Emer McLysaght: Ireland is unmatched in conjuring up scary old ladies

The Blair Witch was Irish. Of course she was Irish! Ireland is unmatched in conjuring up an image of a scary old lady who knows everything about everyone, is rumoured to make children disappear, and gets very annoyed at anyone trespassing in her garden. Maybe that’s why when the film-makers behind The Blair Witch Project needed a backstory for their titular horror figure, they turned to the old sod. As the “legend” goes, the Blair Witch was Elly Kedward, an Irish immigrant who was accused of witchcraft in Maryland and sentenced to death. She was then held responsible for carrying out or ordering a number of grisly murders and disappearances in a wooded area around the modern-day town of Burkittsville.

I truly believe that anyone who doesn’t find The Blair Witch Project terrifying either lacks imagination or has never spent more than 20 minutes among some trees on a heavy, drizzly Irish day. I think Irish people are particularly spooked by the film because we are never more than a kilometre or two away from such a grim woodland, and whatever scary old banshee is creeping around the silver birches.

My first viewing of The Blair Witch Project was a couple of years after it was first released in 1999 amid a storm of confusion and controversy. Filmed hand-held documentary style, it was promoted as a work of fact and the marketing campaign suggested that the three main characters had actually vanished during its production. It was the first film to create a viral marketing storm online, and the first to use “found footage” to portray the story. The lore behind the movie’s release was that the tapes were all that was found of Heather, Mike and Josh after they vanished into the woods in search of the Blair Witch.

It remains one of the most haunting films I’ve seen, and I find it difficult to trust people who are unmoved by it

I watched it on a dark midweek night in my childhood home. My parents had gone to bed and The Blair Witch was just starting on Channel 4. I knew the story behind and figured it couldn’t be that scary. How foolish I was. The woods used for the location were almost identical to the eerie rural areas I played in as a child. Much of the film’s dread and horror takes place during daylight hours, and it brought back memories of being convinced the old cottage ruins and half-dead trees I was scrabbling around were haunted by some kind of hollow-eyed day spirit who wanted to suck my soul and steal the mountain bike I got for Christmas, thus getting me in fierce trouble at home.

Our local supermarket had a creche, and I happily survived it

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Every time I travel abroad I am gripped by the fear that Ireland is making a fool of me

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[ Emer McLysaght: I’ve spent 15 years chasing the white wine highs of my 20s ]

By the time I reached the film’s frenzied and chilling conclusion, I was so scared I had to call out for my father to get out of bed to close the curtains in the sittingroom. I was frozen to my chair, and too terrified to look out the window into the inky void beyond the grass, full sure that the witch was out there in the trees sharpening her sticks and waiting for me. It remains one of the most haunting films I’ve seen, and I find it difficult to trust people who are unmoved by it.

The movie took just eight days to film, and 20 hours of footage was edited down to less than an hour and a half. During those eight days the three actors, who had been trained to use the camera and sound equipment along with the basics of camping and survival, were largely left alone to follow a mapped course and respond to whatever happened to them. In addition to the mounting daytime dread, the film-makers approached their camp in the middle of the night as they slept to make the noises and threats of the “witch”. Even if you know deep down in your soul that the witch does not exist, the anticipation of a terrifying prank is enough to make you click your heels together and chant “there’s no place like home”. The Blair Witch is never actually seen in the film, she is just heard, and there is nothing more terrifying in the dark than what you cannot see.

[ Emer McLysaght: Have I somehow stolen another person’s pet without realising it? ]

Of course, if The Blair Witch Project had taken place in Ireland getting lost in the woods and lured into a demon’s lair would probably never happen, because before you met your untimely death, you would bump into an aul lad on a bike held together with rust, with a Quinnsworth shopping basket attached to the back with twine, accompanied by a Jack Russell he warns is a “bit nippy”. If not him, then a harried couple trying to get the labradoodle they bought on DoneDeal during the first lockdown to obey even one single command on the lead. Even a gang of teenagers drinking Buckfast and hoping the magic mushrooms they just ate aren’t poisonous would provide some protection against the witch.

Still though, I like to undergo an annual Halloween rewatch just to keep myself humble, and remind myself to stay out of the woods. Who knows what’s lurking?