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Get the most interesting and important stories from the University of Pittsburgh.In 1999, an urban myth known as the Blair Witch swept the nation via message boards, chatrooms, and other internet spaces. The story of three college students who went missing after venturing into a Maryland forest to find the mysterious Blair Witch haunted the dreams of many.
But there was a catch — it wasn’t true.
That faux-legend marketing campaign launched a small indie film into what would become a “genre-defining” horror film, according to Ben Rubin, Horror Studies Collection coordinator at the Hillman Library. Now, materials from “The Blair Witch Project” have found a home within the University of Pittsburgh Library System.
The latest archival acquisition for the Horror Studies Collection includes marketing and promotional items like missing person posters and production materials. The archive also contains reviews, articles, games, comics and other tie-in media demonstrating the film’s impact.
Released in 1999, “The Blair Witch Project” harnessed the burgeoning power of the internet for a viral campaign that marked a significant shift in marketing strategy. The film’s original website — an archive of which is included in the collection’s materials — detailed the supposedly-real Blair Witch myth and the ill-fated journey to discover her through extensive fake historical documents, accounts and news interviews about the missing students at the center of the film.
Just before the film’s wide release, the Sci-Fi channel even aired a mockumentary that, like the other promotional materials, depicted the Blair Witch as a real urban legend and the students at the center of the film as truly missing. During “The Blair Witch Project” screenings, the filmmakers would go as far as to distribute missing person flyers of the three students, which are included in the ULS collection, asking audience members to come forward if they knew any information about the students. The actors in the film even signed contracts to stay out of the public eye until the film released to keep up their missing status.
According to Rubin, the success of this strategy stands out as one of the most incredible aspects of the film's legacy. The internet was far less ubiquitous at the time, and many of the tools that lead to viral sensations today, such as social media, had not yet been invented.
“They took a huge gamble on producing and marketing a film on the internet at a time when nobody else in the industry was doing that,” Rubin said. “It showed you could do viral internet marketing, which now is hand-in-hand with any other marketing technique for films.”
That makes it a particularly interesting addition to the collection in terms of lessons for students, Rubin added.
“What’s particularly interesting is that nearly all the students we teach and show this collection to have lived with the internet their whole lives, and this is a look back into the era just before that, and at such an important part of how today’s film marketing landscape came to be.”
“The Blair Witch Project” producer Gregg Hale realized “there was no better place” for the materials than the University Library System’s archive while working with Rubin and the Horror Studies Collection team to find materials for a then-lost George Romero film. The archive includes content from Hale along with the film’s writers and directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick and fellow producer Mike Monello.
“We’re thrilled to find a permanent home for our collection of records, memorabilia and ephemera from a little horror film that lucked its way into cinema history,” Hale said.
The materials join an extensive Horror Studies Collection built upon the bedrock archival collection of independent horror director George A. Romero. Also in the collection are scripts from directors Wes Craven and John Carpenter; the literary papers of horror writers such as Linda D. Addison, Gwendolyn Kiste, Daniel Kraus and Tim Waggoner; first editions of “Frankenstein,” “Dracula,” Edgar Allan Poe works, horror pulps and comics; and more.
The Horror Studies Collection team will begin processing the collection in spring 2025, but visitors to Hillman Library can see some highlights on display in the Archives and Special Collections Exhibit Gallery on the third floor. The exhibit was curated by Julia Hodges, a senior double majoring in communication and rhetoric and film and media studies with a Children’s Literature Certificate.
Photography by Aimee Obidzinski