In 1994 three college students went into the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, to make a film about the legend of the Blair Witch.

They never came back.

My cousin Heather Donahue was one of those filmmakers. Heather was my favorite cousin—almost like a big sister. When she disappeared, I was only eleven years old. I couldn't accept that she was gone. Was she really dead? Was there actually a Blair Witch? I needed to find answers.

So I read every story about the Blair legend that I could get my hands on. I emailed and called everyone who might know something about Elly Kedward, the eighteenth century outcast some believed to be the Blair Witch, or Rustin Parr, the 1940s serial murderer who claimed that an old woman in the woods had forced him to torture and kill seven children.

It wasn't long before more people heard about my work and started sending their stories to my website, theblairwitchfiles.com. Stories of strange disappearances, of family curses, of ghastly unexplained deaths. The tales are all different, but they always lead back to the Blair Witch. I researched and archived the most intriguing stories in these case files, and sealed them so that no one could exploit them for commercial or sensationalistic purposes.

The discovery of Heather's film footage in 1995 left me with more questions than answers. But it did confirm what I had come to believe—that there is something strange, something terrifying, something inhuman in the Blair Woods. And its evil lives on.

I am seventeen now. My case files have grown to thousands of pages. I have decided to open some of them and publish them. Why? Because I know that the answers are out there. My hope is that these books may reach that one person who holds the missing piece - the key that will unlock the mystery of the Blair Witch.

If you are that person—or if you have information that may help me find the truth—please get in touch. I can be reached at theblairwitchfiles.com. I'm always here.

Cade Merrill
Burkittsville, MD

July 2000