Book Review: The Blair Witch Project Dossier

A Book You Can Buy From Me

Book Title: The Blair Witch Project: a Dossier

Author: D.A. Stern

Date: 1999

Publisher: Onyx / Penguin

Length: 191 pages

ISBN: 0451199669

Illustrations: lots of black-and-white movie clips and graphics

Quote: "Three years after student filmmakers Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, and Joshua Leonard disappeared in the forests of Maryland's Black Hills, law-enforcement authorities finally released all of the evidence..."

The forests of Maryland's Black Hills? Say whaaat? The Blue Ridge foothills of western Maryland aren't called "Black Hills." That's your clue. The Blair Witch Project was a fictional horror movie filmed in flat, suburban Montgomery and Prince Georges County, where forested stream banks were cleverly faked into an imaginary wilderness. The movie looks as if it were a serious investigation of historical events. It's not. It's an elaborate fake.

Newspapers clued residents of suburban Maryland in to the production of this movie, and since it really was being made by imaginative local young people, everyone seemed to be in on the joke and enjoy cooperating with it.

Here are a few fun facts about Maryland that may contribute to your enjoyment of the book version of the story:

(1) "Blair" is the name of an old Montgomery County family. Blair House, the official White House guest house, is named in their honor. So is Montgomery Blair High School, which some participants in the movie attended.

(2) The idea of a "Blair Witch" was inspired by the authentic legend of Tennessee's "Bell Witch," actually a poltergeist reported by various members of a real Bell family. Yahoo's Debbie Dunn, also known as D.J. Lyons, has written a book about the Bell Witch story as a wonderful spooky legend; Florence King once tried analyzing how the poltergeist phenomena might have been produced by family members motivated to annoy each other. The Blair Witch story is not based on the Bell Witch story.

(3) Montgomery College is a real community college, which the real filmmakers attended.

(4) In Bladensburg there really is a house made into a church that used to be identified by a sign advertising "GOD'S FINAL CALL AND WARNING, INC."

(5) Dave Stern and the actors in his movie are still living...so although you may get the book cheaper from Amazon, if you e-mail salolianigodagewi@yahoo.com Stern (or his favorite charity) will receive $1 out of your $10 total payment. That's $5 for a clean copy of the book, $5 for shipping; if you buy multiple books at the same time some shipping charges can be consolidated.

If you enjoy horror movies (I don't, particularly) this homegrown movie, and the related books, will chill, thrill, and amuse you.

Postscript: When I looked up D.A. Stern to notify him that his book has become a Book You Can Buy From Me, Google indicated that he connects with cyberspace only through Facebook. Will someone who uses Facebook kindly send him a link to this page? Thanks!