![]() After the filmmakers disappeared, the recovered footage led viewers to believe that they were lured and killed by the witch while filming their documentary. The local lore suggested that the witch, Elly Kedward, had forced a hermit, Rustin Parr, to kidnap and kill eight children in the 1940s. The trio traveled to Burkittsville, Maryland to hike the Black Hills area in order to investigate the legend of the Blair Witch, a ghost that haunted the area after being banished for practicing witchcraft. Williams, and Joshua Leonard, three young, aspiring filmmakers. Presented as a documentary, The Blair Witch Project followed Heather Donahue, Michael C. The Blair Witch Project created a viral storm of suspicion but it has been credited as influencing a new segment of horror in the decades that followed. The 1999 found-footage film was written and directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. But it’s just a film, not a true story.The Blair Witch Project was a fictional horror movie, but due to its innovative marketing techniques, many viewers walked away thinking it was a true story. It sounds like a spine-tingling premise for a horror film, and it has reportedly made for a terrific movie. (Remember, the “Fi” in “Sci-Fi” stands for fiction.) ![]() (If you’re still convinced the movie’s premise is real, perhaps the fact that the “dead” film students are giving interviews - such as the one in Salon - will dissuade you.) Adding to the movie’s pre-release build-up was the airing on the Sci-Fi Channel of a fictional documentary, The Curse of the Blair Witch, about the putative Blair Witch legend and the making of the related film. The actors received notes and supplies left for them and carried a Global Positioning System (GPS) device with them for tracking purposes, but they didn’t know exactly what was going to happen once they embarked on their movie-making venture - thus the film has the feel of a documentary that captures events genuinely surprising to the filmmakers. Myrick and Sánchez hired three young actors (Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, and Joshua Leonard), explained the outline of the film’s story to them, gave them advice about the characters they were to play, then turned them loose in the woods with film equipment to shoot movie footage. The legend of the Blair Witch was invented by the film’s writer/directors, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. (The citizens of Burkittsville and the Frederick County Sheriff’s Department are happy to confirm the fictionality of these events.) When the three student filmmakers allegedly disappeared in 1994, the Maryland State Police reportedly spent ten days and “33,000 man hours” employing dogs, helicopters, a hundred men, and even a “fly over by a Department of Defense Satellite” to locate them, but once again media coverage of this sensational, newsworthyĮvent was completely non-existent. (As the web site informs us, only one copy of the book exists, conveniently in the hands of an unnamed private collector.) A hermit who allegedly “ritualistically murdered and disemboweled” seven children in 1940-41 at the behest of “an old woman ghost who occupied the woods near his house” was “quickly convicted and hanged,” yet none of the area newspapers apparently saw fit to cover this sensational story. The rare 1809 book The Blair Witch Cult, which is “commonly considered fiction” and “tells of an entire town cursed by an outcast witch,” isn’t real. We hate to spoil something so deliciously horrific, but the truth is that the film isn’t really what it’s described to be.įirst of all, the “facts” behind the Blair Witch legend are apocryphal. Scary, isn’t it? And early reports of the film indicate that it lives up to its chilling reputation. Fifteen years later, people still think that the movie is real, even though Joshua Leonard, Heather Donahue and Michael C.
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