Blair Witch is an American horror media franchise created by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, distributed by Artisan Entertainment (now Lionsgate) and produced by Haxan Films that consists of three feature films and various additional media. The development of the franchise's first installment, The Blair Witch Project, started in 1993. Myrick and Sanchez wrote a 35-page outline of a story with the dialogue to be improvised. Filming began in 1997 and lasted eight days. The film follows the disappearance of three student filmmakers in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary on the local legend known as the "Blair Witch".
After premiering at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, the film was released on July 30, 1999, after months of publicity during a controversial promotional campaign. The film went on to be a massive commercial success, and a sequel, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, was released on October 27, 2000. A second official sequel, Blair Witch, was released on September 16, 2016. Series of video games, books, novels and comic books were released to accompany the films.
Legend
The backstory for the film is a legend created by Myrick and Sanchez which is detailed in The Curse of the Blair Witch, a mockumentary broadcast on the Syfy Channel in 1999 prior to the release of The Blair Witch Project. Sanchez and Myrick also maintained a website at BlairWitch.com which added further details to the legend.
The fictional tale describes the murders and disappearances of some of the residents of Blair, Maryland, the fictitious former name of Burkittsville, Maryland, from the 18th to the 20th century. According to the legend, residents always blame these occurrences on the ghost of Elly Kedward (also a fictitious person), a Blair resident executed in 1785 by exposure for practicing witchcraft. The mockumentary presents the legend as real, complete with manufactured newspaper articles, newsreels, television news reports, and staged interviews in an attempt to convince viewers of its legitimacy.
According to Ben Rock, the man who created the backstory for Haxan, he took inspiration from the real Maryland legend of the woman Moll Dyer. Sometime in the winter of 1697, Dyer was accused of witchcraft, tried, and subsequently banished from Leonardtown, Maryland. Her body was later discovered frozen to a rock in the forest.
Films
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard, student filmmakers, set out to shoot a documentary about the Blair Witch. In the Black Hills forest near Burkittsville, Maryland, many children had vanished in the 1940s and people still avoid going too deep into the woods. The party sets out to look for facts that prove the legend, equipped only with two cameras and a little hiking gear. First, they find little piles of stone that must have been arranged artificially, later, they find themselves lost in the woods. Eerie sounds at night and more piles of stones in places where they have not been before cause the already desperate group to panic. One night, days after they should have been back home, Josh disappears. While searching for Josh, Heather and Mike find a derelict house in a clearing and go inside, where they see runic symbols on the wall next to child-sized handprints. Josh's voice seems to be coming from somewhere inside the house, and Mike rushes upstairs. Mike then realizes that the voice is now coming from the basement, and rushes down the steps. Suddenly, Mike is rendered silent and the camera falls. Hysterical, Heather follows and sees Mike in the corner of the room, faced against a wall. Suddenly Heather's camera is knocked down and she too is rendered silent. The film runs for a few seconds, then dies.
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)