The darker side of fanaticism: how Burkittsville was destroyed ‘The Blair Witch Project’ fans
Even to this day, there are few horror movies that enjoyed quite a sense of viral success, like The Blair Witch Project, directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez and released in 1999. The film popularised the “found footage” horror genre and told of three student documentary makers who venture into the wilderness near Burkittsville, Maryland, to make a movie about a local myth surrounding the “Blair Witch”.
The trio of friends suddenly disappear, but their equipment and footage are discovered a year later; that very footage is what makes up Myrick and Sanchez’s movie. The Blair Witch Project experienced a fanaticism that had dire consequences for the town of Burkittsville, Maryland, though, which was nearly destroyed in the proceeding years after the film’s release.
As fans began to descend on the one-time serene town, there was an influx of positive economic fortunes for local businesses. Still, the problems began with a series of thefts of the ‘Welcome to Burkittsville’ and continued into general property damage for the residents of the little town. If that wasn’t bad enough, then perhaps the mayor of the town waking up to find a strange fan of the film in her living room certainly was.
“They’d come along and be peeking in people’s windows, asking them where the witch lived,” a man who identified himself as the town historian had said (via Thrillist). “There were even people holding candlelight vigils in the cemetery for the dead children. And they wouldn’t believe it was fiction.”
A great disrespect for the locals of Burkittsville was displayed in fans of The Blair Witch, who started to treat the town like a horror-themed amusement park and worse. Fanatics began stealing dirt from the local cemetery and defaced several of its gravestones, plus they left a trail of destruction in a quaint church dating back to 1870.
The woodland setting of The Blair Witch fared no better, and the wildlife that once happily lived there was disrupted by their natural habitat. Beer cans and cigarette butts were left lying around after occultist ghost-hunting ventures turned into all-night parties. Naturally, the local residents of Burkittsville quickly felt that enough was enough.
Burkittsville, a once-tranquil community town with a Christian background and history, had become a sickening version of its fictional analogue in The Blair Witch. Damage and disrespect had led to a town that had become a far worse nightmare than any film director or writer could ever conceive, and the whole ordeal served as a reminder of the darker side of fanaticism.
When the producers of the movie had the gall and stones to pitch a sequel to the residents of Burkittsville, it was no surprise that they thought the idea was completely out of the question. A councilman exclaimed, “We’ve already been raped. Now they want us to be prostitutes.”
And it was those very same residents who were left to deal with the carnage inflicted by such mindless horror fans. Naturally, as time progressed, the hype surrounding The Blair Witch Project died down. Fans moved on to other films like Paranormal Activity, and as they did, Burkittsville slowly returned to its former glory. Still, there would always be a latent trauma that whispered through the trees, and a haunting reminder of the costly nature of fictional obsession would become a myth all of its own.
