**Experimenters** The study will be conducted by one doctoral candidate under the guidance of two supervisors. Three student assistants will assist with data collection. **Piloting / training** The airplane crash site virtual reality (VR) instrument was piloted with the assistance of an engineering professional (the creator) from the Instrumentation Engineering Section of Maastricht University. The candidate and student assistants received training in the management of the VR instrument. **Material** The study's protocols and questionnaire material underwent a series of pre-testing trials over a 2 1/2 month period. **Recruiting** A sample of 95 undergraduate students will be recruited from Maastricht University. As a pre-intervention precaution participants will be pre-screened for PTSD. Participants who indicate with PTSD symptomatology and or have a history of a psychological disorder diagnosis will be excluded. **Sample, subjects, and randomization** There will be four experimental conditions, each of which will contain a sub-sample of approximately 24 participants. Assignment to the false-denial, fabrication and truth telling conditions will be determined by the participants' choice of strategy. The fourth directed false-denial condition will comprise of a random subsample of participants who choose to tell the truth but will instead be directed to falsely deny details. **Procedure** The study will be divided into two parts separated by a one week interval. Session one interventions include: the VR clip, baseline test, distractor task, memory test 1 and an exploratory questionnaire (impression of the VR environment). Session two interventions include: a source monitoring task, memory test 1 and a second exploratory questionnaire (intrusive symptoms). Participants will be debriefed at the end of session two. **Setting/Lab/Equipment** The VR intervention will take place in the virtual reality lab at the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience at Maastricht University. **Expected outcomes** Differences in memory accuracy between the four experimental conditions are anticipated but to a greater extent in the directed false denial group. Additionally the replication of denial induced forgetting (DIF) effect for details discussed during the memory test 1 interview is also expected (Otgaar, Howe, Smeets, & Wang, 2016).