This is definitely the sticking point, for me, when people mention the other theories like it was rednecks, it was a hoax, it was Mike & Josh killing Heather etc., etc. It's very hard to explain away the fact that they go into this house that is heavily insinuated to be that of Rustin Parr's and that the belongings of the crew was found in an undisturbed house foundation.
However, at least on the Parr house, I can say this - Parr was convicted of his crime back in the 40s or 50s and the house burned down shortly afterward by locals, disgusted by his crimes and who probably wanted to erase what would be a monument to them. Fair enough. This would mean that the crew would have been transported to around the time of his crimes. This is supported by the bloody hand prints on the walls. However, look at the house again. This is a totally dilapidated building. There's dirt on the floors, the walls are peeling, the fireplace is bricked up, there's no furniture. This looks like a house that was first abandoned and then left to stand for many years, falling into total disrepair, not a house someone had recently been living in.
This therefore presents the remote yet intriguing possibility that there was another cabin in the woods. One hint at this is the woman near the start of the movie who talks about the cabin the witch is supposed to haunt. True, she could be talking about the Parr house, but that would seem like a huge detail to omit, given how famous that tale is in the town, and she also talks about the house in relation to the disappearance of two hunters, and not the kids, as in the case of Parr.
In fairness, the state of the house is as much a goof on the filmmakers' part as anything because I think they did intend it to be the Parr house but it remains that it looks like an unsuitable location for anyone to be living in. If Rustin Parr had been living in such conditions, it makes the legend even scarier, because it looked grim. Might as well just camp in the woods all year.
In the book "Blair Witch Dossier", one of the anthropology students on the dig was interviewed by police and is asked about their opinion on finding the film equipment in a layer of *undisturbed* ash and how this relates to the possibility of a hoax. Their response? "If it was a hoax, it was a damn good one." Maybe this means that if someone out there with enough forensic expertise wanted to hoax all this, or just make it appear is if Elly was responsible, they could. That still leads onto the question of why they'd want to, though. Also, one of the search party interviewed, mentions that there was another house in the woods which was outside of the search grid but she was sure this is where the filmmakers met their end. Possible solidification of the idea that the house was not Parr's.
And this is not even going into the fact that the latest Blair Witch kind of removes much doubt about what's going on in those woods. However, because of the contradicting messages coming out of that film's creative team, e.g. "Oh, what you saw wasn't the witch.", I don't think they even fully know what was going on themselves. I'd move that this latest film be stricken from the BW canon as it's inferior, lacking imagination and detracts from a lot of interesting discussion about the first.
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