Reality Check On 'Blair Witch'

The Blair Witch Project's mock-documentary technique follows three young filmmakers who vanish in the woods near Burkittsville, Md., as they track a 200-year-old legendary witch.

It's scary stuff for some — and apparently realistic.

"One guy wrote us to say he went driving around Burkittsville and he felt this strange presence had surrounded him," said filmmaker Eduardo Sanchez, who created Blair Witch with Daniel Myrick. "Then he was afraid to get out of his car."

It's no accident. Believability in The Blair Witch Project is central to its success, with the film's Web site, blairwitch.com, helping to embroider the tale.

The site has a timeline of events that begins with the witch's rumored origin, and ends with details of the search for the missing film crew. It never explicitly states the story is fiction, which it is.

And there's more.

On cable television's Sci-Fi Channel, an Unsolved Mysteries-style promotion provides interviews with family and friends of the film's missing characters. A traveling museum making the rounds at theaters exhibits Blair Witch lore.

And a novel, purportedly written by a private detective who searched for the film crew, includes excerpts from one of their journals.

"The advertising is like a companion piece to this film," said Amorette Jones, a marketing director at Artisan Entertainment. "We never lied to anyone, but we tried to make it scarier by creating an element of truth in the story."

The marketing scheme has resulted in days of sold-out ticket sales at the 31 locations showing Blair Witch. The film earned $2 million last weekend - only slightly less than the total for "Muppets from Space," which was showing at more than 2,200 locations.

Such breakout success has Sanchez and Myrick wondering just how much the film's legend will spread when The Blair Witch Project goes into wide release on Friday.

Already, a fan has written the filmmakers to criticize a purported tale of an 1886 search party that was found murdered after its members apparently fell prey to the forest-dwelling witch.

"That letter started out, `It's all a lie. It's a big hoax,'" said Myrick, 35. "And I thought, `Well, this guy figured it out.' Then he went on to say, `You had it wrong. Here's the real way they were found.'"

Some believers have organized search parties to look for the fictional documentary crew, who vanished in 1994. Still others have ventured into the Maryland woods with hopes of being spooked by the witch, the filmmakers said.

"You hate for them to waste their time," Myrick said. "But at the same time you're really excited."

Sanchez, 30, added: "Everybody is getting something out of it on a lot of different levels."

As they spoke at a Beverly Hills restaurant, a waitress volunteered she'd been duped by the "Blair Witch" tale, and admitted she'd spent ahour arguing with a friend who told her the film isn't true.

"So, it's real, right?" she asked the pair.

Myrick glanced at Sanchez and said: "We're not telling you one way or the other."

By Anthony Breznican