u/Similar_Floor_7390

Hi folks.

Following on from my recent “The Sentient Forest Theory Revised” post from a few days ago which you can view on my profile I decided tonight to tackle one aspect of our good friend & pillar of the community Mr Parr.

I haven’t seen this massive contradiction ever mentioned before but there seems to be a consensus that Rustin Parr built that house in the woods amongst the townsfolk who gossiped about him and as listed on the “Blair Witch Fandom” website.

Rustin Parr was strictly a Carpenter by trade, taught by his Uncle in their woodworking shop. It was his sole vocation. The Parr house was fairly deep in the woods and there was no access or dirt road linking it to main roads unlike the real life Grigg’s House it was based on. So how was it built there? Would Rustin have used horses & wagons to transport supplies? Rustin could probably build a roof and the stucco covered walls, but masonry? The foundations? The stone basement? The brick chimney and fireplace?

Some of the larger structural support beams from that time period could weigh hundreds of pounds. It seems unlikely that one man could have built it alone.

I’m not arguing that Parr couldn’t have renovated it only that he didn’t build it from scratch as I’ve seen the “Blair Witch Fandom” website claim he built a 3 storey house in 5 years.

Anyone here that can fill me in on if a Carpenter in Rustin’s time period would have an extensive, broader and less specialised range of skills that would crossover into stonemasonry and enable such a construction?

Following on from that when Heather & Mike entered the house did you see any furniture, crockery, toilet, paint, wallpaper, food, beds or mattresses? It was fully hollowed out and decaying with a crumbling fireplace, peeling paint, missing walls and in one room almost the whole floor was missing with just some beams showing. The floor was literally rotted enough to collapse.

How could this be possible if Rustin had built it 4-5 years earlier? If the structure had been that bad when he first arrived there would have been little point in renovating a structure that compromised.

Looters who vandalise don’t cause deeply rotted wood that’s been breathing damp forest air for decades nor can they be held responsible for paint peeling off the walls in that manner.

If we assume it was built around roughly 1850 like the Grigg’s House that means it would have been sitting there rotting for 90 years with no upkeep. It may be worth bearing in mind that in 1886 Robin Weaver the girl from the infamous Coffin Rock Massacre said to Bill Barnes, the Burkittsville historian from the Historical Society, when she was 50 and he was a young boy;

“I saw a woman whose feet never touched the ground and she took me to an old house back in the woods and took me into the basement. The woman left me there and said she would be back.”

She then told Bill “I got scared, crawled through a window, escaped and headed back to town.” Not too long after the search party was found dead.

If it was old in her eyes then that could very well predate it from 1886 significantly with the same basement & foundation but a totally different structure above it.

This leads me to believe that the house was originally near the edge of the forest built by someone else around the Mid 19^(th) Century or possibly earlier and that the forest pulled it inwards. Also, based on Robin’s wording to Bill it doesn’t sound like Robin described a long confusing journey. I’m not saying the forest increases its size, I think like a planet of great mass it yoinks historically significant nodes towards it and that the house was closer to town when Robin was a child.

This is speculation on my part but what if this house had its roots in the very founding of Blair in 1734? What if it was the very first house built there? If a frontier civilisation were to start building somewhere it’s conceivable that one of its more substantial buildings could have been built on solid stone foundations a few hundred yards from the woods where they could easily get wood for fire and water from the creek.

In “Curse of the Blair Witch” David Mercer the Anthropology Professor of Maryland University describes the Colonial era foundation they dragged the rucksack of tapes out from under. What is less clear is if this is the same structure that belonged to the Parr house although there are multiple statements he makes that leads me to believe they are one and the same.

Mercer stated in his police interview that the wall must have been at least 150 years old. According to the deed for the house (Blair Witch Dossier by DA Stern) it was first built when Burkittsville was incorporated in 1824 which was the Federal era yet here we have a Professor of Anthropology identifying the foundation as Colonial (Pre-1776) and what was left of the cabin as a Civil War (1860’s) Way Station for the Underground Railroad with a passageway in the basement.

Mercer’s words “The passageway must have led all the way down to the creek at one point. The creek feeds down into the Potomac. Bill Barnes over at the Historical Society told me a bunch of stories concerning the movement of a great number of slave children and their mothers.”

For those who don’t know a Way Station was a hiding spot for slaves and in this particular one they could come and go through the secret underground passageway that led to the river without being seen from the road.

It would have been a place that absorbed feelings of intense fear.

Lethal force against slave fugitives was authorised in Maryland and even if they weren’t killed they would likely be sold to the Deep South which was a death sentence in its own right due to the punishing conditions.

As a Professor, Mercer’s opinion holds weight, even though he’s not an Archaeologist he doesn’t seem to be confused or lacking confidence in what he describes.

He was there to supervise digging around that property before the discovery.

Mercer said “The original house at the site had burned down and so there was a layer of ash sitting in the interior of the house like the basement. So this napsack had been in sterile soil with no evidence around it of disturbance and over the top of it was an undisturbed layer of ash.”

This is still the same building that he described there being a partial passageway in.

When you put all this together it very closely resembles the state you would expect to see the Parr estate in upon the 1995 tape discovery.

On another note the students involved in the dig described it as being “deep in the woods” to police while a Park Ranger describes it as an area of forest not far from the main trail.

I guess people have very different perceptions of distance inside the forest or perhaps the distance actively changes in the person’s mind depending on anxiety levels.

If the building existed back then and for whatever reason was abandoned the forest could then move in to claim it. Moving fractions of an inch per year while inhabited so they don’t notice and then fully gaining control of it the second it’s abandoned. This would also explain it being moved if it fell into disuse after the Civil War ended.

Once again, it’s been a pleasure to research and write this and I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have. Any thoughts or discussion are welcome!

I've always wanted to do a deep dive on my pet theory based strictly on the canon of the mockumentaries and extended 4 hour version of the original film. If you're interested in the extended version let me know in the comments and I will DM the link to you.

I know most people here only analyse and discuss the theatrical version but you're doing yourselves a major disservice when there are very important scenes excluded from it.

Let me begin. I'll start off slow then gradually ramp it up.

The forest as aggressor theory isn't a new one but in all my years of interacting with the fans of this film it doesn't seem to be as popular as I'd have thought. That doesn't mean they don't find it interesting just that their view that only the witch is responsible is one that's hard to shake especially given the title of the franchise.

Ever since I first watched the theatrical version at 17 (I'm now 36) I never believed it was solely the witch and with each subsequent rewatch and expansion into the lore I became more and more convinced of this stance. That the forest is thousands, possibly tens of thousands of years old, that it sits on land with heavy ties to sacrifices, rituals and murders and that there the layer separating our world from other more demonic worlds is a lot thinner and prone to shifts. A bit like a fault line or a ley line but over a much wider area.

I don't think the forest is ever original, I believe it absorbs people, recreates events, imprints on targets and weaponises the presence of humans who already died there. When the 1886 Coffin Rock incident happened where 5 men were tied, gutted and had occult symbols drawn on them I believe it recreated something from a very long time ago, something that in small town Burkittsville hadn't been recorded in writing. It tends to go through periods of inactivity every 30-50 years.

The witchcraft language "Transitus Fluvii" is a Latin phrase meaning "Passing of the river" or "Crossing the river" which would also explain why Coffin Rock was the original forest node due to its proximity to the river. In ancient cultures a river separated the boundary between the living and the dead. Kyle Brody drew the symbols of this language all over Parr's house. Whether he got this from books or being imprinted on we'll never know. Either way him and Parr both ended up in an asylum shouting the words "Never Given" over and over. Then not long after in 1941 Parr was executed. Another thing worth mentioning is that if the previous party that the Coffin Rock incident had been recreated on had been ambushed; it would have made it so much easier for an attacking party to mask their footsteps because of the noisy river.

I'll outline my reasons for it not being just the witch below.

1. How can a witch loop the environment like a topological recursion trap?
2. How can a witch mimic kids laughing like a temporal audio replay?
3. How can a witch silently materialise piles of rocks and bundles of sticks right outside their tent?
4. How can a witch change the time period they are in for the house to appear?
5. How can a witch replay Josh's words to lure them into that house?
6. If Josh were somehow still alive on that final night in the house how would the witch be able to control his mind to only call for help instead of saying what was happening to him?
7. How can a witch crack sticks to make it sound like she is all around them?
8. Why is it that when you combine all these together it no longer feels like you're dealing with just a witch?

A witch surely isn't omniscient, can't control thoughts or words. Can't recreate the past.

The bundle of sticks with blood and Josh's teeth was left there as a textbook lure so that later on when Josh's voice cried for help they would go looking for him. If a member of a party is injured or in serious danger the protective instincts of a group will kick in to try and save them. This isn't just a movie trope, it's based in real human psychology.

How much would a witch know about human psychology as a pre internet individual heavily ostracised by her small town community?

How would a witch know that Josh was the emotional anchor and the social glue holding the group together? That he needed to be targeted first to soften up the others?

Furthermore, would a mortal woman banished in 1785 even understand what a group of 1990s American film students were talking about? She would have no concept of their modern language, technology or worldviews. Yet, the entity tracks their conversations and breaks down their mental states with flawless precision. It isn't a 200-year-old ghost listening to them; it's an omniscient ecosystem reading their primal biological panic.

Do I think the witch is or was a real person? Absolutely. She was banished, tied to a tree and then died of exposure. (I disregard the later series lore about her being hung from a tree by kids.) I treat the 2000 film and anything else post 2001 as non-canon.

Do I think she is solely responsible for what happened to the trio & Coffin Rock? No.

Is the forest weaponizing the witch? Extremely likely.

Do I think Josh was possessed? No.

Do I think he was imprinted on? Maybe.

What is imprinting? In this case imprinting is when a target is led to believe they are communicating with something that isn’t really there, in this case the witch and is then given commands to complete. Essentially they are then under the control of that system. We saw this with Parr and Kyle Brody. Most people would consider this witch possession but I'm inclined to disagree due to the belief her image is being used as a proxy.

Does that mean Josh could have killed them? Surprisingly Yes. If he had been imprinted on and under the command of something more powerful absolutely. It could very well have been a murder/suicide.

Do I think Josh killed them under the influence of something? No but it's not the worst theory and is actually one I could get behind.

Was Josh already dead the first night they heard him shouting? Unlikely, the sound of his voice was being heavily obscured and sounded like it was coming from all around them, this very much points to it being a live event. By contrast on the final night his voice is being used to lure them to the house and they have no real difficulty in following it. I call this the "obscure & lure". The obscure can work both ways, Josh may not have even been able to hear Mike & Heather shouting "Where are you?" which would make sense as he wasn't interacting with their questions, almost as if they were muted on his side like pressing mute on a remote control.

How did the bodies disappear? When the forest has completed the loop it absorbs them, they vanish without a trace. They cease to exist.

How would tapes of the victims be discovered a year later buried under the foundation of the wall of the destroyed house beneath a thick layer of undisturbed soil?

I decided to research soil stratigraphy to get to the bottom of it and there is no chance that a human 55 years earlier could have buried it and for it to look undisturbed all those years later. In that region of Maryland it takes a minimum of 500 years for even 1 inch of natural topsoil to form after being dug up. A bunch of different layers being all mottled and clumped together would be obvious even after half a century. This is just me briefly entertaining the idea that Parr killed the trio and then buried the tapes.

Do I think Rustin Parr killed the trio? Absolutely not.

In Rustin Parr's interviews from 1940/41 there is no mention of him killing a Back To The Future trio with high tech recording equipment.

What was the purpose of the sticks and stones? To force the trio to interact with them, forcing their perception of reality to change and locking them into a deeper bond with the entity.

Do I think the sticks and stones ever existed to be recreated in the first place? Now THIS is the hardest question for me to answer. Especially when we assume the witch was tied to a tree and died of exposure. She wasn't exactly making friendship bracelets while in there. She was most likely terrified herself. I think the forest took some of her capabilities and signature calling cards that she used in her real life pre banishment and used them to force those interactions with the physical environment it had just manipulated.

When Josh heard the cackle the first night what did that mean? It meant that their presence had been acknowledged. Some might say they were being warned that they weren't welcome. I think the opposite, that it was the sign they had been accepted and that there was no turning back.

Why did they receive this sign? In my opinion because they camped and by camping they staked a claim to the territory. I believe this is why the people at Coffin Rock were also killed cos they arrived late and camped determined to set out at first light to find Robin Weaver.

Also the Coffin Rock search party were still alive and struggling when they were being gutted, they had struggle marks and blood deeply encrusted on the inner edges of the hemp ropes.

Coffin Rock based on what I've gathered from the timeline is quite close to the road. Perhaps a 5-10 min walk which means distance isn't the trigger. You don't need to be deep in the forest to fall victim to it.

The biggest what if for me is why Rustin and Kyle weren't killed afterwards. Was it because they had been useful idiots doing an entities work and giving it the negative energy it needed to feed off of? Was it because they had been driven so insane that nobody would believe them even if they were released?

Why every 30-50 years? 1785 (The witch is banished), 1786 (The town's children and adults start disappearing), 1823/24 (Blair is rediscovered and developed, Eileen Treacle disappearing/drowning and the river turning oily/oily stick figures), 1886 (Coffin Rock & Robin Weaver), 1940/41 (Rustin Parr and the murders). 1971 (Brody commits suicide by slashing his wrists with a sharpened wooden spoon), 1994 (The Trio)

Why the number 7? 7 victims of Rustin Parr abducted over 7 months, 7 days and nights in the forest for the trio, 7 Cairns/rocks the trio came across as noted by Heather on camera. What significance does 7 hold? Is it tied to completion? Or perhaps also the story of creation? 7 days to make the world?

I hope this has been as enjoyable for you to read as it was for me to write. ❤️