The horror masterpiece that still haunts me

It's the month of October which means costumes, candy, and scary movies!

The scary movie festival is an important part of my Halloween experience and there are always too many great selections to fit into one evening.

Each year I watch Michael Meyers chase the baby-sitter played by Jamie Lee Curtis in the 1978 classic "Halloween" and the eerie music scored by director John Carpenter unnerves me every time, even though I know exactly what happens.

"Halloween" resulted in several throwaway sequels, but it remains one of the most influential movies. It's the archetype for the teen slasher genre.

Other movies like "The Omen" and "Rosemary's Baby" have their rightful places in the horror movie hall of fame, but in my opinion, the scariest movie ever made hardly gets a mention anymore in spite of it being a tremendous box office hit in 1999.

Take a second to think which film could be so chilling, so creepy, to stand above all others to earn the number one position in my mind. Here's a hint. I'll never go camping in Burkittesville, Md.

"The Blair Witch Project" is the most terrifying movie of all time and has the honor of unnerving me so much I physically reacted to the fear. I didn't get motion sickness like so many people complained about. I sometimes think all those theatergoers who claim nausea due to the shaky camera work are too embarrassed to admit it was the fear making them sick.

I remember going to see the movie on a bright, hot summer day with my mother and sister, two people I thought were brave for going to see it since they cover their eyes during the "Scream" movies.

The reviews for the movie called it such things as "truly horrifying," which piqued my interest since I appreciate the power a movie has to stir emotions. "Blair Witch" should almost come with a warning label beneath the image of a frightened Heather Donahue in her stocking cap on the film's poster. Warning: This film may cause nightmares, extreme fear of trees, sticks, rocks and cracking sounds, accompanied by chills, sweats and an unyielding sense of terror.

As the three student filmmakers started getting deeper into their project interviewing townspeople about the Blair Witch, the movie had me interested in the story and a sense of trepidation had built inside me. By the time they were lost in the woods, with no hope of getting out, I was curled in the fetal position in my chair, hands covering my face yet forming a small hole to view the screen. It drew me in as much as it made me want to run and hug a stuffed animal.

Directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, unfortunately haven't had much success since, but "Blair Witch" demonstrates their skills. They expertly used stories of the witch to set a background, then built on it with the woodland setting to create a feeling of isolation. For some people, the stick formations and piles of rocks outside the tent the characters slept in didn't work. Still, with each approaching darkness in the film, I felt the same since of impending doom the three campers probably felt.

In the theater, when Heather Donahue cried into the camera, saying she's scared to open her eyes but too scared to close them she not only revealed her character's fears but mine as well as I sat riveted and petrified.

When the movie ended with what is the most disturbing climax I've ever seen, the lights lifted and my mother and sister, unfazed, got up to leave. When they saw me, still in the fetal position, shaking, goosebumps on my skin, with a couple tears down my cheeks, they sat back down, acutely aware it would be a while before I could move.

The story of going to see this movie lives on in my family's history, and my mother loves telling it to my friends over the years as an example of how cowardly I reacted to what she maintains is "a fun, little ghost story."

There will probably never be another film as effectively haunting as "The Blair Witch Project," but perhaps that's best. I don't know if my nervous system could take it.

Chaz Holmes is the Columbia Basin Herald's news assistant. His self-deprecating tale belies a bit of humor in the memory of an effective horror movie.