The True Story of the Blair Witch
The legend of Elly Kedward, the Blair Witch, tells the story of an Irish woman who lived in a tiny town called Blair in Maryland, USA. Elly lived in solitude in the forest of this place, which at the time consisted of only two roads and a few houses.
Elly led a simple and peaceful life, surviving off the surrounding land and using medicinal plants to cure illnesses. However, during the winter of 1785, some village children accused Elly of having brought them to her home to extract their blood with strange instruments.
During this historical period, popular beliefs, superstitions, and fear of witches led the citizens of Blair to judge and condemn Elly without any trial. They beat her and tied her to a cart, which they abandoned in the forest during a February night. Elly Kedward was found dead, drowned in the frozen stream.
The following year, both the children and the adult accusers disappeared without a trace. This fueled the local belief that Elly was a witch and that a curse had fallen upon Blair. The remaining inhabitants fled the town in fear, and fifty years later, Burkittsville was built on its ruins. Shortly afterward, a girl named Eileen Treacle disappeared.
In the following years, there were other unexplained disappearances of children, including that of eight-year-old Robin Weaver in March 1886. After reporting being invited to a house by an elderly woman and experiencing an abduction, the child returned home, but a search party sent to find him was found dismembered and bound, apparently as part of some ritual.
In 1920, Rustin Parr moved into the Burkittsville woods to live in isolation but began to perceive the presence of a woman dressed in a black cloak who constantly followed him. Rustin claimed to hear a woman’s voice compelling him to get up during the night.
This series of events contributed to creating a local legend about the presence of witches and curses in the town of Burkittsville, which inspired the film “The Blair Witch Project.”
