In the office of Discovery & Discovery America, senior producer Tom Betteger opens a package from Los Angeles and pulls out a videotape and a letter.

Tom Betteger put the tape aside, opened the letter and read it.

The package was mailed by García Rodriguez, a former colleague who worked at the American Broadcasting Corporation, who had previously told him about the package, and when Garcia attended the St. Denis Film Festival, he found someone peddling a video of three college students who went on an expedition to Maryland, but the three were missing, and the people who searched for them only found the relevant items and the camera that was left behind.

However, the video tape in the camera is damaged and is still being repaired, so I can only cut out a part of it and mail it to see if it is valuable.

I also hope to help the three missing college students.

Tom Betteg subconsciously felt that this was not normal, but the first thing he remembered was not to verify the authenticity, but whether the video clip was worth playing.

Many of the Discovery Channel's documentaries are themselves filmed under the title of documentary.

In these years, the so-called real documentaries don't do too much.

Tom Berteg came to the workbench and played the videotape, and at the beginning of the footage, a subtitle appeared: it was taken from a camera lost in a forest......

Then there is the questioning of a town by three college students, who frequently mention that there is a scary Blair girl nearby, and that many people have disappeared in the town over the years.

Three college students enter the mountain woods where witches may be present......

Witches are widely spread in the West, and Tom Berteg has also heard many stories of witches, especially in the eastern United States, where there are quite a few long-established witch legends.

There is a market for this film!

Tom Betteg quickly made a judgment that it should be attractive, after all, the legend of witches is extremely widespread among the folk.

Three college students disappeared because they were exploring the secrets of witches, what a big gimmick.

What if something goes wrong in the later stages? Tom Betteg doesn't believe that the three disappeared because of witches, and even thinks that the tape itself is a bit problematic.

But García Rodriguez visited him specifically, and he also owed Garcia a little favor back then, and the tape itself was also full of sales, so it would be a pity to give up.

It can not only return favors, but also attract audiences, and it is best to broadcast it.

As for the real or fake......

Tom Berteger quickly had an idea, in case it was fake, there would be a show later, called Exploring the Secrets of Witch Legends and the like, to expose the falsity of these legends.

Only five or six minutes of video is put to the end, and the three college students disappear into the dense forest, and at the end subtitles appear, as if they were the address of the website.

As a senior producer of the American channel, he has a lot of power in his hands, making decisions quickly.

"Hart, come here. Tom Berteg called in his assistant and handed him the tape: "Send it to the fifth program group and tell them that they will be on the show this week." ”

The assistant named Hart took the tape and immediately went to the fifth program group.

Tom Betteg took out Garcia Rodriguez's letter and read it again, then went to a secluded part of the hallway, called Garcia, and the two talked for a long time, agreeing to get together on a business trip to Los Angeles.

On an ordinary weekend, Kirkland finished dinner, went out for a walk, returned home and turned on the TV, connected to the cable station, switched to his favorite Discovery Channel, and waited for the new episode of "Exploration and Investigation" to air.

It's an enchanting show that has covered the Bermuda Triangle, Pirate Treasures of the Caribbean, ferocious great white sharks, and Amazonian piranhas.

Because I like this show very much, Kirkland specifically checked it on the Internet, and the ratings of the show are quite good, not long after the broadcast, the audience reached 2 million.

This is quite a remarkable achievement for a documentary-type program on cable TV.

"Hi everyone, I'm Carrie Byron, and welcome to this episode of Discovery and Investigation......"

When the time came, the show started on time, and the blonde hostess in a cowboy hat stood in front of a dense forest and said: "Look behind me, there is an ancient stone monument erected in front of this wood, and the words on it are warnings. ”

The camera zoomed in, and the text engraved on the stele was faintly visible: "Beware of witches, stay away from the woods!"

The hostess pointed to the inscription behind the text and said, "This stele was erected in 1824 and is inscribed to Mr. Johnson Seaton, the first mayor of Bulun, Maryland. In many legends on the East Coast, due to the pursuit of the church, many witches in Europe came to North America with the colonial development and hid in the mountains and forests of the East Coast of the United States. ”

Seeing this, Kirkland was full of interest, this episode of the show was obviously about witches, although his home was in the west, he grew up and heard a lot about the legends of witches in Europe and the United States.

Even, most of the terrifying memories of childhood are contracted by the legend of the witch.

His grandmother said that when his great-great-grandfather was still living in the middle, he served as the sheriff of a small town, and there was a gypsy woman who fell in love with the daughter of a rich merchant in the town, and the rich merchant despised the gypsies very much, and led people to kill the gypsy woman, but he did not expect the gypsy woman to know witchcraft, and he cursed the rich merchant before he died, and the rich merchant's family fell seriously ill and died one after another......

It also led him to think that the gypsies were bad guys for a long time.

"The legend of the Blair Witch has a long history and has attracted a lot of attention. ”

The words on the TV brought Kirkland's attention back to the show: "We received a videotape some time ago in which someone accidentally picked up a camera and some personal belongings in a dense forest, and later examined the remains of three missing college students, who, according to the last person to see them, wanted to find out the secrets of the Blair witches. ”

The host's speech is speeding up: "Since the tape is still being urgently repaired, we can only edit out the intact part of the footage first......"

The screen of the program changes, the host disappears, and a videotape with a serious camera shake begins to play.

In October 1994, three film students disappeared in the jungle near the small town of Bouzisville, Maryland, while they were working on a documentary about the old local legend, "Blair the Witch." A year later, their backpack was discovered, and the cassette tape, Hi-8 camera, and 16mm camera clearly recorded the final journey of the trio......"

The tape was not long, that is, five or six minutes, but Kirkland's eyes widened, this was obviously the three college students taking selfies with DV cameras, there was absolutely nothing wrong, they were crazy to find witches?

Kirkland shuddered when he thought of the legends of those witches, and ran to the jungle to find the witches.

Then, another thought came to mind: The three college students are missing? Have they been found now? Even if they can't find the living, can't they find the dead?

It can't be a witch encounter, right?

Kirkland hurriedly drew a cross on his chest.

The show is still on the air, but Kirkland's head is full of witches and three college students, after all, human lives are at stake.

The names of the witch and the three college students lingered in his mind all night, causing Kirkland to lose his concentration when he went on a date the next day.

"What's wrong with you?" asked his girlfriend Harley, concerned.

Kirkland told the truth: "I watched a show on the Discovery Channel last night, and three college students went out into the mountains and woods to look for witches, and they disappeared. ”

"Really?"

"It should be true. Reflecting on yesterday's show, Kirkland said, "Someone picked up the video of the three college students taking a DV selfie and sent it to the Discovery Channel. ”

Harley was curious, "Won't she be killed by witches?" I heard my father talk about witches, and some witches are said to eat people. ”

Kirkland shrugged: "Don't know, the show doesn't reveal any more information, poor kid." ”

At the end of a day, when Hallie came home, she met Lisa from her neighbor's house, and the two walked towards the community while chatting, and without knowing what was going on, Hallie mentioned what she had heard Kirkland say in the morning.

"Yesterday it was said on TV that three college students went to find a witch and disappeared, and there was no one alive or dead. ”

This is a religious country, materialism is not the mainstream, Lisa immediately asked, "Really? Which TV station does the program really have witches in the world, right?"