HEAD GAMES
Did you know that the brilliant young directors of the Blair Witch Project played an eerie psychological game with their actors, tormenting them behind the scenes so they could produce lifelike terror and reactions of horror?
Throughout the eight-day shoot, directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez played taped creepy sounds while the cast tried to sleep in the woods. They also sent costumed bogeymen to scare them, and cut down on the food they left in the woods along with acting notes for each days shoot in order to keep them nervous and jumpy.
Bet you were also unaware that the actors actually became lost in the thick Maryland forest and got into a screaming match over the whereabouts of the missing map.
And all that happened, despite being equipped with a computerized tracking system.
THE REAL SPOOKS OF BURKETTSVILLE
With a population of only 214 residents, Burkettsville, Md., is small-town friendly. But maintaining their neighborliness has admittedly been a tough chore since The Blair Witch Project became a summer 1999 movie sensation.
Hundreds of people have flocked to the village some 55 miles northwest of Washington D.C., trampling through the tiny cemetery and upsetting the normal tranquility of the surroundings. Imagine all the fuss, and there isn't even a real Blair Witch. And never was.
Real supernatural phenomena have been a part of Burkettsville history for at least a century or more, however.
The uncanny goings-on center around a hump of land known as Spook Hill, where vehicles left in neutral will roll up the grade instead of down.
Local folks say that the restless ghosts of the area are those of a bunch of Confederates who died in 1862 during the Battle of Crampton's Gap.
When the moon is out and a night breeze rustles the trees, the restless shades of the fallen Johnny Rebs can be counted on to gather and carry out their eerie prank.
YOU'LL BE SURPRISED TO KNOW
First time filmsters Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez had a flat $60.000 in their Jean pockets when they turned out the Blockbuster horror movie The Blair Witch Project. Just about enough to pay for limousine service for the stars of most Tinseltown flicks.
