Welcome to Burkittsville

By RICHARD CORLISS

Yes, Heather, there is a Burkittsville, Maryland. It's a lovely little town of some 200 souls, whose old homes, festooned with flowers and flags, make Mayberry look like Milwaukee. The good folks of Burkittsville can even handle a media frenzy, seeing as all those Blair Witch doings supposedly took place here. "I don't mind," says postmaster Larry Ott of the strangers dropping in to snap photos and buy postcards. "It takes the boredom out of the day."

Joyce Brown, the town's part-time mayor, doesn't care for the film's subject matter--"When it comes to witchcraft, we're a Christian community"--but is savvy enough to have ordered up a town website to set the record straight. Other locals see Blair Witch as a kind of mistaken-identity comedy. "Everybody's kind of laughing," says Robin Goetz, a library clerk. "Why, no one could get lost in our woods. All you'd have to do to get out is walk down toward the farm property."

A few visitors just aren't polite. A sign that read WELCOME TO BURKITTSVILLE--FOUNDED IN 1824 was stolen, and someone left a candle burning in the cemetery. "That wouldn't have been a problem, except for the drought," says Sergeant Tom Winebrenner of the Frederick County sheriff's office, which fields 30 to 40 calls a day about the film. "Many still think it's a true story. When you tell them the truth, they think there's a conspiracy and a cover-up."

The truth, eh? We know a guy who can sniff that out, and he works not far away, in Washington. Fellow name of Fox Mulder.

--R.C. Reported by Melissa August/Burkittsville

With reporting by Melissa August/Burkittsville