Featured Image Credit: YouTube/Alan Wright
Topics: News, Royal Family, UK News
Callum Jones
A man who unintentionally filmed his friends reacting to the death of Princess Diana in 1997 says the scream you hear on the footage was genuine.
Alan Light was playing a casual game of UNO with his friends on 31 August, 1997, when he was alerted by his mother that Princess Diana had been involved in a serious car crash.
Alan was trying out his new camcorder for the first time and saw a game of UNO with his mates as the perfect opportunity to test it out.
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He said that he put the TV on immediately after he was alerted to Diana being injured but continued to play the game with the TV on mute.
Just seconds later, the group of friends are in complete shock as it is confirmed that Princess Diana had died from her injuries.
Upon the tragic news, one of Alan's friends is heard screaming out loudly to the shock news report, something that was real and not for the video's purpose.
Sadly, over the years, many have questioned the authenticity of the video and the friend's reactions - but this prompted Alan to take to the comments section in his YouTube video and address what actually happened while he was filming.
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Alan wrote: "When my mom called me to say that Diana was in a car crash I turned on the TV, on silent, and we kept playing the game while monitoring the text on the bottom of the TV screen.
"When the screen text changed to 'Diana dead' the true reality of the situation hit like a ton of bricks, and we stopped playing UNO of course.
"All of the guys in the video are still alive today.
"The guy who screams when he learns Diana has died is my friend Ken who still lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa."
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He continued: "It is his genuine reaction to the news of Diana's death. Some people call it a 'Wilhelm scream'."
As the news was breaking of Diana's death, Alan decided to focus on his friends' reactions rather than filming the TV footage.
He said: "When CNN announced that Diana had died, I didn't turn the camera back to the TV because my instinct was that it would be more interesting to capture my friends' reactions."
Alan said he had this video sitting in a box for many years until he decided to release the unedited clip online.
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The man from the state of Iowa in the US said he is still in contact with all the friends in the viral video and continued to play games such as UNO with them until the Covid-19 pandemic brought it to a halt.
Alan also said in the description to the historic clip on his YouTube channel that people call his clip a 'reaction video'.
Something he notes was not a term in 1997 and neither was YouTube, which first launched in 2005.