49 Fun Facts About The Blair Witch Project

Which two film-school friends wrote, edited and directed The Blair Witch Project?

Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez were creeped out by 1970s paranormal documentaries such as In Search of..., so they set out to make a horror film that looked like one.

In The Blair Witch Project, the three students head into the woods near which real Maryland town?

Burkittsville is a real town, but the abandoned township of Blair that it was supposedly built on never existed: the directors invented it for the legend.

What hangs from the trees in The Blair Witch Project?

Stick figures. One of the directors said the image of a stick figure hanging from a tree had creeped him out for years, and he built the story around it.

In the Blair Witch legend, who did Rustin Parr say made him murder seven children?

A ghost, he told police: an old woman's spirit that haunted the woods near his house. He had walked into a local shop to announce he was 'finally finished', and was soon convicted and hanged.

In the Blair Witch legend, Rustin Parr made one child do what while he killed another?

Stand in a corner facing the wall. The interview that tells this story was filmed after the festival premiere, so that the last shot of Mike standing in a corner would make sense.

In the Blair Witch legend, what was eerie about the old woman Robin Weaver met?

Her feet never touched the ground. Robin Weaver came home on her own, but one of the search parties sent out to find her never returned.

In The Blair Witch Project, which landmark do the students hike to on their first day in the woods?

Coffin Rock is where, in the legend, five men from a search party were found tied together and gutted. By the time help arrived, the bodies had vanished.

In The Blair Witch Project, what appears beside the students' tent after a night of strange noises?

Piles of rocks: three of them, which the directors crept up to build in the dark. The actors heard them coming, and the crew had to shout the code word 'taco' to keep them in the tent.

In The Blair Witch Project, what does Mike admit he did with Heather's map?

Kicked it into a creek. Without it, the three hike south by compass all day, only to arrive back at the river they had already crossed.

The bundle of twigs Heather finds outside the tent contains a scrap of Josh's shirt wrapped around what?

Bloodied teeth and hair. Some of the teeth were real ones from a dentist and the hair was the actor's own; Heather at first threw the bundle away unopened, and the crew had to send her back to look.

In The Blair Witch Project, Heather's tearful close-up apology is addressed to whom?

The three students' mothers. It became the film's most parodied moment, and the actor said years later how glad she was that it had stopped being the first thing people thought of when they met her.

The Blair Witch Project ends in a ruined house whose walls bear what?

Children's bloody handprints. Fans carted off pieces of the real house as souvenirs, and within months of the film's release the authorities had ordered it demolished.

In The Blair Witch Project, what is the forest where the three students get lost called?

Black Hills Forest is the legend's name for the woods. Everything there except the climax was really filmed in Maryland's Seneca Creek State Park, along a route the directors had plotted by GPS.

What did The Blair Witch Project's actors have to make up themselves?

Their dialogue. The directors' outline had none: they let the actors decide how to play each scene, and say they stepped in only when they wanted something toned down.

At her Blair Witch audition, Heather Donahue told a mock parole board what?

She shouldn't be released. One of the directors says the plan had been to cast three men, until that answer made them cast her.

Joshua Leonard says he was cast in The Blair Witch Project largely because he could already do what?

Operate a film camera. No camera operator followed them into the woods, so the three actors shot the film themselves, which made one who already knew a 16mm camera essential.

The Blair Witch actors found their daily instructions hidden inside what, left in milk crates in the woods?

35 mm film cans, one for each actor with a name on it. The three were told not to show each other their notes, which carried private prompts such as 'Heather's driving me crazy'.

Blair Witch producer Gregg Hale based the actors' ordeal in the woods on his memories of what?

Military training. On an Army survival course Hale had been chased through the wild for days by mock enemy soldiers, so the crew harassed the actors at night and fed them less and less.

After fleeing their tent in the night, the Blair Witch students return to find Josh's gear covered in what?

Slime. It is Josh's gear that gets coated, and the next morning he becomes the first of the three to vanish.

The colour video footage in The Blair Witch Project was shot on what kind of consumer camera?

A Hi8 camcorder. Heather Donahue had never used a camera and got only a two-day crash course, which she blamed for the footage being so jumpy in places.

The makers of The Blair Witch Project named their company after which film about witchcraft?

Häxan, a 1922 Scandinavian film whose title means 'The Witch'. Before shooting a frame, Haxan Films made an eight-minute teaser that a cable TV show presented as if the footage were real.

In the Blair Witch legend, what did the townspeople do to accused witch Elly Kedward?

Banished her, in a harsh winter, and gave her up for dead. Soon afterwards, the legend says, her accusers and half the town's children vanished, and the settlement was abandoned.

The Blair Witch Project's makers say they never show the witch partly for which reason?

They couldn't afford special effects. Their producer said he would love to call it a grand theory of horror, but mostly 'we couldn't afford to show anything'.

The Blair Witch Project premiered as a midnight screening at which festival in January 1999?

Sundance. The directors thought they would be lucky to get a cable or video deal; instead the queue for the midnight screening ran around the block, and a distributor bought the film.

Which distributor bought The Blair Witch Project after its midnight festival premiere?

Artisan Entertainment then asked for a clearer ending, because test audiences were confused. The directors went back and shot four alternatives, but the original stayed.

During The Blair Witch Project's first year, IMDb listed its three lead actors as what?

Missing, presumed dead. The hoax worked so well that the actors' families took condolence calls, and one was sent a sympathy card by a relative.

In 1999 the unknown stars of The Blair Witch Project made the cover of which magazine?

Newsweek. One of the actors was still moving furniture for a living, and his boss kept asking why; the three say they were struggling to pay their rent at the time.

Which cable network aired Curse of the Blair Witch, the mockumentary presenting the film's backstory as fact, in 1999?

The Sci-Fi Channel special was closer to the directors' first plan for the film itself: a mock documentary about the legend, in which the students' footage would have been only one part.

What do Heather and Mike hear in the night after Josh vanishes in The Blair Witch Project?

His screams. They had been recorded in a studio and were played back in the woods that night, by which time the actor, his part over, was on a bus home.

The three lead characters in The Blair Witch Project share what with the actors who play them?

Their real names. The directors wanted nobody to break character while hungry, lost and yelling at each other, and Heather Donahue has since said she regrets agreeing to it.

Which later hit rivals The Blair Witch Project as history's most profitable film?

Paranormal Activity cost about $15,000 to shoot. Blair Witch's famous $35,000 likewise covered only the shoot: finishing the film for theaters took its real budget past $200,000.

On its first nationwide weekend, The Blair Witch Project finished second to which Julia Roberts comedy?

Runaway Bride was showing in almost three times as many theaters, yet The Blair Witch Project took more than twice as much money per theater that weekend.

What made some audiences of The Blair Witch Project physically sick?

Shaky camerawork. On a movie screen the lurching picture fills your whole field of view, so the brain decides that a body sitting still is moving; some viewers asked for their money back.

For The Blair Witch Project, Heather Donahue 'won' which Golden Raspberry award?

Worst Actress. As the face of the film's marketing she took much of the backlash once it was everywhere, and she later said it had become hard to find other acting work.

After suing over their pay for The Blair Witch Project, each of its three actors settled for roughly how much?

$300,000 each, paid out over several years. Their only bonus while the film filled theaters had been a payment in the low five figures, so they sued on the eve of the sequel.

Which 1980 Italian horror film used The Blair Witch Project's found-footage premise nearly two decades earlier?

Cannibal Holocaust follows the recovered reels of a documentary crew lost in the Amazon. Italian courts banned the film, and rumors spread that its on-screen deaths were real.

Which horror comedy sends up Heather's tearful close-up apology from The Blair Witch Project?

Scary Movie has its TV reporter, chased into the woods by the killer, sob an apology into her own camera with her nose streaming, in a copy of Heather's famous close-up.

Which documentary maker, known for Paradise Lost, directed Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2?

Joe Berlinger says the studio recut his film and added scenes of gore against his will, and that he lacked the courage at the time to take his name off it.

In Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, what brings a group of strangers to camp in the Maryland woods?

A guided Blair Witch tour, sold by a local cashing in on the first film, which exists inside the sequel as a hit movie that has filled his town with sightseers.

Which director, later of Godzilla vs. Kong, made the 2016 sequel Blair Witch under the fake title The Woods?

Adam Wingard kept the secret for months: the studio released a trailer and printed posters for The Woods, and the real title came out only at a surprise Comic-Con screening.

In the 2016 sequel Blair Witch, the hero James is what relation to Heather from the original film?

Her brother. Convinced that she is still alive, he heads into the same woods after an online video shows a figure he takes to be her.

The 2019 Blair Witch survival horror game gives ex-cop Ellis Lynch what companion in the woods?

A dog named Bullet. You can praise him, scold him or feed him treats, and the ending you get depends on how you have treated him along the way.

After quitting acting, Blair Witch star Heather Donahue wrote a memoir about her new job doing what?

Growing marijuana. She left Hollywood for a growers' community in the mountains of northern California, and called the book Growgirl: How My Life After The Blair Witch Project Went to Pot.

In October 1999, Cartoon Network spoofed The Blair Witch Project in a special starring which cartoon characters?

Scooby-Doo and friends. The Scooby-Doo Project was slipped out in short scenes during the ad breaks of an all-day rerun marathon, then shown in one piece once the marathon ended.

Which horror studio announced in 2024 that it would make a new Blair Witch film with Lionsgate?

Blumhouse. The first film's three actors complained that nobody had warned them, yet by 2026 two of them, Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams, were executive producers of the new one.

Which 2008 film brought Blair Witch's found-footage style to a big studio release?

Cloverfield, a monster movie produced by J.J. Abrams. Its first trailer showed no title at all, only a release date, and for months fans knew the film simply as 1-18-08.

In Blair Witch lore, child-murderer Rustin Parr's name began as an anagram of which historical figure?

Rasputin. The production designer built the legend's names in a library by scrambling real ones: the witch, Elly Kedward, is Edward Kelley, an Elizabethan occultist.

In the 2016 sequel Blair Witch, a camper falls from a tree while trying to fetch what?

A drone. Sent up to look for a way out, it shows nothing but forest in every direction, then crashes into a tree.

The Blair Witch Project is often called the first widely released film marketed mainly through what?

The Internet. Its website posted fake police reports and news-style interviews as if the story were true, and heated arguments broke out online over whether the film was a documentary.