By Jason Saldivar 

jsaldivar@lc.edu 

The production and subsequent “advertisement” of the 1999 movie The Blair Witch Project was treated as a genuine found footage film discovered a year after the three main characters’ disappearances. What makes this particularly weird is that the actors were treated as if they had truly gone missing. Multiple factors contributed to the ruse, such as letters of condolences being delivered to their families, the website for the “documentary” they were filming having been put together as if they were trying to build a missing persons case (before it was changed to represent the “found footage” as a fictional film), missing flyers being posted, and even the IMDB website stating that the actors were missing or presumed dead.  

Before it was officially revealed to be fake, a lot of people believed that not only was the Blair Witch monster real, but that three people went missing or were dead because of its documentation. One of the major examples of people’s misguided beliefs was a church that posted the missing posters on their prayer board, requesting that people prayed for the actor’s safe return.  

This surreal effect even extended to the actors themselves believing that it was real at times. They had vague directions on where to go with certain scenes – some that they were not told were going to happen – which often disturbed them while filming.  

Despite now being two and a half decades old, The Blair Witch Project is still acclaimed as one of the best movies in the found footage genre. Mainly because, at the time of release, it felt so much like a real experience uncovered via found footage. In fact, it took weeks for people to understand that it was all a hoax.