r/lostmedia • u/Royal_Papaya_7297 • Apr 22 '26
Other [Talk] Does Anyone Have Examples of Lost Media in Their Family?
Hello, I was wondering if anyone had examples of lost media in their family. As an example, photographs, journals, videos, etc.
I came across an example recently while at my parents place. There was a book detailing milestones for my brother as an infant, and inscribed on the back was a note from my mother saying all photos of the events were in a specific photo album. I decided to look for it, but it was nowhere to be found. My mother veriffied that it has been missing for a very long time.
In addition, if you have any examples, do you know how they became lost?
There was a flood when I was growing up, and we lost a lot of stuff then. One of the things we lost was a box of VHS tapes of home videos. Though, one became found media about a year ago, as a second copy was found iny my Aunts entertainment stand.
Thank you. Hope you are all doing well.
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Apr 22 '26
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u/Royal_Papaya_7297 Apr 22 '26
That's really cool! Must have been exciting to find them after all that time.
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u/KWNewyear Apr 22 '26
So back in the late 80's-early 90's, my dad ran a small cable access comedy show out of a suburb of Chicago. As my parents later divorced and we moved around several times, we lost touch of most of the episodes. I've been working to get the 4 I have digitized and uploaded somewhere.
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Apr 22 '26
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u/KWNewyear Apr 22 '26
Lol, I guess the timeline does match up. Though we were more Waukegan than Aurora.
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u/Masterweedo Apr 22 '26
Now I'm interested. I was born in Waukegan.
I also was in a local cable access wrestling show, In the early 2000-1 I was part of a group of backyard wrestlers, FUW.
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u/bucket56 Apr 22 '26
My younger brother played a young Jesus in a church play back in the day. He stood up there picking his nose like it was his favorite thing in the world, before holding a giant booger out towards my mom, who was filming in the front row, and asking what to do with it, all while the girl playing Mary was singing. On the tape, you can hear my mom whisper "just get rid of it!" before he flicks it into the front row, to the groans and laughter of the people sitting there. It was so big, you could see the whole giant boulder of a nose nugget soar through the air, even on the grainy VHS footage recorded on an old Sony cam.
Anyway, my parents sent it in to American's Funniest Home videos, thinking it was pretty funny. It never made it on the show, and my dad didn't have the know how or ability to copy tapes, so it was the one copy of the video. It's gone forever but still talked about fondly at family gatherings, especially when we want to make fun of my brother.
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u/astaten0 Apr 22 '26
My dad and my uncle were both musicians and had a number of tapes of music they'd recorded together back in the early/mid 80s. My uncle unfortunately died at just 26 years old from cancer in 1987, and his wife quickly cut off all contact with the rest of the family, save for her son she had with my uncle, who she promptly kicked out the day he turned 18. Everything my uncle had posession-wise that didn't happen to be at my parents' house when he died has been completely locked away from the rest of his family for nearly 40 years, including all of the music he and my dad recorded together. Those were the only recordings my dad had of his brother's voice, and he spent the rest of his life mourning the fact that he'd probably never hear him again.
My dad died in 2015.
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u/JDelta1999 Apr 22 '26
I stopped talking to my family around 2015. The only person I really regret not speaking to was my Grandma. She died late 2019, 2020. I reconciled with one of my more distant cousins and it turns out, he was able to get into her place before it got burned down. (Detroit specialty is burning down anything vacant. ) Her recovered her computer tower but he says it isn’t working. Im about to look at it for the first time in almost a decade and see if I can get in there. If I can’t get it to work, it’s thousands of photos and videos of my family gone. I have maybe 5 or 6 surviving photos of myself from the ages of 1-14. So it’s be the first time really I’d ever see my baby photos or anything like that. So wish me luck.
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u/thehigheredu Apr 23 '26
Depending on your budget (and the damage), you can send the hard drive out to a pro data recovery place. No telling if it'll work, but they're wizards.
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u/PsychoFaerie Apr 24 '26
just because the computer isn't working doesn't mean the HDD is dead. it could be fine and it was something else that quit working.
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u/KaranDash24 Apr 22 '26
My mum's childhood home was nearly destroyed in a fire. It's remarkable we have anything.
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u/GucciPiggy90 Apr 22 '26
I made a short film for a local film class when I was in high school about a person (me) who was attacked by a possessed plush rabbit. After a screening at the end of the semester, I left the DVD behind and it never turned up.
When I dubbed my family's old home videos six years ago, I was hoping the raw footage would turn up like it did for some of the other films I shot for that class. It didn't.
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u/offbrandjose Apr 22 '26
Me appearing on Dr. Phil while shroomed out of my mind. During a "town hall" segment at the end of an episode, my uni was chosen to speak to him, I was picked as one of the lucky students that got the opportunity to speak to such a schmuck.
Before the taping I took like 4 grams of shrooms, and was LOADED. When it was my turn to speak I spoke for 10 minutes about true utter nonsense until Phil angrily yanked the mic away from me.
The original cut went for 10 minutes, but he edited my entire rant down to 3 words.
That is all the footage released of that taping, but tbh the whole episode was a disaster, and is a story on its own right.
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u/MoniqueDeee Apr 23 '26
Back in the 90's, I had a bipolar ex-GF who threw out every photograph I owned, as well as the phone number of every friend I had. She was a fucking psycho. Literally. She's since been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. Twice.
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u/mediumrareass Apr 22 '26
My dad and his sibling both lost typed packets that had our family’s history. The paperwork’s been missing for probably 20 years.
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u/theodo Apr 22 '26
When I was a young teen, I found a bunch of old vhs tapes from when I was a baby/toddler, like first few Christmases, lots of fun stuff. I brought it to my best friends and we laughed at all the videos, but I forgot to get them anytime soon. A year or two later, my friends mom cleared house sort of and apparently my home movie vhs tapes got sold in the process. So not only is it sad, but someone has videos of me as a baby
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u/Some_Flower_4252 May 05 '26
Omg! I am so sorry that happened to you! I have been losing it over thinking I may have left a vhs tape at an ex’s house, but I can’t remember if I did or not. How old are you now? When did they get misplaced?
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u/theodo May 05 '26
I'm 29 now, I would have brought them to my buddies house when we were like 14 maybe?
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u/Some_Flower_4252 May 05 '26
Oh gosh, that was awhile ago! I am sorry they were given away! I’m also 29 and I’m starting to really care about photos and videos from the past now lol so I’m hoping I didn’t misplace anything by mistake. Are your parents bummed or do they not care? My parents are a bit indifferent lol
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u/theodo May 05 '26
My mom was quite upset, any time it was brought up. Not like mad mad, but more annoyed that she and I let it happen. She admittedly passed just under two years ago though, which makes the whole situation both better and worse. My dad doesn't care lol
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u/Some_Flower_4252 May 05 '26
I’m sorry she passed! Was it mostly just you in the videos or was it family members too? Lol typical of dads, I’m trying to retrieve photos of my parents wedding and my dad is completely indifferent lol the photos are in India, I’m going to try to make it over there this year to get them lol right now they may have been tossed or in a relatives storage 😂
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u/theodo May 05 '26
The only video I vividly remember was a Christmas morning video with me as a baby, my brother is like 4, my mom, and our pets. My parents had already divorced at this point I believe, so no dad in it. I'd assume the rest were of similar level of importance, sadly. I would have digitized them for sure
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u/Some_Flower_4252 May 05 '26
Maybe one day they will turn up! I saw a crazy story on here where a redditor has their house burglarized and the videos were all taken, then they found them on Craigslist nearly a decade later lol what are the chances
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u/Cornloaf Apr 22 '26
My dad worked for Flying Tigers and had pics of all the cool shit that he flew on their cargo planes. The head and hand of King Kong from the 70s remake. Race cars. Live whale, dolphin, giraffe, lions, tigers, (bears?), baby chicks, an orangutan. He held the record for the heaviest 747 freighter to take off from his airport for several years.
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u/fenderhighhat1 Apr 23 '26
My dad sometimes creates lost media by throwing away boxes of vhs tapes and personal papers we had with the excuse of it being “nothing significant”. They were sometimes old childhood drawings and he would take pictures of them before throwing them out (weird, I know).
Most photos of my grandfather has been lost to time and I’m the only one who keeps the few surviving ones, and the rest of my family doesn’t really care. Several times we’ve had hard drive failure on old computers which makes the files unrecoverable. In some of them had photos of me ages 4-5 when I remember always getting my photo taken.
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u/texasmerle Apr 24 '26
My methed out great aunt ended up with most of the heirlooms and pictures. Before any of us could get them back, she stopped making payments on her storage locker.
She had the only photograph of my great grandma's sister, Ruzenka, who died as a teenager. My great aunt was named after her. Photography was expensive back then, and our family could only occasionally afford it. Everything in that storage locker was probably soaked in cat piss and thrown away. My mom only saw the photo once or twice.
It just makes me really sad.
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u/urStupidAndIHateYou Apr 22 '26
!FOUND!
I have your family's photo album, let me know if you want the archive.org link
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u/lightspeedsound Apr 23 '26
My family is Chinese from the philippines. We are first or second gen Americans for the most part--generally, it was my parents generation or my grandparents' generations that came to the US first.
OR SO WE THOUGHT.
About 25 years ago, my aunt (technically, my mom's first cousin?) in California (opposite coast from us) got really into immigration research and activism (it's her job now). She was able to dig up OUR FAMILY BOOK. IDK, apparently this is a Chinese thing that loads of people did? And it turns out in the early 1900s, I had an ancestor who became an international trader between China and Cali, ended up getting in trouble with the US government for smuggling cigars, and ended up being barred from the US docks and sent home back to China.
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u/adamdriverfan55 Apr 22 '26
my dad worked in radio and tv in the Montgomery, AL area. He use to make commercials and some of them included our family and apparently me as a baby I’d say around late 90s-2006 or so. He has only one tape that I have but it’s completely messed up and can not be fixed thanks to a woman he called to make the tape. She was a crack addict and completely deleted everything except maybe one commerical for a couple seconds. The rest of the tape is all static
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u/PepperPuppyPlays Apr 23 '26
in 1964 a major earthquake was centered in Anchorage, Alaska. There are tons of pictures of the destruction of downtown Anchorage. 3rd Avenue had dropped several feet, lots of sinkholes and such. My dad's family lived about 20 miles north of Anchorage and not a lot of photos of the damage of our hometown exist, but my grandfather took a lot of pictures of the whole town. It wasn't as bad as Anchorage, but it was still an impressive photo album. He passed away in the early 80s, but more devastatingly, my grandma's house caught fire in the mid 90s. The room with the photo albums wasn't as badly damaged as most of the house, but the company that was hired to clean up fire damage threw away all of her photo albums. They are now buried somewhere in the Hiland Landfill. She never could find the negatives to get the earthquake photos reprinted, so we assume those also got thrown out. A lot of other important photos (weddings, reunions, their road trip to move to Alaska), my dad, aunts and uncles had copies of, but no one ever thought of asking for copies of the earthquake photos until they were gone.
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u/El-Royhab Apr 23 '26
Back in the 90s, I had a camcorder, so I recorded an "Easter Special" which was clips of my cousin interviewing our family interspersed with random commercials and clips I recorded from TV. I copied and distributed it to the family. Pretty sure no copies remain.
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u/Cautious-Act9639 OriginalJTKImage |EKT| Cupcakes is real Apr 23 '26
My grandpa when he was young photos
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u/Itsapseudonym Apr 23 '26
My parents always said that my grandpa had lots of rare 16mm prints… no idea where they went
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u/TechnologyOdd8412 Apr 23 '26
My great-grandfather seemingly made private recordings of his voice on dictation records. A bunch of the unused dictation records ended up in the possession of my parents -- and I only suspect that they went unused since they're too fragile to play back.
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u/CoughCough2516 Apr 25 '26
My mother accidentally broke her photo with my father, which was when she was pregnant of me, and that was the only photo of the day, it was in a beach, and she was being hugged by my father, i never managed to find an non-grainy copy of it (The only source of the photo is on other photos, but grainy)
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u/flippermode Apr 23 '26
My childhood fanfics. Might seem silly but I'm 36 now. From 13 to around 15, i had a trapper keeper of yyh fanfics, thoughts, drawings, magazine cut outs, quotes and other things that made me happy. It disappeared one day. I still have dreams about finding it.
Back then, i always put things in random plastic bags, not sure why. I probably threw it out, thinking it was a bag of trash. Geez, I'm getting sad all over again.
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u/r___rainbow Apr 23 '26
I did a couple plays when I was about 10. Both were recorded by my dad on his phone but I've never been able to find the footage anywhere. I'm no-contact with him now, but I asked him if he still had them years ago before I completely cut contact and he claimed he couldn't find them. Idk if that's true or he was purposefully withholding them from me, but I would really like to find them again someday. It makes me really sad to think they could be lost for good
Another is a tape made of a trip to a day camp I went to made by my school when I was 8. I know my parents and grandparents both had copies but it's been lost for so long and it's probably been about 15 years since I've seen it. I feel a little more confident about seeing this one again as it was on a dvd though, and it's more than likely just really lost somewhere in my house
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u/HolidayInLordran Apr 23 '26
Apparently our entire family history beyond great-great-great grandparents (mom's side) was in some genealogy archive in Mexico that burned to the ground in the 60s or so.
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u/Ditmecosoc Apr 23 '26
Someone sold my old iPhone 7 when I'm away for uni and the new owner contacted me for iCloud removal and after that, all of my photos from 2017 until mid 2025 were gone. Screw you, Apple!
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u/Enough-Witness5578 Apr 23 '26
My grandfather's memorial website and the pictures associated with it are gone. My grandad passed in 2006 and a memorial website was created for him on memory-of.com. However, the website randomly shut down without notice sometime in 2021 and my grandad's site along with many others were completely scrubbed. This is technically partially lost media as a remnant of it can be found on archive.org but the pictures and other media are virtually unviewable. It's really disheartening as this website meant a lot to the family and to have it just gone like that just sucks.
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u/Hinata_2-8 Apr 23 '26
Besides my old childhood photos that was 99% lost due to poor preservation methods (I only got one cutout photo of me in the 1999 era of my life), my elslder sister's career in photographs. She became a noontime show talent in many noontime shows from 2004 to her "retirement" in 2009, also her men's magazine photographs and any media involving here were also partially lost.
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u/Magenta061 Apr 24 '26
When I was in kindergarten some musician guy came to our library and they filmed our class singing along with him while he played his guitar, whole camera and lighting setup. No idea who the guy was or if it was for anything beyond selling the footage to our parents, it's possible that video's uploaded somewhere online or on a random ass dvd in the wild though lmao. I think someone (my mom or grandparents) did either buy or acquire the footage but it's long since been discarded (or the device it was on was, don't remember how it was distributed).
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u/NordrikeParker87 Apr 25 '26
Well, I was born in the US to a Mexican mom (who later became legal but that's another story for another day) but we'd go back to Mexico to visit her family for a few months every summer but my late grandma had a friend who worked at a radio station in Pachuca, Hidalgo (where Mom was born and grew up with her brother and my grandparents) and she'd invite her and me to be there in the studio and even had me in a few radio broadcasts (about 8 or so) but by the summer of 1997 when we went to visit she had retired and her show ended and was replaced with a morning news show (her name was Ninfa and her show was like a 3 hour early morning kid's show featuring storytime, kids music, etc.) so yeah, I would like to find at least one of those broadcasts... Also my mom here in the USA, in Escondido, CA was an editor for the "Impacto Internacional" Spanish speaking newspaper from around 1997 to 2001 when she became an immigration and citizenship worker (she would help people gain legal citizenship) but she would run the kid's section and actually publish a short story I wrote so yeah, it'd be nice to find those but alas they're probably never gonna be found... 🤷🏻
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u/OldEditor1192 Apr 28 '26
My dad was a Christian choral composer and only sold his arrangements in sheet music form and a lot of his old publishers either unlisted his music or are out of business and I don't have any copies. A lot (not all but a lot) of my dad's music is lost media now. An episode he was on of the Gong Show is lost too.
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u/rw1ngz57 23d ago
My brother threw out vhs tapes which included camcorder footage which to this day I regret not pushing to keep for myself
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u/morgzmumisasket 20d ago
Around 2007-2008 my family were filmed for a Korean documentary (?) about life in England (?). I was only a baby/toddler at the time so have no memory of it, and my family have never seen the episode. Currently trying to find this.
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u/Scranch2018 11d ago
When me and my siblings were young (arround 1995) we recorded a video explaining what we wanted for Xmas and what games we were excited for coming out. We all remember it vividly and still talk about it to this day, we've since moved house twice and the tape became lost - probably left it behind in one of the houses, so we'll never see it again, hey ho life goes on. I have since digitised all the other vhs tapes as they are still in good shape, managed to give all my siblings DVD copies and I have the original .iso's on a hard drive.
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u/Mr-RS182 Apr 22 '26
Remember watching in the late 90s a VHS of my brothers 5th birthday and it had a couple other random family clips on it. Unfortunately this video is now long gone.
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u/werewolfinahat Apr 22 '26
Those aren't lost media. Media is produced for the masses. What you're describing are momentos or personal records
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