The reporter's lost tape

The reporter's lost tape is an important object in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and serves as the final scene in Tatarigoroshi-hen. In 2003, twenty years after the Great Hinamizawa Disaster, an old couple in Osaka finds a cassette tape left by their son who passed eight years prior. Their son had gone missing when he was involved in a shipwreck in 1995. The deceased used to work at a tabloid magazine company and the tape was assumed to be one of his interview tapes. The tape's label says Maebara Keiichi, November 28th, Shouwa 58 (1983). Over the course of the tape, the reporter questions Keiichi regarding his location during the Great Hinamizawa Disaster. He reveals that it is impossible for Keiichi to have been by the riverbed as he claims because it would have left Keiichi in the middle of the gas leak throughout the night. The reporter accuses Keiichi of knowing about the Disaster ahead of time and finding a hiding spot until the gas dissipated. Keiichi claims that he gained a sort of superpower after he began to hear an extra footstep as he walked. That superpower, he claims, made his wish for Hinamizawa to be destroyed come true. However, Keiichi says that the footstep stopped the day of the Disaster so he was unaware of how effective his powers now were. However, Keiichi, upset that the reporter didn't believe what he was saying, cursed the reporter and wished him to die of drowning. Two days after the interview, Keiichi told his nurse that he hears the footstep again and subsequently died of a fever.