New “˜Blair Witch’ offering nothing to scream about

  Illustration by HINGYI KHONG/Daily Bruin

By Aphrodite Manousos
Daily Bruin Contributor

The latest installment in the Blair Witch chronicles, “The
Secret Confessions of Rustin Parr,” reveals that even the
occult can be made banal. Of course, for those die-hard fans who
believe that “Blair Witch” is a masterpiece, this novel
will be a great piece of eye candy.

Set in the sleepy community of Burkittsville, Maryland, this
tale follows a former priest named Dominick Cazale. Fifty years
ago, Cazale had an unforgettable encounter with Rustin Parr, a
hermit living in the Black Woods, a dense, claustrophobic forest
said to be crawling with evil magic.

Parr was believed to be the murderer of several local children
from Burkittsville who were found dead in the woods. Upon his
capture, Parr claimed that he was not responsible for the murders,
that strange voices in his head commanded him to carry out the
brutal crimes. Some locals believed the real culprit was the
infamous Blair Witch, a 17th century sorceress expelled from the
town for drawing blood from innocent children to use in her spells.
The ghost of the Blair Witch is now said to haunt the Burkittsville
region, still reaping her sinister revenge on the community that
ostracized her so long ago.

The only person who might know the truth about Parr’s
guilt is the priest who heard the condemned man’s final
confession, but that priest, Cazale, has kept the sanctity of the
confessional for the past fifty years.

When the novel opens, Cazale is in the hospital, comatose and
with third-degree burns on over 30 percent of his body. His wife
has been killed in the same fire that destroyed his house and left
him incapacitated.

BOOK REVIEW  

Title: Blair Witch: The Secret Confessions of Rustin
Parr
Author: D.A. Stern
Publisher: Pocket Books
Price: $11.95 Pages: 160
Rating: 4

Meanwhile, Detective Nicholas Yamana (who is fashioned a bit
after Columbo, with his haphazard manner and pseudo-ignorant act)
is a hard-nosed cop investigating the fire. Meeting up with the
narrator, while both are visiting Cazale at the hospital, the two
men try to extract information from each other to solve the mystery
of the fire that gutted Cazale’s home and killed his wife.
Somehow, the fire is related to the confessions of Parr, recorded
over 50 years before the events in the story now unfold.

The novel is a simple read. The only questions one will have are
over the mystery of what actually took place in the woods and what
happened to Cazale. Every historical tidbit, every religious
allusion, every tale of witchcraft and superstition is explained in
layman’s terms. No need to worry about complicated words or
storylines here.

The motivation to continue reading might come from the desire to
figure out the meaning behind all the mysterious
“witch’s markings,” arcane celtic symbols that
Parr carves into the arms of his young victims and that later also
appear on Cazale. Or one might continue reading to find out if the
murders were all due to supernatural causes. Unfortunately not much
will be revealed about either mystery.

Reading the synopsis on the back cover will suffice if one is
unable to dredge through the 150 pages of the book as the author
does not cover much more inside. In the end, the reader is left
guessing what really happened. Did Cazale himself go mad and burn
his wife and home? Did the ghost of the Blair Witch really kill
those children? Was it 11-year-old Kyle Brody, the one survivor out
of all the children kidnapped by Parr, who committed those heinous
crimes? Was Rustin Parr an innocent man, a lunatic, or a liar?

“The Secret Confessions of Rustin Parr” serves its
purpose as a semi-entertaining book, following on the heels of a
much talked-about film. If you find yourself with nothing
better to do than to contemplate your navel, you could do worse
than picking up a copy of this book.