I haven't, go on..

SPOILER:

A guy investigates the disappearance of his friend who was going to film school and had sent him a series of video tapes he had recorded himself. The friend had become infatuated with a mysterious young lady he saw on campus. He started stalking her and filming her with a VHS camcorder (This was set back in the 1980s, but I think it was written in the late 1990s.)

The stalker follows her around campus, filming her. She interacts with no one and seems to take little interest in her surroundings. When she catches him filming her, she doesn't seem angry or creeped out. In fact, she oddly seems to have no emotional reaction at all.

He asks if he can record an interview with her and she agrees. She never gives him her name and he gives her the nickname "Ana" so he can call his documentary about her, "The Ana Log."

The "interview" consists of him telling her to talk about anything she wants. She doesn't talk, though. She just stares into the camera with an odd expression. There are many, many tapes like this. The girl, immobile, looks at the camera, barely moves and never talks.

The investigator watches all the stalking tapes and the "interviews." He starts to develop a bizarre infatuation with the girl, himself. In the beginning, he fast-forwards the interviews, looking for any signs of activity. Soon, though, he sits watching them for hours at regular speed.

Then, during one interview, he sees something bizarre. A few times during the tape, the girl suffers a video glitch. The room around her is fine, it's just the girl glitching.

The next tape in the series isn't an interview. It shows the girl being filmed as she watches a TV with the tape of the glitched interview playing on it. When the glitch happens, the girl has her first real emotional display, showing horror and confusion. She then suffers a seizure and glitches badly. Again, the glitch only affects the girl, not the room around her or the film maker who rushes to aid her.

The next tape in the series shows the girl committing suicide. She slashes her wrist in the shower and the guy films the whole thing. Her body is discovered, but ruled a suicide. The cops don't know the guy was there and don't know the tape exists.

The next tape shows a series of "Ana" sightings. The filmmaker starts to see her around campus, usually when he's alone. When he's not alone, she seems to vanish the instant he tries to get someone else to look at her. When she starts getting closer, he sees she shows signs of video degradation, as if someone made a copy of a of a tape. He can see it in real life and it shows up on the tapes as well.

The guy ends up leaving school and renting a house away from the city. Unfortunately, "Ana" follows him. The next tapes show her standing in the woods behind the house looking up at his window. Her glitch becomes increasingly more pronounced with each sighting.

Using the tapes as a guide, the investigator is able to locate his friend's last residence. He drives out to the house and finds the friend dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot to the head. He also finds an unfurnished room with several "Ana" copies in various stages of decomposition and glitchiness. He has just enough time to wonder why his friend sent him the tapes when he looks up and sees a very badly glitched "Ana" looking at him through the window.

thanks Binro

wait no, link me to it yo

Couldn't find it online. I think it was in an anthology I read years and years ago.

all i could find was a reading of it, and the voice is terrible.

Good

Thank you! I've read so many pulpy horror anthologies, they all get mixed up and lost in my head. I can often remember the primary points and the titles, but not the collection I read them in.

I've been trying to track one story down for a while, now. I think I read it back in the 1980s, but can't be sure. I remember it was about a professional runner whose training regimen took him across a high causeway over a bay. In the climax, he gets caught in the middle by someone in a van who keeps coming back attempting to either hit him or drive him into jumping over the rail to almost certain death.

Sound familiar at all?

Nope.