THE BLAIR WITCH

The story of the witch of Blair comes from Burkisttsville, an American small city founded close to a village which one regarded as cursed and called Blair.
We speak about the place which one says that at the XVIIIe century, the activities of a terrible witch were sheltered and become famous after the movie "The Blair Witch Project".
We will not speak here about the supposed disappearance of three young people occurred in 1994 in the wood of Burkittsville - which constitutes practically the story of this famous movie but we will report more distant facts in the time and which can be regarded as the starting point of an incredible story, then exploited by all types of mercantile advertising.

THE ORIGINS OF THE BLAIR WITCH AFFAIR

At forty miles of Baltimore in 1734, were born the small rural community of Blair, formed of approximately eighty houses inhabited mainly by Protestants. In 1769, the name of Elly Kedward, known like the witch of Blair, appeared for the first on the list of the passengers embarked on the Seafarer moving towards Baltimore from Ireland.

In 1785, all the Blair inhabitants showed Elly Kedward of sorcery: the woman was recognized guilty for having kidnapped some children of the village in order to drink their blood.
As punishment, by an icy night in the Blair wood, the inhabitants attached Elly to a tree to die of hunger and thirst.

In November of the following year, all the children who had affirmed themselves as victims of Elly disappeared mysteriously. Many adults who went to search for them knew the same fate and disappeared mysteriously too.In 1809, an anonymous book, The Blair Witch Cult, was printed telling the history of a small victim city of the curse of a witch prisoner of the woods.

In 1824, during the installation of the railroad between Washington and Baltimore, the workmen discovered the remains of a small city choked by the forest: it was Blair, the tragic small village. The whole zone was bought by Henry Burkitt, who founded the village of Burtkittsville there.
One year after, a eight year old child, Eileen Treacle, drowned in a brook which crossed the wood of Burkittsville. Many witnesses stated to have seen a human arm emerging from water and seizing the young girl there.
Although the brook was not more than one meter depth, the body of the young girl was never found. During the thirteen following days, many small wooden crosses was found on the water.
A few years later, several cows died after having drunk the water of the brook. In 1886, the child, Robin Weaver, disappeared from Burkittsville during three days: when she reappeared, she told that she had been kept by a woman who had the feet that did not touch the ground and that she had been taken along in a house in the woods.
During his kidnapping, seven men have gone for searching her and were found killed, their bodies awfully mutilated. Many citizens moved towards this sector, with the intention to bring back their bodies, but instead of the corpses they found seven small stone heaps.

Here ends the first most documented part of the affair of the witch of Blair, identified as Elly Kedward, well-named: "the mistress of the devil", actually a woman paedophile suffering of vampirism.

The sources on this last aspect are contrasted: indeed, whereas some reports affirm that the witch sucked the blood from the children, others say that she took it to make magic potions.
The case is even problematic because it seems close to many others where the marginalized woman (she was catholic in a Protestant village) becomes the scapegoat of a community probably tortured by a deep faintness social, which claimed a culprit for calmin the population.
Much witches were shown to be at the origin of all the problems of a community unable to identify the source of its problems. The report of Lloyd Whellons, of Burkittsville, is rather significant: "...in 1828, there was an epidemic... the Indians destroyed a close city... a puma killed a woman and a baby and a young girl drowned in the river and everyone in the village said that it was the demon".

The phenomena which followed the judgment of Elly Kedward: disappearance of the children (who could be kidnapped by the indians), the killing of the rescuers, the symbols thrown on the brook (related to unknown rites), increased the fear of the community.
This fear found in the myth of the witch of Blair, the ideal culprit in front of the misfortunes for which the community did not find a logic explanation.

THE RETURN OF THE WITCH

Sixty years later, the witch of Blair came back to the front of the stage. November 13, 1940, the disappearance of the small Emily Holland, from Burkittsville, called back the myth of the Blair Witch affair. Other children disappeared then. In approximately six months, seven of them disappeared mysteriously. One year later, a vagrant, Rustin Parr, who lived in the wood, confessed having killed the seven children. Their remains were found in the cellar of the house where Parr lived. Parr was hung on November 27, 1941. He affirmed to have acted on order of the "Mistress of the Wood".
The weight of the myth of the witch of Blair is found in the interrogation of Rustin Parr:

– Mister parr, why seven children ?

– It is what the voices said to me to do.

– The voices of who ?

– Of a hurdy-gurdy.

– It was the witch of Blair, Mister Parr?

– I don’t know.

– Is this only voices, Mr Parr? Did you never see anybody ?

– It was a spirit, I never see his face ?

– Mister Parr what mean the inscriptions on the walls of your house ?

– I don’t know.

– Do you write them ?

– No.

– Who write them ?

– It’s the Blair Witch.

They were perhaps simply the ritual of a psychopathe killer, whose procedure had been strongly marked by the echo of the practices allotted to the witch who in 1785, had started to torment the life and the dreams of the inhabitants of Blair, then of Burkittsville.

But till today, nobody can really assert nothing!! and the myth of the Blair Witch Affair goes on...