“Well, if you’re wondering what happened, so am I.” – Dan Roan, WGN sports reporter

On November 22,1987, TV channels in Chicago were mysteriously interrupted by someone wearing a Max Headroom mask, and we still have no idea who did it.

The first signal intrusion happened during Chicago’s WGN-TV’s live Nine O’Clock News. As sports anchor Dan Roan gave highlights from the Bears game (video above), he was suddenly interrupted by an unknown person wearing a Max Headroom mask and bobbing side-to-side in front of a sheet of corrugated metal. The only audio is a numbing buzzing sound. The incident went on for about 20 seconds before engineers were able to switch the frequency.

The second signal intrusion (below) by the Max Headroom squad occurred two hours later, but this time it was on WTTW and, according to my own opinion, about 400% creepier. It’s longer, weirder and would have been completely shocking to anyone watching Dr. Who at the time. After about a minute and a half of barely audible declarations including “He’s a frickin nerd,” and “I think I’m better than Chuck Swirsky, frickin Liberal,” the person wearing the Max Headroom mask pulls his pants down so another person can paddle him with a fly swatter. A 1987 Chicago Tribune write up of the hackings sums it up pretty well:

An off-color skit starring a bare-bottomed imitator of television character Max Headroom showed up on Chicago-area TV screens Sunday night, evidently the work of a sophisticated video pirate with an unsophisticated sense of humor.

On the surface, the hack seems like a simple and dumb prank, but authorities did not see the humor. The signal interruptions were in violation with federal laws, a maximum penalty of $100,000 fines plus jail time.

Twenty-seven years later, we still have no idea who hacked the TV signals.