With the upcoming release of the new “Blair Witch” the hype has been high and we simply cannot get enough of it. The film has been long due and tons of fans are eager to see if there’re any particular changes or if it’s basically gonna be the same thing only with some CGI thrown in there. Now the original made a big impact back in 1999, hitting it big at the box office with a whopping $248.6 million, on a $60,000 dollar budget. But besides being a big blockbuster hit, did you know that the movie has even spawned a variety of things that range from video games, books, and even comics? Well, if you didn’t here are 10 more facts, you didn’t know about the original Blair Witch Project. 

1.- The instructions for the day of all 3 actors were similar to that of a scavenger hunt. The production team programmed coordinates on their GPS devices to locate milk crates with 3 plastic canisters that contained the story for the day of each of them but weren’t allowed to share it among each other for dramatic suspense.

2.- For budget purposes, one of the cameras used in the film was actually returned to a nearby “Circuit City” in Maryland. So if you shopped for a camera between 1998 and 1999, you might be the lucky (or unlucky) owner of a movie prop.

3.- The actors were only paid $1,000 dollars a day since the film was on a limited income, but after the high success of the film, it is said that they actors received an additional $300,000 for their appearance.

4.- During the 1999/2000 hunting season in Maryland, hunters weren’t too fond of the film. Due to the popularity of it all, a vast amount of tourists and fanatics kept pouring in from everywhere to catch a glimpse of the infamous witch. Making this difficult for them to hunt, and has been the worst hunting season ever.

5.- In one of the most unforgettable scenes from the movie (where Heather is crying into the camera) she actually wasn’t acting, her reaction was that solely of fear, being alone in the woods in the middle of the night petrified her.

6.- The teeth and hair you see twined in the twigs are actually REAL! The teeth were donated by dentist and writer/director of the film Eduardo Sanchez and the hair actually belong to actor Joshua Leonard.

7.- Pulling a classic “Cannibal Holocaust” move, the actors (to make the film look actually legit) pretended to be dead. They even went as far as listing themselves “missing” or “presumed dead” on the IMDB. Heather Donahue’s family even received condolences letters and calls.

8.- They had a code word for the actors who wanted to speak out of character, instead of your typical “uncle” for them it was “taco”.

9.- The directors didn’t disclose the fact that the movie was “fake” instead they made them believe there was an actual “Blair Witch” and that the legends were true, they even hired locals to “lie” about the so-called legend when the actors decided to make some research of their own. Both directors were so intense in a lot of aspects of the film, that in fact, to make the setting, even more, creepier, they left the actors alone and with a limited supply of food, but they did spy on them from time to time.

10.- When the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, the filmmakers put up “missing” poster signs of the actors for extra publicity. They actually got in trouble since a real kidnapping was going on at that time in that area and were forced to take them down.