The Blair Witch Project marketing legend

Record summary

The Blair Witch Project used a fictional documentary format, a promotional website, missing-person framing and fabricated folklore to present its 1999 film as recovered evidence connected with woods near Burkittsville, formerly Blair, Maryland. The campaign became an influential example of transmedia legend-making and showed how location, archival style and online dissemination can make invented haunting narratives appear documentary. It is relevant for comparing modern folklore with purported anomalous-place reports. The actors and events were fictional, despite early audience uncertainty and deliberate promotional ambiguity.