Social media users are convinced they have seen footage of Steve Irwin’s death – despite it never being released to the public: ‘We saw the ray’s sting pierce his chest’

It’s been almost twenty years since Steve Irwin’s death, but interest in the conservationist remains high.

The TV personality was tragically killed in September 2006 at the age of 44 when a stingray’s barb pierced his chest while filming in the waters off Port Douglas, Queensland.

Although footage of the event was captured, it has never been released to the public. However, many fans online remain convinced they saw it.

One user recently made the switch Reddit and claimed they vividly remember watching the clip as a child.

“I think I may have seen it online, a time when internet restrictions were a little looser and it was a little easier for a little boy to come across a tragic video if he really cared about the goings-on,” he said. the message.

Many commenters in the post agreed that they had seen the same clip and had vivid memories of it.

“I remember seeing the same video but on a national news broadcast but cut shorter as he was about to get hit by the stingray,” one commenter wrote in response to the Reddit post.

“I remember it being on the news too, but there was a longer version floating around the internet,” another Redditor wrote.

“On video he was swimming with the rays, then one swims nearby and the video freezes and the incident doesn’t show, but text appears,” one person recalled.

Yet another claimed to have seen the fatal blow, writing that in the purportedly televised footage, “we see the sting of the beam pierce Steve’s shirt, directly under his left pectoral muscle, near the sternum.”

The memory of the video may be due to a phenomenon known as the Mandela effect.

The Mandela Effect is a type of false memory that occurs when large numbers of separate people remember the same piece of misinformation.

It takes its name from the widespread false memory that South African President Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s.

However, in the comments of the Reddit post, another theory emerged regarding a fake video.

In 2018, Steve’s widow Terri Irwin confirmed that the video of her husband’s death was never released to the public, but that a fabrication had gone viral shortly after the tragedy.

“After Steve died, 100 million viewers watched a video of his death that was released on YouTube,” she told You Magazine.

‘That film was a complete fabrication in which people’s grief was exploited. I’ve never seen the real footage. Why would I?’ Terri said.

‘I know how my husband died and I was relieved that the children were not on the boat as usual; it would have been terrible if they had witnessed it.”

Although the video that many fans remember was fake, the ‘Wildlife Warrior”s tragic death was all caught on film because of his production rule of never stopping filming no matter what.

Copies of the tapes were released to Queensland authorities to assist in their investigation, but they were all destroyed in 2007.

The only surviving copy was given to Terri, who allegedly burned it without viewing the footage.