pumpktoberfest #12 - legendary horr-raw.
film: the blair witch project
beer: elysian night owl pumpkin ale



after college, even though i'd never been camping, i wrote an unrealized masterpiece screenplay about a group of friends on a weekend camping trip. the title--"into the woods." i had dreams of making the film while on an actual camping trip with the cast & crew. we'd spend a few weekends in the woods, bond & make a film all guerilla style. a year later, i read about a film called the blair witch project. from what i gathered, it was a film made up of found footage by three filmmakers who went into the woods of maryland to film a documentary about a local legend--the blair witch. they never returned. i was intrigued, so i went to the film's website (a great early example of online film marketing) & read up on the backstory behind the film & legend. from what i could tell, shit was real.

with all the website folklore i'd absorbed floating around in my head, i caught the film at a packed kendall sq cinema on the second night it was out. when i left the theatre, i was in complete shock, walking the streets of cambridge like a zombie, feeling like i'd just seen three people's final days but saying to myself, "that wasn't real...right?" even though it wasn't, i immediately put my plans for "into the woods" on hold. i'm very susceptible to believable ghost stories. i had a high school friend who told me that on multiple occasions he'd seen his grandfather wandering the halls of his house in the suit he was buried in. now every time i think of that guy, that's the first thing that comes to mind & i still get the occasional chills from it.

as for blair witch, i went back & watched it today & while i now know that it's not real, watching those people lose their minds in the woods still made me extremely uneasy. the film does a great job of creating a believable reality. a sequel about three boston filmmakers investigating the maryland disappearances came out the following year. i never saw it, but as legend has it, it sucked. now, ten years after the original release, they're working on a new one. since folks will already know that it's not real, i don't see how a new one can be as effective as the original, but i wish them luck...milk that cow.

every pumpktoberfest season, a frightening creature from the underworld roams the streets of seattle's capitol hill looking for prey. as legend has it, back in 2003, a group of five university students were out one evening, walking down pike & celebrating pumpktoberfest when from out of the night sky an enormous bird, the elysian night owl, swooped down, mauling four of them before letting out a deafening hoot & flying off, leaving the fifth to tell the tale. since then, he's returned every year to feast on the blood of the hip capitol hill citizens. in an attempt to appease the satanic strigiform, seattle's elysian brewery developed their seasonal elysian night owl pumpkin ale.

according to the label, each barrel of it is brewed with seven pounds of pumpkin & pumpkin seeds. i'm not sure how big the barrel is, but it sounds like a lot of pumpkin regardless. it's definitely present in the flavor & color. in addition, it's conditioned with a ton of spices (nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, ginger & allspice). they really dominate the flavor, with the cinnamon standing out the most. it was almost too much, but there was just enough pumpkin flavor to balance out the spices. i'd heard a lot of raves about the beer beforehand, so i was sort of expecting something amazing, but to be honest, while i thought it was well done...it wasn't anything legendary.