Currently on Blair Witch: Season 1...

Troubled teenager Liam Kent has gone missing from his home in Burkittsville, Maryland. In the absence of any concrete evidence, the Burkittsville Sheriff's Department has given up hope. But Liam's mother, Rosemary, hasn't. She has hired you, a private detective, to help her find her son.

As you investigated Liam's disappearance, you found that he was fascinated with the legend of the Blair Witch, and that he was struggling to cope with the death of his father, Hudson.

You helped Rosemary discover that Liam was spending his free time holed up in the all-but-abandoned basement of the Burkittsville History Museum, reading about the history of the Blair Witch. While exploring that basement, Rosemary was able to find some of LIam's belongings and personal notes.

Some of these notes contain a number of strange coded messages, and they appear to be written in two sets of handwriting: one is Liam's, and one belongs to a mysterious stranger.

Rosemary is certain that this mysterious stranger is responsible for Liam's disappearance, and has asked you to decode the messages' meanings in order to find out this stranger's name.

Hints

Handwritten Letter

• A document and item from the previous episode will help you solve the coded phrases in this letter.
• To solve this code, you need to revisit Liam's notebook from Episode 1. Using Liam's pen, shine the light on the inner cover of Liam's notebook to reveal the clue you will need to decode this message.

• This guide in Liam's notebook will tell you how to read the coded phrase.

• This is the guide to a pigpen cipher, in which each letter of the alphabet corresponds to the shape it is drawn within. For example, since the letter "E" is drawn within a square, it is represented by a square in this code.

Logging On

• Rosemary tasks you with finding the name of the person Liam was talking to. Submitting the name to the tipline on www.kentcase.com will complete the episode. The website's password is Quietly5.

Mysterious Symbols

• The carved figurine has four symbols carved into its chest. Figuring out the meanings of these symbols will help you to decipher the rest of the symbols found in this episode.
• The carved figure portrays a young man wearing a bracelet. Does this remind you of anyone?
• In the History Museum security reports, Anthony has included an image that contains another message written in the mysterious symbols. Can you use the letters you've already figured out to decipher this message?
• There is more to the handwritten letter than meets the eye.
• There is more to the lore pamphlet than meets the eye.

Reveals

Handwritten Letter

• Decoded, the phrases written in the pigpen cipher read:

  • I felt in my gut that this was the same one
  • Rosemary asked me to get dinner with her at The Silver Moon the very next day
  • Death doesn't always mean finality, not when love remains
  • Pull to the forest
  • Was I ever going out there of my own free will at all?
  • If I ever visit the hollow again, I'm not going to be able to come back.

Mysterious Symbols

• The figurine is a carving of Liam, who, as Rosemary mentioned in Episode 1, was known to wear a bracelet that his father gave him.
• The four symbols on the figure's chest spell out his name: L-I-A-M. You now know four of the symbols of the mysterious alphabet that Liam was using. Plugging these four symbols into the rest of the instances of the mysterious symbols will allow you to decipher all of the letters in the coded alphabet.

• The symbols of the History Museum security reports translate to:

  • I'm not finished yet.

• Liam has written the following on the handwritten letter in invisible ink.

• Decoded, the phrase written in invisible ink on the handwritten letter reads:

  • death doesn't always mean finality

• Liam has left the following messages in invisible ink on the lore pamphlet.

• Decoded, the invisible text on this pamphlet reads:

  • You know she is
  • Where to? Into the woods?
  • you should
  • Made of wood from the forest. Supernatural properties?
  • BORING
  • "WE?" Couldn't even mention Dad? YOU didn't renovate anything
  • I wish I didn't have to. She's the only one who can help me

• Decoded, the text of Liam's correspondence reads:

  • I'm not very talkative.
  • Can you understand this?
  • Come on. Try a little harder. I know you can do it.
  • Like this?
  • Yes, that's it. Very clever. Your father must have been very proud.
  • Not a witch, not a human, not a friend, not a foe, not alive, not dead.
  • No. Although I hear her, sometimes. I feel the compulsions she seeds into my heart. Can't you?
  • She appears in many different ways.
  • What's your name, anyway?
  • You can call me Carver.
  • Do you like my gift? I found it for you in a very old hollow.
  • I have my ways.
  • Things and, occasionally, people.
  • If he was, I could help you find him. I can't stand to see a family torn apart.
  • living and dead and somewhere in between.
  • Tomorrow night.

• The mysterious figure identifies himself to Liam as Carver in this document. This is the name that Rosemary asked you to find. Type the name Carver into the tipline on www.kentcase.com to complete the episode.

Transcripts

Handwritten Letter

It's strange to think that this may be the last time I come this far out into the forest, after spending my entire youth running around this place with an abandon that frankly bordered on stupidity. Guess that's what happens when there's nobody at home who cares enough to keep tabs on you, and a tiny part of you wants to trip into the creek and hit your head on a rock just to show them that they should've.

Nevertheless, in a few short weeks I'm going to be a father. I've got my own family to think about, and being a father means developing a sense of self-preservation for your kid's sake, if not your own.

So, this is my goodbye to a place that's been very important to me for many years. Hopefully, once I've got what I have to say off my chest and leave this letter behind me, I can close out this chapter of my life for good.

Ever since I found this place as a teenager, I knew there was something special about it. Special doesn't mean safe, of course. But it does mean fascinating, especially for a precocious and impulsive kid.

I stumbled on this strange little hollow by total chance after I'd gotten into some knock-down, drag-out fight with my mother and "run away from home" with nothing but a few quarters and an empty lighter in my pockets. The first thing that struck me when I walked in was that outside sound didn't seem to penetrate the hollow at all. No cracking twigs or rustling leaves, only the sound of my own breath. The second thing that struck me was the thing at the center of the place. The twisted, hollow stump of a tree with bark as white as maggots. I remembered Anthony talking about the Blair Witch being tied to a twisted white tree. [Unintelligible]

I went over to get a closer look, and when I put my hand on the bark, it was colder than I expected it to be. Then, I felt a sharp pain in my palm. I'd managed to get the most wicked splinter imaginable and ended up bleeding all over the tree as well as myself. I started to feel numb and lightheaded, and I left. I got home right before sunset. That's one local taboo that I've never once broken, and that I never will break. Knowing about all the people who'd gone missing after staying out too long was enough to make me make that concession, at least.

I used to go out to the hollow a few times a week, always in the daytime. I'd write in my journal and while away the hours, which seemed to pass in a matter of minutes out there.

One time in the hollow, I wrote a note that I never intended to send to a girl who I knew was miles out of my league. I couldn't bring myself to throw it out or destroy it, but I was too mortified to keep it anywhere that another living soul might be able to find it. So I shoved it to the very back of the hollow hole of this tree. [Unintelligible] I know that doesn't necessarily mean anything, but I still couldn't help but feel as though it did.

For a short time after, this was our spot. Her house wasn't the happiest place to be at the time, what with Jess staying over to deal with her whole ex-husband situation. I'd dare Rosemary to go and find the notes that I wrote for her, and she'd find them and leave some of her own for me. I thought that if neither of us had a place to be happy of our own, I could make a place for us to be happy together from scratch.

Maybe it was naive of me to think that there was any place for joy in the forest, after all the tragedy that's taken place here. Rosemary certainly started to think so after a while, anyway. But even though she hasn't come out here since high school, I've still visited sometimes, just to look at the remnants of our old love notes, or to occasionally squirrel away something new into the tree's hollow.

I always liked the image of paper, the pulp of a desiccated tree, being buried within a tree that was dead itself. It like the thought of Rosemary's and my love notes returning to the earth while our bodies are still out in the real world, alive. [Untintelligible]

But the recurring nightmare that I've started to have about this place lately has been enough to scare even me away. Almost every night, I dream that I'm buried underneath that stump. I try to claw my way up, but I never make it to the surface.

Ever since I've started having that dream, I've felt a stronger [Unintelligible] than ever before. [Unintelligible]

Either way, I have a strange feeling that [Unintelligible]

I'm still going to have to go into the forest sometimes, for my livelihood. After all, I've got a family now, and they're going to depend on me for a long time. But I can be careful. I'll keep leaving before sunset. I'll never, ever bring any of this up to Rosemary. She shouldn't have to worry about it, not when she's going to have a new child on her hands so soon.

Liam's Correspondence

• I know you're out there. I see you in the forest all the time, and I bet that you're watching me leave this note for you right now. Who are you?
• Come on. This note's been on the path for days, there's no way you haven't seen it. Answer me or I'll call the cops and tell them there's a weird man following me.
• Answer or I'll stop coming out into the woods.
• [Unintelligible]
• What does that mean?
• [Unintelligible]
• ?????
• [Unintelligible]
• Okay, so that took me forever to work out, but I think I get it now. [Unintelligible]
• [Unintelligible]
• I think he was. Or at least, I hope so. You know, I thought you were him at first.
• I'd see you in the forest, out near where it happened, and I'd think about all the stories there are about this place. There's tons of evidence that time and space don't work out here like they do everywhere else, even my dad would say so sometimes. Plus, I mean, if people can vanish so easily in the forest without any explanation, why shouldn't they be able to reappear too?
• They almost never find bodies when people go missing, even when they search for months and months. I figured that might mean that people who die in the forest don't really die. I guess I was wrong, though.
• That's a very interesting theory, Liam. I wouldn't be so quick to discount it.
• You know my name?
• Does it frighten you that I do?
• I mean, yes. But at the same time, you've had about a million chances to attack me or murder me or whatever since I've come out here alone pretty much every day for the past few years. You haven't done any of those things, though, which makes me think you might not be out to get me. But what are you doing, then? What are you?
• I'm more of an absence than a presence. [Unintelligible]
• You're not the Blair Witch?
• [Unintelligible]
• Sometimes I kind of go numb and then just sort of act without thinking. Other times, a thought pops into my head that feels like it's not even mine. Is that her? It happens the most often when I'm out walking in the forest.
• [Unintelligible]
• [Unintelligible]
• [Unintelligible]
• How long have you been out here?
• As you said, time works differently in the forest. [Unintelligible]
• How did you get that???
• [Unintelligible]
• That note was written before I was born. It should be nothing but pulp by now.
• As you said, time works differently in the forest.
• It really does? Things that should be gone are still out there?
• [Unintelligible]
• You know, I heard your mother the other night. Your house is close enough to the forest's edge for me to listen in. She sent you to your room like a child, all because you spoke your mind.
• She doesn't like when I talk about him like he's still alive. She says it's unhealthy. She doesn't get that the real unhealthy behavior would be to give up on him if there's any chance he's still out there.
• Is he? Is my dad out in the woods? Please, just tell me.
• [Unintelligible]
• You know, he wasn't able to finish his last words to you before he choked on his own blood, but what he wanted to say was "Thank god that you're alright."
• How do you know that?
• I'm connected to this place and everything in it, [Unintelligible]
• Okay. Fine. Please help me find him. I'll do anything.
• I require no payment besides the satisfaction of reuniting a family. Whenever you're ready.
• [Unintelligible]

Rosemary's Confirmation Audio Recording

[Beginning of recorded material]

 

Rosemary: Carver? Liam was talking with someone who called themself Carver? Uh, I recognized that name. (shaky breath) Um, something like twenty years ago, a boy was taken into the forest. Or maybe he wandered in... I don't know. Um. When they sent people out to look for him they found all kinds of strange carvings on the trunks of trees. People in town started to call whoever left those markings the Carver, and the name stuck. (shaky breath) God, I wish Jess were here. Or that I could get her on the phone for more than five minutes. She never understood why I stayed in this town. I guess I understand where she was coming from. (shaky laugh followed by a sob) Whoever this complete and utter son of a bitch may be, we're clearly dealing with someone twisted. I mean, who knows what he's done to Liam. What he could still be doing - (sob) No. I think about that, I'm gonna lose it. (crying) You know what? This will help us get the search parties going again. Sheriff Lanning has a personal stake in this now. When his uncle was sheriff in the nineties, he oversaw the Carver case. I'm going to call Lanning's office right now and then we're going to round up anyone who will follow me into the forest. I'm going to go back in there and I'm going to find Carver. And when I do, I'm going to make him feel the same misery and pain that he's put my family through.

 

[End of recorded material]

SuperNeutral Podcast: The Bell Witch Audio Recording

[INTRO MUSIC, fading to the introduction by our hosts Ed Barret and James Durant.]

 

Ed: Welcome to SuperNeutral, the pint-sized paranormal podcast that pits a believer: that's me, Ed Barrett...

James: Against a skeptic. That's me: James Durant.

Ed: On this minisode, we're going to talk about the legend of the BELL Witch.

James: Not to be confused with the Blair Witch.

Ed: Exactly. Maybe I just have Blair Witch on the brain, but I'd always heard people compare these two legends, and I just had to find out why.

James: Well, why don't you go ahead and tell the people about the Bell Witch?

Ed: Now, the Bell Witch is the name given to an entity that haunted the Bell family in the early 1800s. What I wrote in the newsletter was mostly about the father, John Bell, but now I want to focus on his daughter, Betsy.

James: Okay.

Ed: You see, Betsy has an equally fascinating connection to the Bell Witch. There are some who say that the witch only targeted John after he attempted to shoot it with a gun. But the paranormal activity was mostly focused on Betsy.

James: Alright, and why would that be?

Ed: Glad you asked. I have a theory.

James: Of course, you do.

Ed: What do you think you know about poltergeists, James?

James: (laughs) What do I "think" I know?

Ed: Mm-hmm.

James: Why? Are you about to prove me wrong?

Ed: I am.

James: Great. Well, poltergeists can throw stuff. They... (thinking) can interact with the physical world. Am I wrong?

Ed: Nope, that is all correct. But what you didn't mention, and what I didn't know until recently, was that poltergeists are said to draw their power from children.

James: Come on.

Ed: It makes sense, James! Children have so much more energy than adults. And who would be a better source of poltergeist-powering youth energy than an anxious, angry teen?

James: So, what? Betsy was fueling the Bell Witch?

Ed: Maybe she was powering the Bell Witch, and over in Maryland just a couple decades prior, the children created the Blair Witch.

James: Uh-huh, interesting. Well, maybe both the Blair Witch and the Bell Witch are metaphors for adolescence. Maybe people invented the concept of a poltergeist and a vengeful witch as a reaction to the hormones that cause children to behave with intense emotion at the drop of a hat.

Ed: Or maybe people invented the concept of a poltergeist and a vengeful witch to explain the actual supernatural phenomena they experienced.

James (sarcastically): Excellent argument.

Ed (interrupting): Did you know - did you know that President Andrew Jackson came face-to-face with the Bell Witch? The story goes that Jackson was traveling to visit the Bell family with a few companions when the witch halted his cart on the perimeter of the Bells' property. When Jackson finally managed to move his cart and get to the Bells', she appeared to him again later that night, taunting him and his companions, daring them to try to shoot her. One of them tried, and she beat the living hell out of him and threw him out of the house.

James: That is a great story, but I've already looked into it. The only "evidence" that Jackson ever visited the Bells in the first place, let alone met a witch when he was there, is a letter written in 1894 by a man named Thomas Yancy, who described all of this as an amusing story his grandfather told him.

Ed (good-humored): You're no fun, James, you know that?

James: Uh-huh.

Ed: Thank you, all so much for joining us; we hope you learned something interesting and had a good time doing it.

James: We'll see you in the next minisode.

But until that time comes, it's safe to turn out the lights.

Ed: Or is it?

 

[The SuperNeutral theme music closes out the podcast.]