, before then releasing the full remade movie as Alien Abduction: An Incident In Lake County.

This was then regarded as a 'cover up' for the original tape, because of course it was. In reality, the aliens are children in rubber suits, but hey, let them have their fun.