 Item number SCP-1981 Object Class Safe Special Containment Procedures SCP-1981 is to be kept inside a secure video storage unit at the media archive of site ██. When in use, SCP-1981 should not be removed from its casing, or exposed to any strong magnetic sources. A Betamax home video system and an analog television have been provided in Observation Theater 02 at Site ██, as well as video equipment to record viewings. Description SCP-1981 is a standard Betamax tape. Ronald Reagan cut up while talking has been handwritten on the adhesive sticker and belt tip pen. Laboratory analysis indicates that SCP-1981 is made of ordinary material, and serial numbers correspond with home cassette tapes produced in September of 1980. SCP-1981 was initially encountered by a filing clerk in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in 1991, who upon watching it alerted the police, with the intent to find the tape's creator to press obscenity charges. A low-level police investigation was conducted, at which point the Foundation was alerted and secured SCP-1981. Class-A amnestics were administered before ██ could be notified. Another investigation of the library's records by Foundation personnel failed to yield any leads on SCP-1981's origin. SCP-1981 appears to be a home video recording of former United States President Ronald Reagan delivering his evil empire speech to the National Association of Evangelicals at Sheridan Twin Towers Hotel, Orlando, Florida, on March 8, 1983. However, at 1 minute and 10 seconds, the speech begins to deviate heavily, eventually resembling no known speech ever made by Reagan. Beginning in approximately 5 minutes, multiple incisions, lacerations, and penetration wounds can be seen being slowly inflicted, though no corresponding source of these wounds is visible. Despite suffering bodily harm that would likely incapacitate an ordinary person, Reagan will continue to deliver his speech until either his vocal cords are severed or the tape degrades the static at 22 minutes 34 seconds. Upon rewinding SCP-1981 on initiating playback, Reagan will deliver an entirely new speech, often radically different from the ones previously observed. Topics have included torture, child molestation, and ritual sacrifice. Trauma inflicted upon Reagan also appears to be divergent, with impalement, general mutilation, and ██ having all been observed. In roughly one in seven buoys of SCP-1981, a figure clothed in black robes with a conical hood will have replaced a random member of Reagan's press detail, henceforth referred to as SCP-1981-1. The significance of the appearance of SCP-1981-1 is currently unknown. The speeches delivered by Reagan are mostly incoherent, lacking any sort of underlying thematic structure and largely being composed of nonsensical anecdotes and parables. However, occasionally references are made to future events that Reagan could not possibly have known about or predicted, such as the September 11 terrorist attacks, the result of the 2008 Russian elections, and ██. For this reason, rigorous time and effort have been devoted to recording the speech delivered on each playback. Attempts to replicate SCP-1981 onto a similar Betamax tape have met with failure. However, cameras used to record a television SCP-1981 as broadcasted on have succeeded in capturing individual playbacks. Many observations performed on SCP-1981 must be recorded on the camcorder provided and delivered for subsequent review to Dr. ██, Project Supervisor. Years of natural magnetic interference has severely degraded SCP-1981's signal quality, making it even more difficult to set meaningful information from playbacks. Additionally, the gruesome nature of the mutilations performed upon Reagan have been described as extremely disturbing, and for this reason it is recommended that any personnel feeling squeamish or ill after playback visit the on-site psychiatry facility for a level 3 evaluation. As Ronald Reagan was alive at the time of SCP-1981's containment, a surveillance net was deployed to establish any relation between him and SCP-1981. No known connection was developed, though Reagan would frequently complain about nightmares before his mental state degenerated due to Alzheimer's. Excerpt from video transcripts of recording made on ██-93 Seventeen minutes twenty-four seconds, Reagan, a renewal of the traditional values that have been the tenets of this country's strength. One recent survey by a Washington-based researcher concluded that Americans were far more willing to participate in cannibalism than they have in the past hundred years. America is a nation that will not suffer abominations lightly. Seven, and that is the core of the awakening, twelve, eighteen. We will stop al-Qaeda. Now there you go again. Seventeen minutes fifty-three seconds, applause. Eighteen minutes two seconds, Reagan. For the first time we have risen, and I see we are being consumed. I see circles that are not circles. Billions of dead souls inside containment. Unravellers have eaten country's moral fabric, turning hearts into filth. I am from the kingdom level above human. What does that yield? A hokey smile that damns an entire nation. Eighteen minutes forty-three seconds, there is no hope. Eighteen minutes fifty-nine seconds, applause. Nineteen minutes fifteen seconds, Reagan winks his back as if experiencing severe pain. Several new lacerations begin to manifest across bare eye socket, as well as punctures appearing to penetrate forehead and temples. The fear of left arm is now cleanly bisected. Nineteen minutes fifty-nine seconds, Reagan. Further consensus has proven that over half of all Americans still hate, eaten whole by void, the emptiness, the sadness, the blackness, the darkness, laughter. Twenty minutes thirty seconds, laughter continues until signal degrades into static. In transcript. Record from video transcript of recording made on ██████████████████ 96. 1232, Reagan. I've been to the steel mills of Alaska and the cornfields of Nebraska. I've seen the derelict offices of Google burn with the window boarded up and the squatters inside them. I've seen the houses where they cut up the little babies. From coast to shining coast I have walked empty down drooling path, indecipherable, the decaying flesh of false morality poisoning our children. I have stood atop the mountain of this greedy earth, looking upon our beautiful pious pit, filled to bursting with the vast hands of helplessness. And did you know what I saw? Thirteen minutes fifty-seven seconds. Hell. Fourteen minutes twenty seconds, the audience erupts in the laughter. Fourteen minutes thirty-two seconds, muffled voice can be heard behind camera. Fourteen minutes forty-five seconds, Reagan. Now there you go again. Fifteen minutes fifty-two seconds, laughter proceeds to die down. Fifteen minutes. Reagan. But truly now we live in a fortunate time. This is a fortunate time. Time is on our side. Tee-hee-hee. A stitch in nine saves time. Fifteen minutes forty seconds. There are your truths and there are my truths. There are known knowns, known unknowns, and known undecipherable. Some of them are in the audience right now. Sixteen minutes two seconds. At this stage, wounds inflicted upon Reagan's neck appear to be so severe that it can no longer support the head. Speech degenerating to gurgles as Reagan violently jerks forward, spine being severed cleanly, and the head only being loosely connected to the body by strands of muscle tissue. Body remains animate for the next three minutes, and continues to gesture as spinal column appears to be withdrawn from neck cavity, before finally collapsing. Take the grades in the static at twenty-two minutes thirty-four seconds. End transcript. Video transcript of recording made on ██ 2002. Redacted. O5 level clearance required. Video transcript of recording made on ██ 2005. Zero seconds. Long shot of podium as well as empty chairs normally occupied by Reagan and Entourage. Curiously, this is the only recording that lacks both the Entretitles and the presence of Ronald Reagan. Thirty seconds. Camera zooms in on podium. Two minutes fifty-five seconds. Entity known as SCP-1981-1 enters shot from left and stands at podium. Remains motionless for remainder of film. Twenty-two minutes thirty-four seconds. Tape flashes the single frame Entretitle with words, I see you, colored in red. Remains for seven seconds and immediately cuts to static. No further signal for remainder of tape. End transcript. Note, this is the last known sighting of SCP-1981-1. SCP-1981-1 has been absent in all subsequent playbacks. If observed, staff are advised not to attempt to communicate with SCP-1981-1, and to alert any level 4 supervisor on duty.