The University of Pittsburgh Library System’s (UPLS) Horror Studies Collection is a horror-lover’s dream. Amongst the library’s holdings are the George A. Romero Archival Collection, consisting of hundreds of items devoted to the influential “Night of the Living Dead” filmmaker, the literary papers of “Whalefall” and “The Shape of Water” author Daniel Kraus, scripts from filmmakers Wes Craven (“A Nightmare on Elm Street”) and John Carpenter (“Halloween”), the papers of horror writers Linda D. Addison, Gwendolyn Kiste, and Tim Waggoner, first editions of “Frankenstein,” “Dracula,” and various Edgar Allan Poe works, as well as horror pulps and comics.
It’s no surprise that the university has embraced horror: the Pittsburgh area has served as the filming locations for Romero’s films “Night of the Living Dead,” “Dawn of the Dead,” and “Creepshow,” and it’s the home of movie-makeup pioneer Tom Savini’s Special Make-Up Effects Programs.
And now, university students and researchers will have access to items from the 1999 horror classic, “The Blair Witch Project,” courtesy of the film’s producer, Gregg Hale. The Horror Studies Collection will add numerous marketing and promotional items from the film, including missing persons posters, as well as a large swath of items demonstrating the film’s impact, including reviews, articles, games, comics, and other tie-in media,
Released in 1999, “The Blair Witch Project” used a found-footage conceit to tell the story of three college students who went missing after venturing into a Maryland forest to find the mysterious Blair Witch. The film was revolutionary in its early use of the internet and marketing. The film’s original website—an archive of which is included in the collection—detailed the supposedly-real Blair Witch myth and the ill-fated journey to discover her through fake historical documents, accounts, and news interviews about the missing students in the film.
Before the film’s wide release, the Sci-Fi channel aired a mockumentary about the Blair Witch, depicting it as a real urban legend and the students at the center of the film as truly missing. During “The Blair Witch Project” screenings, the filmmakers distributed missing person flyers of the three students, which are included in the Horror Studies Collection. The actors in the film even signed contracts to stay out of the public eye until the film was released to keep up their missing status.
“They took a huge gamble on producing and marketing a film on the internet at a time when nobody else in the industry was doing that,” Ben Rubin, Horror Studies Collection Coordinator at the university’s Hillman Library, told PittWire. “It showed you could do viral internet marketing, which now is hand-in-hand with any other marketing technique for films.”
That makes it a particularly interesting addition to the collection in terms of lessons for students, Rubin added.
“What’s particularly interesting is that nearly all the students we teach and show this collection to have lived with the internet their whole lives, and this is a look back into the era just before that, and at such an important part of how today’s film marketing landscape came to be,” he said.
UPLS will begin processing the collection in spring 2025, but visitors to Hillman Library can see highlights on display in the Archives and Special Collections Exhibit Gallery.
Want to learn more about “The Blair Witch Project” at UPLS? Visit PittWire for photos, insights, and more. Or, you can listen to an interview with Ben Rubin about the Horror Studies Collection on American Libraries’ podcast. And be sure to check out our conversation with author Daniel Kraus on episode 11 of the How I Library podcast!
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