BLAIR WITCH HISTORY

Several children accuse Elly Kedward of luring them into her home to draw blood from them. Elly Kedward is found guilty of witchcraft and is banished from the village during winter.

By midwinter all of Kedward's accusers along with half of the town's children have vanished. Fearing a curse has been placed on them the townspeople flee Blair and vow never to utter Elly Kedward's name.

The Blair Witch Cult is published. This rare book considered fiction tells of an entire town cursed by an outcast witch.

Burkittsville is founded on the Blair site.

Eleven witnesses testify seeing a womans hand reach up and pull ten year old Eileen Treacle into Tappy East Creek. Her body is never recovered and for thirteen days after the drowning the creek is clogged with bundles of sticks.

Eight year old Robin Weaver is reported missing and search parties are dispatched. Although Weaver returns one of the search party does not. Their bodies are found weeks later at Coffin Rock tied together at the arms and legs disemboweled.

A total of seven children are abducted from the area surrounding Burkittsville, Maryland.

A hermit named Rustin Parr walks into a local market and tells the people there that he is "finally finished." After Police hike for four hours to his secluded house in the woods they find the bodies of seven missing children in the cellar. Each child has been ritualistically murdered and disemboweled. Parr admits to everything telling the authorities that he did it for "an old woman ghost" who occupied the woods near his house. He is convicted and hanged.

Montgomery College students Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams arrive in Burkittsville to interview locals about the legend of the Blair Witch for a class project.

In the morning Heather interviews two fishermen who tell the filmmakers that Coffin Rock is less than twenty minutes from town and easily accessible by an old logging trail. The filmmakers hike into Black Hills Forest shortly thereafter and are never seen again.

The first APB is issued. Josh's car is found later in the day parked on Black Rock Road.

The Maryland State Police launch their search of the Black Hills area. The operation lasts ten days and includes up to one hundred men aided by dogs helicopters.

The search is called off after 33,000 man hours fail to find a trace of the filmmakers or any of their gear. Heather's mother begins an exhaustive personal search for her daughter and her two companions.

Eventually the case is declared inactive and unsolved.

Students from the University of Maryland's Anthropology Department discover a duffel bag containing film cans, DAT tapes, video-cassettes, a Hi-8 video camera, Heather's journal and a CP-16 film camera buried under the foundation of a 100 year-old cabin. Burkittsville Sheriff Ron Cravens announced that the 11 rolls of black and white film and 10 HI8 video tapes are indeed the property of Heather Donahue and her crew.

After an initial study of the bag's contents select pieces of film footage are shown to the families. According to Angie Donahue, there are several unusual events but nothing conclusive. The families question the analysis and demanded another look.

The families are shown a second group of clips that local law enforcement officials consider to be faked. Outraged Mrs. Donahue goes public with her criticism and Sheriff Cravens restricts all access to the evidence. A restriction two lawsuits fail to lift.

The Sheriff's department announces that the evidence is inconclusive and the case is once again declared inactive and unsolved. The footage is to be released to the families when the legal limit of its classification runs out, on October 16, 1997.

The found footage of their children's last days is turned over to the families of Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams.

A Witches' Bible: The Complete Witches Handbook

WITCHCRAFT

PARALUMUN