February 1785 In Blair village, about two hours from Washington, several children accuse an Irish woman whose name is Elly Kedward to lure them in her house to draw blood from them. Kedward is convicted of witchcraft and banished from the village during a particularly severe winter; the inhabitants of Blair presume her dead.
November 1786 In some weeks' time all of Elly's accusers along with half of the village's children vanish. Fearing a witch's curse, the townspeople flee Blair vowing never to utter Elly Kedward's again.
November 1809 "The Blair Witch Cult" is published. Rare book, usually considered fiction, tells about an entire village cursed by a banished witch.
1824 Burkittsville is built upon Blair's ruins.
August 1825 Eleven witnesses testify having seen ten-year-old Eileen Treacle being grasped and dragged into Tappy East Creek by a pale female hand. Notwithstanding the water is rather shallow, her body is never recovered. For thirteen days after the fact the creek is clogged with strangest, human-shaped oily bundles of sticks.
March 1886 Eight-year-old Robin Weaver disappears, and search parties are dispatched. Robin returns the town after a while, telling to have met a woman who walked without putting her feet on the ground. The woman led Robin by hand to a cabin in the middle of the forest, asking her to wait for her return in the cellar. As the woman didn't come back, Robin, terrified, ran away and reached safely Burkittsville. But one of the search parties is reported missing. Their bodies, tied together and completely disemboweled, are found weeks later at Coffin Rock, close to Tappy East Creek. On their faces and hands are painfully carved sinister symbols. People who find them run then to the town to ask for help, but on their return they see only some blood and broken rapes together with a strong smell of death in the air, but nothing else.
Nov. 1940/ May. 1941 Starting from Emily Hollands, a total of seven children are abducted from the area surrounding Burkittsville.
May 25, 1941 A hermit named Rustin Parr walks into a local market telling everybody he is " finally finished". The police then find the seven missing children's bodies in the cellar of Parr's house in the woods. Every child seems to have been tortured, disembowled and finally killed according to a magic ritual. Parr admits to everything in detail, adding that he did it to please an old woman ghost haunting the forest. Parr is quickly condemned and hanged
October 20, 1994 Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard e Michael Williams, 3 students from Montgomery College, arrive in Burkittsville in order to shoot a school documentary project. Heather interviews Mary Brown, an old and quaint woman who affirms having seen the Blair Witch years ago near the Tappy East Creek in the form of a scaring hairy beast, half-human, half-animal.
October 21, 1994 Heather Donahue interwies in the early morning two fishermen who tell her that Coffin Rock is at about 20 minutes' walk from the town and easily accessible by an old logging trail. The filmakers hike into the Black Hills Forest and are never seen again.
October 25, 1994 A first search is organized. Josh's car is found in the evening parked on the Black Rock Road.
October 26, 1994 The Maryland State Police launch their search of the Black Hills, an operation which lasts ten days and involves up to one hundred of men aided by dogs, helicopters, and even a fly over by a Department of Defense Satellite.
November 5, 1994 The search is given up with no results. Heather's mother, Angie Donahue, begins an exhaustive personal search for her daughters and her two companions.
June 19, 1995 The case is declared unsolved.
16 Ottobre 1995 Some students from the University of Maryland's Anthropology Department discover a duffel bag, contaning film-cans, DAT tapes, video-cassettes, a Hi-8 video-camera, Heather's journal and a CP-16 film buried under the foundation of a 100-year old cabin.When the evidence is examined, Burkittsville Sheriff Ron Cravens announces that the 11 rolls of black and white film and 10 HI8 video tapes are indeed the property of Heather Donahue and her crew.
December 15, 1995 After an initial study of the bag's contents, several pieces of film footage are shown to the families. Even if there are some strangest inexplicable events, nothing is conclusive. The families ask the police to see all the rest of the footage.
February 19, 1996 The families are shown a second group of clips that the local law officials consider to be faked. Outraged, Mrs.Donahue goes public with her criticism, so Sheriff Cravens restricts all access to the evidence.
March 1, 1996 The Sheriff's department announces that the evidence is inconclusive and the case is once again declared inactive and unsolved. The footage is to be returned to the families when the legal limit of its classification runs out on October 16, 1997.
October 16, 1997 The footage is returned to the families. Angie Donahue contracts Haxan Films to put together the several pieces to see what happened in Heather, Josh and Michael's last days of life.