The Blair Witch Project

Three film students — Heather, Mike, and Josh — drive to Burkittsville, Maryland in October to make a documentary about the Blair Witch, an eighteenth-century legend involving a child murderer whose ghost is said to haunt the Black Hills Forest surrounding the town. They interview locals, most of whom suggest with varying degrees of urgency that they not go into the woods. They go.

The first day passes without incident. On the second they find a cairn of carefully balanced rocks that was not there when they made camp. That night something moves outside the tent — close, deliberate, unhurried. On the third day they discover they have hiked in a complete circle and are back at their starting point despite walking in a straight line. Heather has lost the map. The argument about the map, captured in full on camera, strips the three of them down to fear and blame and the realisation that none of them actually know how to get out.

Josh disappears in the night. Mike and Heather find a bundle of sticks and cloth hanging from a tree containing what appears to be Josh's bloody teeth, pieces of his hair, and a scrap of his shirt. They hear a voice in the trees that sounds less like Josh each time they hear it. Child-sized handprints appear on the outside of the tent, at head height, all facing inward.

On the last night the footage cuts to the two of them inside an abandoned house deep in the forest. They descend to the basement. Mike is standing in the corner facing the wall, silent — the witch's method, from the legend. Heather screams. The camera falls. The recording ends there.