In Burkittsville, Life's A Witch
The Blair Witch people are back. And this time, Burkittsville is ready.
Last summer, curiosity seekers overran the startled western Maryland hamlet where the hit hoax horror film, The Blair Witch Project, is set. They snatched road and cemetery signs and vandalized tombstones.
But with the movie's recent release on home video and Halloween coming up this weekend, many of the 214 townsfolk are embracing opportunity instead of bracing for invasion.
Amble down the town's Main (and only) Street and you'll see no convenience stores, no restaurants, no service stations. You will, however, see a hand-lettered cardboard sign, "WITCH STUFF," on a telephone pole near Trude Head's 200-year-old house.
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Her sidewalk display offers $7 versions of the rock and stick totems featured in the film. A few dollars more buy a good-luck Blair Witch spell.
"I'm doing very well, selling things to the people who want to have something from the witch town," she says, smiling brightly.
So is Margaret Kennedy, a painter and gallery owner with a profitable sideline in Blair Witch T-shirts; her photographer friend Warren Morrow doesn't even live in Burkittsville, but he's made some stick figures, too.
The surprise hit movie purports to show the final days of three student filmmakers who vanish mysteriously while traipsing through the Black Hills Forest, making a documentary on the legendary witch of Blair.
In Burkittsville, the Blair itch has become a cottage industry.
"Kind of weird, isn't it?" said Linda Prior, a local grandmother who was among the first to see the sales potential, selling sticks and stones on the online auction site eBay.
An outfitter offers weekend "witch hikes" on the nearby Appalachian Trail. A Baltimore entrepreneur organizes Blair Witch camping trips.
Not all Burkittsville is pleased by its sudden notoriety.
A.K. Cox has been bothered by drive-by tourists with video cameras.
"I think that makes any parent nervous," she said as a white van with Ontario plates cruised by, camcorder rolling.
Mayor Joyce Brown says Blair Witch-related patrols have consumed half of the village's $3,000 contingency fund. She phoned officials in Amityville, New York, scene of another cinematic legend, The Amityville Horror, for a consultation.
"We're not going to let these people control our lives," said Deborah Burgoyne, mother of a 5- and a 10-year-old.
But mostly Burkittsville is taking the phenomenon in stride. The village, after all, has been invaded before -- most recently in 1862, during the Civil War.
At that time, the forest behind Burkittsville was the site of the Battle of South Mountain, a warm-up to the slaughter at nearby Antietam. Wounded soldiers streamed into the village, where any available public building was turned into a hospital, said Mark Hudson, executive director of the Frederick County Historical Society.
Not surprisingly, legends have sprung up over the years about ghosts of Civil War dead roaming the hills near the town.
Few residents say they have seen the film, not even Mayor Brown, though she plans to buy the video for the town archives.
And of course, no one in Burkittsville takes the Blair legends seriously--though Trude Head sells a "witch chaser" bag, containing stones, garlic and lavender, just in case the filmmakers are on to something.
