Burkittsville Witch Project

good morning friends,
again many thanks for your visits and friendship.
today's piece was created for rendo's urban legends halloween contest.i'm quite proud of it so when i put it together i made a version for this main gallery as well as an entry version.i did quite a lot of research before i started it as well. my idea was to recreate a scene from the film 'blair witch project' which was coincidently filmed a few hours from where i grew up in maryland.although the movie was proven to be fake there is a large bit of it that is steeped in legend,folklore,and historical truth about the town.before i leave you today i'll let you in on my findings about a little town called burkittsville.
as always 'till the dragon flies again,hugs and regards',
lee
~excerpt from www.hollowhill.com~
-The town began as "Dawson's Purchase" in 1741. In the 1790's, Joshua Harley and Henry Burkitt arrived in the area. From the start, they competed to control and eventually name the town.
Although Burkitt owned three-quarters of the land by 1810, the competition seemed concluded in 1824 when Harley secured the official Post Office as "Harley's Post Office." However, Joshua Harley's death in 1828 left Burkitt with the last word. He named the town Burkittsville before he, too, died in 1836.
As early as 1735, nearby Middletown was settled by German immigrants. According to legends repeated in the Middletown Valley Register in the early 20th century, the community was terrorized by a monster called a Schnellegeister. The word means "fast spirit or ghost" in German, but neighbors nicknamed it the "Snallygaster."
Whatever its name, its colonial reputation mixed the half-bird features of the Siren with the nightmarish features of demons and ghouls.
The Snallygaster was described as half-reptile with octopus limbs, and half-bird with a metallic beak lined with razor-sharp teeth. It can fly. It can pick up its victims and carry them off. The earliest stories claim that this monster sucked the blood of its victims.
No one knows whether the Snallygaster caused the hasty sale of most of "Dawson's Purchase" (later Burkittsville) in 1786, and the remainder in 1803. However, George Wine, who bought the final acreage, did not live to confirm the purchase.
The name "Snallygaster" has been a joke to some in the 20th century, but more sober minds recall that it has been documented in the Burkittsville area as recently as 1973.
Another 18th century German settlement, Zittlestown, seven miles north of Burkittsville, was also plagued with supernatural events. Like Middletown, residents feared a large and vicious animal-spirit which was rarely seen. An 1880's book by Madaleine Dahlgren (widow of Admiral John A. Dahlgren), documented the troubles of that community.
in 1862, wounded and dying Civil War soldiers in this area were placed in as many as 17 makeshift hospitals. Some of those "hospitals" were actually homes and even the tannery in Burkittsville.
The soldiers' ghostly voices are still heard throughout the town, but the tannery is particularly significant.
The tannery was torn down, but the site is still haunted. Anyone who parks his car there overnight may find the vehicle marked with footprints from soldiers' boots, where the car was kicked or even trampled by the ghosts of marching men.
In the winter of 1785, an Irish woman named Elly Kedward was banished from the town of Blair after several local children accuse her of witchcraft Although her acts of witchcraft were allegedly evil in nature (she had withdrawn blood from the childrens' fingernails, possibly to examine a new, unidentified illness which she had discovered) the townspeople acted towards her in a way which, if possible, was even more evil than anything Elly could accomplish. They pounced on her, accusing her of being a witch and being too reclusive and using her religion as a Catholic (the Blair reisdents were Protestants) to back up their evidence. Elly could not defend herself, and they tied her to a sledge and dragged her out into the woods in what was the harshest winter in human history. The townspeople led her blindfolded into the woods and tied her to a tree. There they set about abusing her, cutting all sorts of signs into her which labelled her as a witch, then the citizens pressed their palms into her wounds, and finally they left her by the tree, but they still kept coming out into the woods to see if she was dead. They kept on physically abusing her until they saw she was still alive and set their dogs on her, which tore at her flesh. Then they saw she had survived every form of human torture which she could undergo and finally they left her hanging by her neck in the branches of her execution tree.
Everyone believed she had died and that the witch had been punished, but her spirit was doomed not to rest: Her ghost returned the following winter and abducted half the town's children from Blair.
In 1824, the township of Blair was discovered by Mr Burkitt, who bought the partially ruined town and renamed it Burkittsville. A few months later, an eight-year-old girl named Robin Weaver was out in the Black Hills Forest when she got lost and met a woman, whose feet, according to Robin, "did not touch the ground." She was initially frightened, but then she came to trust the old woman, who acted in a seemingly generous manner, and she followed the old woman deep into the wood to an old, abandoned house, which she entered. Robin followed the woman and entered the house, and followed the woman down to a basement down in the bowels of the house. The old woman said she would depart, and left promising to return. Hours passed, as Robin sat in the basement, which slowly grew darker as afternoon faded into evening. Robin grew more and more frightened: she had been feeling a growing feeling of evil ever since she stepped into the basement. As she pictured herself all alone in the woods, which were becoming swamped in the darkness of the evening, Robin stood up and found a window in the basement, through which she squeezed herself and then ran through the darkening woods, and out of the woods completely, racing back to Burkittsville, to which she returned safely, although from then after she avoided the woods, claiming to feel an evil presence about the area.
In 1994, Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams went into the Black Hills Forest while filming a documentary about the legend, and never returned. Search parties went out looking for them but they were never found. The footage of their documentary was found a year later within the foundation underneath an old house in the woods. Part of the documentary that was found was not published, instead sent back to the families of the three students. A film of the documantary was made by piecing together footage from their film, and published in 1999. Of course, this is just part of the plot: the whole legend had been made up to promote the upcoming movie.
these are just a small part of the legendary burkittsville tales.way too many to print here.more can be found at www.hollowhill.com and www.blairwitch.wikia.com *shiver* enjoy