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I was fourteen years old. I had just gotten home from a friend’s house after dark and noticed my parents weren’t home. Nice. I flipped on the cable TV with the clicker, not even bothering to find a channel. I’m loafing around, snacking or whatever. Then I hear blood curdling screams and the TV finally catches my attention.
Now, what I was about to experience could not have happened today. Today I would just whip out my phone and Google it and understand this situation. Then I’d hop on Twitter to see what everyone thinks. Instead, what I was about to see scared the living shit out of me the same way I would imagine witnessing a murder in the middle of the woods would. It would also send me on a weeks long goose chase of pure unadulterated fear and culminate in me feeling extremely stupid.
Back to my house in the middle of the country alone at home at night, I witnessed or rather was assaulted by the black and white footage from a camera being swung around in a frenzy. The person holding it was running through the woods, screaming for their lives before falling over and the picture going black. Then, the TV program explained in that haunting Dateline type voice-over that we were currently watching real footage. Footage that had been found in the woods where three students had vanished looking for a goddamn witch.
This was all presented as a real documentary. It doesn’t help that this realistic type horror footage always freaked me out. We lived in an age of unsolved mysteries because the internet was in its infancy and also because of the literal show Unsolved Mysteries. If I heard even the music before bed I was prone to need to watch Fresh Prince or something to shake it off.
Extremely creeped the hell out on that fateful night, I fought the urge to just turn off the TV, sat there and took it all in. These kids were actually missing and this footage was proof that some entity or at the very best evil person had hunted them down?! I can’t remember exactly which footage from the movie was shown but I do remember it was what would be considered today a very spoilerish amount. It was some grab bag of the running, screaming, tent shaking in the middle of the night; the bag of tongues and teeth found outside said tent; and the lovely arts and crafts left for the unlucky youths in the woods. I was completely and totally messed up. Every light in the house on, desperately awaiting someone else to come home.
I mean, this shook me. Truly and legitimately SHOOK ME.
When I changed pants and got myself together a couple weeks later, I was staying at a friend’s house and we were all talking about it. They all went to bed and I was hanging out in the basement by myself and thought, “Let’s see if there’s a web page about this.” Big ole’ mistake, Mike.
I started up the giant tube TV we used to call a computer monitor and waited a solid five minutes for AOL to connect. Then came the crude connection noises, of course. I popped in something along the lines of WWW.BLAIRWITCHPROJECT.COM and boom. That haunting stickman was front and center. The website sold the awesome lie as well. It played the whole thing as though it was an actual missing persons case!
Way before internet sleuthing this thing had interviews with people who lived in Burkittsville, creepy ass photographic evidence and more. I thought I was scared shitless before but now I was on a whole nother planet – and so were my buddies. I mean, imagine actually believing that the world was about to be told via a film that not only were witches real but there’s footage of one murdering people! Oh and by the way she lives in Maryland. Right now.
This kind of grab assing went on with me and my friends for weeks leading up to the film’s release. We once even made little Blair Witch arts and crafts one day and hung them in the woods to freak our friend out. We were ready for the scare of our lifetimes. Then the night before the movie I’m once again flicking aimlessly around the tube and had it all ruined for me. The entire cast was on a talk show. I can’t remember which one, whether it was Leno or Letterman or whatever but there they were…..the three missing assholes laughing and talking about their movie. It’s one of those moments where in your own head you‘re like, “Of course it’s not real you stupid, stupid bastard! You’re honestly lucky they let you feed yourself you gullible asshole!”
Of course, the reality didn’t hurt the movie one bit.
The next day we finally had a ride to the theater and were going to witness The Blair Witch Project for ourselves. First theater we went to? Sold out. All day. Next theater? Same thing. We lucked out though because our friend’s mom drove us in her soccer van thirty minutes or so to the Kentucky Theater in downtown Lexington. The PERFECT place to watch this and a place to that point I’d never been. It’s an old school, fancy type theater that with the right atmosphere can be extremely creepy. Now, I was a salty little bitch for having the movie ruined for me the night before but all that changed when we were standing in line and the showing before ours let out.
A woman came out of the theater literally screaming! She was out of breath and looked dead at us and spilled, “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god” as she stumbled down the corridor like a crackhead wearing rollerblades. That’s all it took. The fear was back on. I was genuinely scared to watch this movie when the lights went down.
Then the movie happened and that kind of hype only leads to one thing: Disappointment. No money shot. Not much I hadn’t seen already in all my obsessive research. No witch. It’s something I appreciate about the movie today but at the time? I was pretty bummed. What even happened? All this for a dude staring at a wall? I was pretty upset in that moment but over time I learned to appreciate the ride. I didn’t get to see a witch murder innocent people but there’s always the next Faces of Death on VHS, right? I did however get to witness what I believe to be the greatest movie marketing stunt of all time.
And you truly had to be there to fully appreciate it.
