Imagine marketing your low-budget independent film by convincing the world that your lead actors are dead. In the dial-up era of 1999, that deception worked. This episode unpacks the origins, the grueling production and the controversial aftermath of The Blair Witch Project, from two University of Central Florida film students in 1993 who noticed that grainy paranormal documentaries scared them more than polished horror, to a website that had logged 160 million hits by August 1999.

The discussion covers the near-anagram mythology of Elly Kedward and Rustin Parr, a 35-page outline with no scripted dialogue, an audition process that cut 2,000 actors to three, and the October 1997 shoot in Seneca Creek State Park where the directors tracked the cast by GPS, left conflicting instructions in film cans, restricted food and harassed them at night. ...