Our favorite media has been taking a turn towards digital for quite some time now. Video games, movies, and albums are available through digital storefronts and subscription services. It has become rather rare, then, to pick up physical copies. Of course, this can be a positive, as it’s a real space-saver in the home and provides instant access right from your device, but it also raises the question of ownership and control. We shouldn’t forget the fantastic physical media of the past, such as VHS (or Video Home System) tapes. They vanquished Betamax in the format wars and have now become a novelty themselves.

Like vinyl records and floppy disks, VHS has its niche applications and its enthusiasts. It’s rare, but it hasn’t quite disappeared, and it has a fantastic nostalgia value. You never quite know when you’ll spot a VHS tape in the wild, nor what time capsule-esque content will be on it. This is exactly what the YouTube channel Found Footage Fest promises. It’s an often-hilarious and always unpredictable collection of footage from ancient VHS tapes. For those who have fond memories of a mountainous family VHS collection, it’s the sort of thing that you can while away wonderful hours watching. It’s not as hard as you might think to connect with a piece of the past, if you know where to look for it.

Many of us remember owning our first movies on these chunky cassette tapes. Of course, you can convert old VHS tapes to digital, but there’s nothing like the original physical item. The great thing about the format is that you can find a little of everything. Found Footage Fest specifically seeks out the kooky and strange side of things committed to VHS, and that’s quite a generous bounty. It also has a VHS of the Month Clubwhere you can sign up to have a tape shipped to you each month. The site promises, “it’ll be the good stuff too: dance instructional videos! Blooper tapes! Exercise videos! Medical videos! You won’t be getting some lame tape that every thrift store on the planet has.”

With that in mind, then, you have an idea of the kind of strangeness that awaits you on this hilarious YouTube channel. As a case in point, one of the most recent uploads to the channel at the time of writing was this little treat, footage of some dancing skeletons at the Lawrence Welk show Halloween special in 1979:

The quirky, the peculiar, the long-forgotten, it’s all here. Anyone who grew up in the 1990s will appreciate this medley of charmingly cheesy toy commercials provided by Video Toy Chest (of Children’s Palace fame). If you had a collection of Tiger’s Lanky Doodles, you’ll be right at home here. For VHS enthusiasts, then, the clips on the Found Footage Fest channel are a joy, but it’s the sheer scale of the content they have on offer that’s particularly impressive.

For Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett of Found Footage Fest, it all began in 1991, when they happened upon an obscure and intriguing VHS tape at a Wisconsin McDonald’s. It was called ” Inside and Outside Custodial Duties,” and it seems a treasure like that was enough to spark a lifetime love for the curious, collectible qualities of VHS. That video was the beginning of a formidable collection of more than 13,000 (as Found Footage Fest puts it) “unique special interest videos.” The issue then was providing practical access to that enormous archive. The Found Footage Festival VHS Archive neatly arranges just short of 8,500 videos into categories such as Bad Green Screen, Uncomfortable Host, and Commercial/Advertisement. If, for instance, you’re a documentary maker who needs access to footage from the National Pork Board’s 1997 video “A New Look At Pork,” you can get in touch via the contact page.

Alternatively, you might simply want to watch this enormous range of VHS entertainment for yourself. Streaming service REWIND•Ocreated by the team, enables subscribers to search or browse through this utterly unpredictable range of VHS entertainment. The Paul Lynde Halloween special from 1976? Ohio Bigfoot Public Access: A Hunt for the Cryptozoological Icon? It’s all here, as are all sorts of other delights in between. Most importantly, these are full-length videos, not just surviving snippets. Some VHS tapes are worth more than you’d expect, but it’s the entertainment value of the content that counts here.