BLAIR WITCH: THE DROWNING GHOST and BOOK OF SHADOWS

By: Dan Cziraky
Date: Friday, November 03, 2000

The Blair Witch Files: The Drowning Ghost is the third in this Young Adult series, supposedly written by Heather Donahue's obsessed, seventeen-year-old cousin, Cade Merrill. So far, the previous books have dealt with Elly Kedward and Rustin Parr, the two major figures in Blair Witch mythology. This volume centers around a lesser player, Eileen Treacle, the young girl supposedly drowned by the Blair Witch while wading into Tappy East Creek in 1825; her body was never found, and a week later the water was poisoned by bundles of oily sticks floating in the creek.

Merrill is contacted by Cecelia Northrup via his blairwitchfiles.com web site. She relates a tale from the early spring of 1999, several months before the release of the first BW film. Northrup, her boyfriend Mark Reddick, and their fellow seniors at Baltimore's Meade School, Jane Rubin and Noah Parker, agree to act as counselors on a five-day camping trip for thirty seventh-graders. Mr. Morris, the soccer coach, and Ms. Zadek, the science teacher, lead the group of youngsters into the Black Hills Forest to a campsite just under a mile downstream from where Treacle supposedly vanished 175 years earlier. The weather is unseasonably cold (Merrill confirms a cold front from Canada moved through the area by calling the National Weather Service) for Late March, but Mr. Morris is determined to make the best of the situation. However, things start to go wrong right from the start. The girls are frightened when a dead squirrel is placed in one of their sleeping bags. Mark and Mr. Morris both nearly drown in the shallow waters of the creek, and exhibit signs of severe personality changes soon afterwards. Cecilia then finds seventh-grade outcast Lukas Graham burying the squirrel in a shallow grave, chanting, 'They must die. They all must die.' More incidents follow, including ghostly voices in the night, injuries during an obstacle course run, and Lukas' growing conviction that Eileen Treacle is coming for all of them. The rest of the book degenerates into the usual nonsense, and we're once again left with one of those 'Was it the curse of the Blair Witch? Who can say for sure?' endings. This series looks to be running out of steam already, yet Bantam Books has at least three more on the way.

D.A. Stern wrote the interesting The Blair Witch Project: A Dossier and the less successful Blair Witch: The Secret Confession of Rustin Parr. Now comes his Blair Witch: Book of Shadows, the official tie-in to the film Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. The premise is that Stern has been contracted to finish the Blair Witch: Hysteria or History? book begun by Stephen Ryan Parker and Tristen Ryler. Of course, Ryler was killed and Parker stands accused of multiple murders, as chronicled in the movie (and also the Sci-Fi Channel mock-umentary, Shadow of the Blair Witch). Whereas the film was a 'dramatic re-enactment' of the so-called Black Hills Murders following the release of The Blair Witch Project, the book uses photos of the actors as if they are, in fact, the 'real people' of the tragic story. (At least Shadow of the Blair Witch managed to use photos of different actors, thereby maintaining their own sense of realism within the fiction.)


Unlike the new film, Stern still maintains that the events of the first film were real (and at least his book includes some explanation for the title Book of Shadows). This leads to several contradictions of the current BW myth already (as does the YA BW Files series, for that matter). Still, Stern manages to craft an intriguing series of improbable coincidences that add to the story of BW2. For instance, Blair Witch Hunt leader Jeff Patterson is the son of a well-known pulp fiction painter, who once illustrated a story called 'The Book of Shadows,' which merged elements of the Blair Witch legend with an English bogeyman known as Bloody Sam of Malkin Tower (another total fabrication). Patterson's mother was also once a member of the 1960s' Blair Witch Cult, lead by former Hillary's Butterfly lead singer Leroy Creegan (more fabrication). Patterson, it turns out, once performed a magic ritual on Coffin Rock to heal his sick dog, Rusty. We learn he was institutionalized for four years after kidnapping a baby, intending to sacrifice it on Coffin Rock to heal his dying father.

This all ties in rather nicely, and some of the so-called evidence is quite compellingly faked. Still, by using the film actors' likenesses as if they are the actually persons from the supposedly true events, the illusion is shattered from page one. However, if you enjoy the whole BW line of b.s., then you'll find Stern's latest effort at least mildly entertaining.

THE BLAIR WITCH FILES #3: THE DROWNING GHOST, by Cade Merrill. Bantam Books, October 2000, 176 pp., $4.99

BLAIR WITCH: BOOK OF SHADOWS, by D.A. Stern. Pocket Books, November 2000, 192 pp., $13.95.