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Blair Bathory
5.2k Plays1 year ago
Blair Bathory has been creating works of horror for many years. She began her career as maestro of the macabre when she was just 19-years-old. Beginning with a 3-minute short film entitled ‘First Date: A Modern Love Story’, Blair wrote, directed, and produced the short film. Instantly gaining a large following after premiering the film online, she decided to follow her success with another film.
Immediately following, Blair wrote another short horror film, but this time at longer length and more ambitious. Planning to create a full foam-latex creature suit she set out to raise the money for production through crowdfunding. After successfully garnering three-times what she asked for; Kitty, Kitty was shot and completed in 2014. It was invited to many film festivals around the world and eventually released online in 2016.
In the process of creating her own horror stories, Blair quickly realized the lack of platforms that short form filmmakers had to showcase their work. Furthermore, she felt the need for a centralized location for the massive amounts of short horror films in existence. With her love for anthology shows like ‘The Twilight Zone’, ‘Tales from the Crypt’, and ‘Goosebumps’ she saw an opportunity to combine the two mediums. From her years of working within the genre and meeting so many talented filmmakers, Blair had an arsenal of films to choose from.
In May of 2015, Blair Bathory rose from the grave and lit the candles inside FEAR HAUS. Once a week The Lady of the Haus introduces her Victims to one new short horror film. Showcasing independent directors from all over the world, an audience quickly grew. Since its conception, Blair has been invited to host a night of horror films at The Rome International Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival, Frightfest and many others around the world. Also, in 2017 Blair took the position of Festival Director at The Spooky Empire Film Festival - running that for the next three years.
Spooky Empire, one of the nations largest genre conventions, was a massive success and gave Blair yet another opportunity to see the best of the best in independent horror cinema first. FEAR HAUS helmed by Blair has done brand activations now at DreamHack, the world’s largest streaming convention, and a tour with across the East Coast sponsored by several liquor companies.
Currently, she is the new host for the widely successful podcast Something Scary, which boasts over 3 million fans.
Blair’s personal social media platforms are highly popular and she reaches over 250,000 fans.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host, Ken Zalante. Editor and producer, Peter Bauer.
Blair's Spooky Journey Begins
00:00:16
Speaker
Yeah, sure.
00:00:20
Speaker
In 2020, the great pause happened, of course, and it was unfortunately lined up with my 30th birthday. Oh, wow. So I couldn't, you know, do anything big like I wanted to or see any friends. But my partner took me to Savannah for my birthday and we stayed at the most haunted hotel there and
00:00:49
Speaker
did all the spooky things.
TikTok Fame and New Role
00:00:51
Speaker
And a friend that we had met in Sedona earlier that year, in August, lived there and she was like, I have to show you this place, Blair. It's right up your alley and it was the Gray Face Museum.
00:01:10
Speaker
which for those that don't know it's a four-story museum run by a husband and wife. And they have some of the most interesting and unique pieces in any type of collection I've ever seen in regards to like oddities and whatnot. So yeah, I was so impressed and I met the owner and he was
00:01:35
Speaker
really interesting. So I shot a video on my phone and I've been a filmmaker for 14 plus years
Podcast Appearance and Inspirations
00:01:43
Speaker
now. So it wasn't something I was going into thinking I was going to use. But regardless, I shot a video and then I fast forward December, I was looking at my phone kind of cleaning up photos and I saw that video and I had been on TikTok for about
00:02:04
Speaker
Six months, but I hadn't really taken it seriously at that point and I just made a little what I now call micro documentary about my trip there and Posted it went to bed didn't think anything of it and I woke up the next morning and it had been viewed 3.8 million times
00:02:25
Speaker
Yeah, shared 42,000 times. It had like 50,000 comments. And a couple of weeks later, ended up being in the New York Post. And the best part about it was Ryan Grayface, the owner, contacted me a month later and he said, hey, that video that you made
00:02:50
Speaker
kind of in a roundabout way saved us because we had our largest day ever since opening and there was a line wrapped around to get in. And he said, if that hadn't happened, COVID almost shut our doors and your posts blowing up kind of breathed some life into the museum. So
00:03:14
Speaker
From there, I kind of just leaned into this spooky travel guide role and haven't looked back since. Yeah.
Influence of the Blair Witch Project
00:03:27
Speaker
Folks, we're talking about Blair Bathory and she's come on to the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast. I'm your host, Ken Vellante. And I thank you for that story, Blair. I mean, talk about inspiring. I mean, I can just kind of feel the feeling of
00:03:43
Speaker
breathing life at a time when, gosh, who knows what was gonna happen, right? So having it tilt positively, gosh, that's amazing. I love you using the term micro-documentary. Just hearing that and seeing your work, I really loved your videos and loved the spots and places that you go to. Also though, the particular quality you have of
00:04:14
Speaker
immersing yourself and not disguising like your immersion within like what, what this is. And, um, and I'm sure you talked about this all the time, but I shared with you, um, Blair witch project who, and I'm, I'm a huge film buff, but I will, I will fight with sword against anybody for found footage films. I will.
00:04:38
Speaker
I will not accept popular prejudice. We might have that. Blair Witch just knocked me aside like it did most folks. In my head, I lived in Maryland for a bit. I knew some of the environs over that way driven through stopping towns like that. One thing I saw that I really enjoyed was you going right into
00:05:04
Speaker
the film, the location, how it came together, and it seems like you, in describing it, were trapped into Blair Witch Project because of your name and how you are, that like, all right, you've kind of leaned into it and been like, yeah, it's Blair Witch Project. But what about your interaction with Blair Witch, in particular that
00:05:29
Speaker
documentary, which I found just great because thank you. Yeah. One, one piece about it is the way you do it, it still hovers around this area of, okay, it was a film. It's not real, but then it is real in the sense of what it creates. And then it's like this real unrealness that I love existing in that space. And when you enter it, you just kind of hang out there and be like, is it real? Yeah. No.
Found Footage Filmmaking
00:05:57
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know it is kind of so tell us a little bit about the you and uh you and blair witch Well, of course my namesake being blair that movie came out uh When I turned eight years old or I had just turned eight years old And at the time I wasn't allowed to watch horror movies and my family never
00:06:23
Speaker
was into that kind of thing. And in fact, my mother to this day still has a great grudge to the Blair Witch Project filmmakers because she specifically named me Blair, in her words, because it didn't have a nickname. Well, unfortunately, I have been Blair Witch my entire life. She was trying to plot out the territory. She really was. And the universe had different plans. But
00:06:50
Speaker
You know, that film was so prolific for not only cinema, but marketing and the internet and also, you know, Ed Sanchez and the other director are both from Florida as well. They went to UCF. So there's also that connection too. But the epiphany I had when I was in Birketsville filming that documentary
00:07:18
Speaker
was I didn't recognize that when I first saw Blair Witch, Heather Donahue, the director in the film, is the first time in my life I ever saw a woman directing. And that hadn't connected for me until that moment. And I was standing in the cemetery and I was actually with Jed Shepard who wrote the scariest movie of all time, Host.
00:07:46
Speaker
and so which is also so found footage so that was all just really surreal in itself but just standing there and kind of recognizing you know how big of an impact that movie had on me was really cool um and i like the what you said about real unreal i think that's what's so cool about found footage is kind of straddling that line of
00:08:14
Speaker
reality and I actually have been working for the last almost two years on trying to make my own found footage movie which I'm very close but I can't say much more than that but yeah it was it was such a cool experience and the documentary was not planned I was on a road trip with Jed because he asked if he could tag along
00:08:41
Speaker
with me going from Chicago to New York, filming some spooky locations like I do. And we were in Monroeville.
00:08:50
Speaker
And we had just gone to the Dawn of the Dead Mall, which for horror fans is a big deal. We got to see the George Romero bust and pay our respects. And we were sitting in this rink eating coffee shop deciding, because we really kind of hadn't decided where we were going to go from Chicago to New York. We just knew we had to get to New York because I was going to be in this other documentary.
00:09:18
Speaker
And we're sitting there and I'm looking at the map.
00:09:23
Speaker
because I'm from the South, so I don't really know that part of the country very well. And in fact, at that time was the first time I had driven through any of that, like Ohio, Chicago, Illinois, all of that. And we're sitting there and I go, you know, Jed, we are, and he's British. So he had no idea where we were. I said, do you know where we are? And he was like, no, I was like, we are literally three hours from Brooketsville.
00:09:49
Speaker
and his face turned white. And it was like, we have to go. So we went and on the way there, he tweeted about it. And Matt Blasey who wrote Eight Days in the Woods, which is the definitive guide on the making of the Blair Witch Project, contacted him and then was like, I want to give you guys a tour. Then some of the original cast ended up being there. And it just kind of, you know, as documentaries tend to do, it just kind of
00:10:18
Speaker
birthed itself. And it was truly one of the coolest experiences of my life because of that epiphany and that full circle moment for me as a filmmaker. Yeah, well, gosh, there's so much there's so much in there.
Blair's Storytelling and Early Life
00:10:32
Speaker
And I, I think one of the things that I enjoy about doing the podcast is to stop and hang around and talk about this type of stuff, you know, and
00:10:44
Speaker
Uh, the show goes around in a lot of different areas. I've noticed lately that, um, dropping into more of the, more of a ghost and spookiness and I adore horror movies. And, uh, I got a Susie block, uh, episode coming up who was in, um, a horror in the high desert one in our heart and high desert to Minerva. I love both of those films, but, uh, so it's been, it's been, it's been fun to, to, to move into this territory of, uh,
00:11:13
Speaker
the different things that I go into. I was wondering about you, Blair. I know you popped around a bit on podcast and something scary, podcast. And I was wondering, what do you, what are your thoughts about, you know, podcasting and, you know, your, you do your video, you know, for the videos. But what do you think about the whole podcasting thing and audio and your experience with doing a podcast?
00:11:37
Speaker
It's been a blessing. It was something that completely fell into my lap last year. Our executive producer and...
00:11:46
Speaker
some random casting agent found me, I guess from my online work. And they asked me if I had ever done voiceover talent. And I said, no, I'm not, I'm not, you know, I've done, it's so funny. I have to defend against being talent because I'm a writer, director, producer, documentarian, but I do do stuff in front of the camera.
00:12:13
Speaker
But I do not consider myself an actor. There's much better people to fill that position. So when they said that, I was a little hesitant because I didn't want to take the job away from somebody that was actually good at it. But I said, screw it, I'll do an audition and
00:12:32
Speaker
I just took to it. It was just meant to be. The EP hit me back and she was like, you're hired. Actually, next week is my 50th episode with something scary. It's gone by really fast.
00:12:50
Speaker
Every week we do weekly episodes, which is incredible because we have staff writers and as a writer myself, I recognize how difficult that is to output four, excuse me, four original stories every single week for the podcast, which is amazing. Plus they are derived from our listeners' personal stories a lot of the time.
00:13:16
Speaker
So just that alone and the team is mostly women. We only have one man on the entire team, which is rare. So that is very cool. And I co-host it with Stephanie Strange. So she does the videos and then I do the podcast.
00:13:35
Speaker
And it's been, like I said, a blessing. And before something scary, I have done what we're doing right here with lots of different podcasters, mostly people in the horror genre, indie filmmaking space.
00:13:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a great medium. It's really cool that anybody can do it. Anybody can pick up a mic and a computer and tell their story. And I think it's great. I recommend anybody to do it, but also same with filmmaking. I mean, anybody can make a movie at this point. So I think, you know, there's a lot of people that are creatives that think it dilutes
00:14:20
Speaker
talent pool, but I don't think that. I think everybody has a right and an opportunity to tell their stories. Yeah, I find I've interviewed close to 200 artists on this, and it's that fascinating area of
00:14:40
Speaker
You know, who am I, you know, what am I, what am I supposed to do? Like your identity and what you do. And I, I think it's interesting hearing from you on, you know, kind of an earlier identification with, uh, you know, making film and, uh, a strong connection with that. Let's dive in on this with the, you know, the, one of the questions is when did you see yourself as an artist? When do you see yourself as an artist?
00:15:08
Speaker
since I was six years old. The other epiphany with the Blair Witch thing is I got my first Hi8 camera, the same camera they used in Blair Witch Project, a year before it came out. My father was in news media. He was a news director.
00:15:31
Speaker
This stuff is in my blood, even though we do sort of different mediums, but he's a storyteller through and through. And he won this Hi8 camera in a golf tournament. And I'm his only child, so naturally he let me use it. And I was making stop motion videos when I was, like I said, six, seven years old. And they were always skewed towards
00:16:00
Speaker
It's horror, always, even at that age. And people have asked me so many times, where does that come from? Why were you drawn to that? I have no idea. I don't have a cool story about that other than I just always inherently liked being scared. I love to be scared. And in fact,
00:16:19
Speaker
When I was about nine, there was like this group of little girls that used to hang out in the apartment complex that my dad lived in, and I would gather them all up. And, you know, I was a child, so I didn't know how to really make a movie, but what I would do is I would get these girls and I would play out a scene for them. I'd say, okay, we're gonna cut up watermelon and we're gonna put it in a pile over here. That's body parts. And what I want you to do is look at it and then turn to the camera and screen.
00:16:48
Speaker
Yeah, screen. So I'm directing these little girls at nine years old, and I didn't know what that was at the time, but looking back, it's like I was a director even then. And I was in art schools from the age of
00:17:07
Speaker
you know, 10 to the time I dropped out, I dropped out of high school when I was 15, 16. And I went to a pretty prestigious art high school in Jacksonville. And yeah, so I mean, I've always been artistic, I've always had artistic friends. And yeah, so I've considered myself a creative my whole life.
00:17:32
Speaker
Yeah, well, thank you. So, Blair, on that, what is art,
Art and Expression in Horror
00:17:40
Speaker
right? You're dedicating yourself to this. You've maybe not had so much of a choice of what you've been pulled into and connecting with with all that. But what is art? What is art? Art is everything. Art is
00:17:58
Speaker
the emotion that surrounds us every single day. It's the self-expression of your life experiences and connecting with those around you. I think that it's one of the biggest parts of the human experience and
00:18:17
Speaker
It's something that pushes us forward as a society. So I think it's incredibly important and not to sound like a complete dickhead about it, but I think it's It's just as important as any other role in society to have artists. Yeah, I and I think uh
00:18:39
Speaker
I feel that too, and I think that when you look out into the world or you look into the United States and say, how do we view artists and what they're up to? And I think that's where a lot of thinking in my head goes to, because for me, artists and art is the one thing where you think about the absence of it, then there's no comprehension and I go into a crisis of the thought of being like,
00:19:08
Speaker
Well, there's nothing shiny and beautiful and inspiring and bigger than this and be like, ah, you know, so I I view it as that is that fundamental? One of the things I wanted to wrap back around and I heard you say this on the Blair Witch was that you saw the image of the female filmmaker and I
00:19:33
Speaker
you know pulling that detail out and for what it meant to you uh was was was really inspiring and just seeing and seeing that and also within horror right because you operate in horror and it's a weird ass feel for women where there's like opportunity and doing the whole horror thing but it's also you know caught up into trickier dynamics of what happens to women or victimization so um
00:20:03
Speaker
So you, and you talked about working with groups and women and doing horror, is there something when you're doing that and approaching horror for you that you know you're going to be doing something different, that the angle is going to feel different coming from you and your female crew? I mean, yeah, as far as working with women, I try and
00:20:30
Speaker
do that in all aspects. I mean, even with the paranormal investigation stuff that I've done, it's mostly all women. And I think
00:20:40
Speaker
It's like all artistic endeavors. The more perspectives you can have, the better. And of course, my perspective is gonna be much different than a male filmmaker or a filmmaker of a different race or from a different country. I have my own unique experiences and I think that creates something exciting.
00:21:09
Speaker
But it's also difficult. I mean, there's only so many roles to fill on a set. And I think we're just now getting to a time where it's slightly normal to see a female DOP or a female
00:21:26
Speaker
Producer on set but it's still less likely than seeing a man in those positions So, you know, I hope you know in the next 20 years of my career I can help lift as many female filmmakers up and give them jobs and create jobs and
00:21:44
Speaker
I think the dynamic is women have a more nurturing aspect to themselves just naturally.
Realism in Found Footage Films
00:21:54
Speaker
So when you have a bunch of women on a set versus more men, I think there's a calmness, no offense to my male colleagues, but I think there's a calmness and a warmth that adds to the whole experience, which if you've ever been on a film set, it's intense and chaotic.
00:22:13
Speaker
tiresome and you have a very limited finite amount of time to get the shots you need for that day. But when there's this almost serene calmness, it just makes it flow better, I think.
00:22:31
Speaker
Yeah, what a found found found footage or so you and I just freak out about it and I think when it came out and more popular culture and Blair Witch Project paranormal activity and this kind of what people say all this, you know, the found footage but
00:22:47
Speaker
You and I know it goes back into some deeper history of filming and the use of maybe lower quality camera or bootleg footage in horror has been a deep part of the tradition. But what is it about found footage that feels so different?
00:23:07
Speaker
than other things. I mean, it feels different for me. I might say some things, but what is it about found footage where we have this conversation and be like, this is the shit that like, this is this is horror, right?
00:23:19
Speaker
It's the closest you're going to get to a reality. When you are making a traditional narrative, it's very polished and you have a lot of cooks in the kitchen, so to speak. When you are doing a found footage, inherently, you have less of a budget. You have a smaller crew. You have less gear. You typically don't have a full grip and electric team.
00:23:45
Speaker
You have to use the things around you. And there's actually a lot of restraint that's needed as a director when you're making a film like that because you want to get the most authentic reactions out of your actors and your team as possible because at the end of the day, you're selling this as
00:24:03
Speaker
found footage as if this was filmed by real people and this is to feel like it really happened that, you know, Heather, Mike and Josh were really out in the woods trying to find the Blair Witch. So I think that's why it feels different because of all of those elements. And I think that's what makes it such a cool sub genre and something that
00:24:27
Speaker
I think all filmmakers should explore personally because I think it's a really great exercise to explore.
00:24:35
Speaker
Yeah, and I think I see
Horror's Impact and Regional Influences
00:24:38
Speaker
it in other things. I think of alien or aliens. And it's not like found footage, but when we're talking about through a lens or there's infrared, there's all these different, it's a little, it's like using the piece of a different way of showing that feels like, okay, now I'm right here in this. And I love that because I feel that energy. And the thing is for me as a horror fan, the movies that have,
00:25:03
Speaker
like where I've and there's only been like three or four for me like when I walk outside the theater and being like like do I need help like what is going like that happened to me like a couple times Blair Witch um paranormal activity and a couple other films where I walked down I was like I think I should just talk to somebody and process out I mean it's an hour yeah I mean I loved it but like it really it really really impacted me
00:25:31
Speaker
So I do love that piece of it. I'm a Yankee from up in Rhode Island, and I live out in Oregon now, but I've been to the South, and I think of growing up in New England, I would have kind of
00:25:48
Speaker
mythologies or fables, you know in my head about Going south but I've experienced I've experienced there and I tell you one thing that has always drawn me That might be romantic in and of itself but
00:26:05
Speaker
I've read a lot of these stories of 19th century, early 20th century, southern early African-American writers and of the conjure that's in the woods or witchcraft, but in particular conjure meaning a particular thing.
00:26:24
Speaker
Within that tradition and I when I think of that I think of I went to Savannah once and Savannah looks like I think it would look like and how it's been shown to me it has this swampiness this gloominess That ghosts seem to be here nearby or I don't know at all um but what I want I'm leading to
00:26:51
Speaker
Is there something particular you're down in Atlanta? Is there something particular about Southern horror or what's in the woods down by you? Absolutely. I'm actually working on a new short film with an amazing photographer that
00:27:14
Speaker
only shoots the south and i think him and i kind of connected because i told him i i think people don't understand the mist mysticism of down here you know being from florida people have three things they think about when i when i mentioned i'm from that state disney world florida man cocaine in miami so i was gonna say miami vice your third one hit it yeah yeah and i
00:27:43
Speaker
I hate that because Florida is so beautiful. And there's such a unique smell and a feel. There's an energy and vibrance in the air. And my grandmother's in Apopka, which is only an hour outside of Casa Dega, which is the psychic capital of the world. And Palm Beach is also known for having a lot of witches and psychics and mystics. And also my mother's from Appalachia.
00:28:14
Speaker
And she doesn't like to admit that, but I lived in East Tennessee for a while, and I lived up in the mountains, and I kind of reattached to my roots in that way. And the AT, the Appalachian Trail, that actually starts in Georgia, very close to where I am. Oh, of course, yeah.
00:28:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's got such a cool vibe to it. And then, of course, you know, Appalachia has so many interesting urban legends and, you know, the hat man and, you know, wind goes and the things that hide up in the trees don't go out into the woods at night. And, you know, all those old wives tales,
00:28:59
Speaker
So yeah, I think there is something really special about down here. There's also an enormous amount of history here. I'm from Jacksonville Beach, which is really close to St. Augustine, which is the oldest city in America. And also one of the most haunted cities in America. I think when you get to places like Savannah and St. Augustine and places that have just this
00:29:24
Speaker
reverence for historical moments in time. I think, yeah, you're going to find a lot of ghosts. Yeah. Yeah. I, there's something particular that I like and I know, and just seeing you, you know, looking at geography and kind of connecting land to horror and the stories back behind it. You know, I see myself as very influenced in terms of horror from where I live. I think like in New England, right? Actually my,
00:29:53
Speaker
my first long-term girlfriend lived down the street from the Warrens in Connecticut, with the Annabelle Dowell and all that type of stuff. And then when I lived in the Midwest, it's, I don't know, serial killer territory, right? John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer. When I went to Marquette, I lived four blocks from Dahmer's
00:30:14
Speaker
apartments that were there, and there's Ed Gein in Plainfield, and there's this Midwest type of thing. And then out here in Oregon, it's Spooky Woods, UFOs, and there's a different vibe out this way. But I tend to be sensitive and feel what the
00:30:38
Speaker
the weird vibe or that cultural piece that's in the ears. Where's your favorite locale for found footage? I've found footage for me. I always want space to work more effectively through and throughout. Of course, Blair Witch is in the woods. I remember one of my favorites, record REC, that was in a Spanish movie.
00:31:07
Speaker
a quarantined hotel apartment apartment building there. What's your favorite locale for the found footage when it shows up?
00:31:17
Speaker
Obviously, the woods are classic. I like Hell House LLC, I love Butterfly Kisses. I just saw a found footage movie that took place in the desert. I thought there were some really interesting ideas in that. But I want to see something outside of the United States and I want to see something in a really beautiful location.
00:31:45
Speaker
really interested in the dichotomy of setting a horror movie in a really beautiful place and having these horrific things happen to people when they're in the most beautiful beach or whatever. I think M. Night tried to do something like that with Old, but it was a miss for me on that one, but I appreciated what he was trying to do, and I think that's cool.
00:32:14
Speaker
For me, if I'm going to make a film, I want to do something people haven't seen before.
00:32:23
Speaker
I have never seen a found footage movie on a beach or somewhere. The mountains would be cool. Appalachia would be interesting. So yeah. Appalachia would be interesting. I think I like the idea of course horror.
The Role of Art in Blair's Life
00:32:36
Speaker
I mean, if we think of a beautiful scene, right? Like everything's geared towards you letting everything loose and like opening yourself up. And the most extreme violation is the horror to occur there. So.
00:32:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think that would be a nice spot. What's the role of art, Blair? You talked about what art is, and I'm just going to connect one little question to this. I talk to folks nowadays, and sometimes they feel art is more important, or the role of art, as they define it, is more important. What do you feel the role of art is here? We're chatting in spring 2023. In my life or in the world?
00:33:20
Speaker
Um, both. Okay. In my life, it's, it's almost
00:33:28
Speaker
an addiction at this point. I mean, I got to get my fix every day. I was just talking to my best friend yesterday. We've been best friends since high school, and he's a filmmaker in LA. And we both went to an art school, but we're only one of two out of a handful that actually have continued on and done whatever our art was from that school. And he was
00:33:57
Speaker
He was asking me if...
00:34:01
Speaker
because I'm in my 30s, so people are having kids. A lot of people have been married now for a decade at this point. He was saying, do you think people are happier just living that life? I said, I don't know, but it's just different. I don't relate to people like that because I couldn't wake up in the morning if I didn't have something that I had to make or create or fight for. Maybe that's
00:34:30
Speaker
a fault in my personality or something, because it's really, really hard. That's your drive though. That's what gets you to do the thing. Yeah. And I've only just gotten to a point in my life where friends and family have accepted like this is the role I'm playing in this life because throughout my twenties,
00:34:51
Speaker
They were like, are you sure you don't want to go to college? Are you sure you don't want to settle down? Are you sure you don't want to do X, Y, and Z? And I was stubborn. I was like, no, I'm a filmmaker.
00:35:04
Speaker
You know, I'll be 33 this year and people are just now finally accepting like, all right, I guess this is what she's going to fucking do. Well, you know, I mean, but I mean, but you should. I want to go back to one of the pieces you mentioned, you know, you're talking about acting and when you were talking about that, I was thinking in my head and just seeing, you know, um,
00:35:27
Speaker
the the
00:35:44
Speaker
I think that when you inhabit the space, even as you blare in the graveyard and talking, there is character to it. It's not artificiality, but there is performance to that. When you're talking about acting, I was like, I don't know. I know you're doubtful about it, but I'm like,
00:36:07
Speaker
We're all actors. We all wear masks. If you want to get deep with it. As a director, there's a level of understanding of that that you need to have because the director works with the actors and that's their main job.
00:36:35
Speaker
I think I just don't want to live the lifestyle of being an actor. Being an actor is really hard. It's tough, Jeff. I'm not strong enough. It's hard enough trying to be a filmmaker, trying to be an actor. I've lived with actors. They've been my roommates and I can't do the auditions. Also, I'm a control freak. I can't be told what to do.
00:37:01
Speaker
Yeah, I'm interviewing I'm interviewing with my disobey my disobey shirt, you know, I work as my day job is as a union rep. I think I'm paid in encouraged in my lifelong oppositional behavior. I get it, Blair.
00:37:22
Speaker
Yeah, there's some there's there's leaders and there's followers, you know. Oh, man. Oh, man. No, it's it's it's great to it's great to chat about that. I'm going to hit you with the big one and then we're going to kick around just a little bit more horror or whatever. The big one is the something rather than nothing question. Blair, why is there something rather than nothing?
00:37:46
Speaker
Because we create it, we make something out of nothing. And that's one of my favorite things about my job, whether it's something scary or my documentaries or my narrative films.
00:38:03
Speaker
It's just a seed of an idea. And then somehow, miraculously, you get all the people you need, you find the money, God willing, and you make it. The only thing I can ever compare it to is like, I do not have children,
Discovering Eerie Locations
00:38:23
Speaker
but it's almost like giving birth because you are creating something out of nothing.
00:38:30
Speaker
Yeah. Well, that's I love that. That's that's incredible. I I usually have a bunch to say, like right after it. But, you know, here is it. There you go. I know. I know. I it's such a it's such a funny question to ask over time because it's meant to it's meant it's I don't know. It's even meant for me to to stumble over. Right. But I
00:38:59
Speaker
as far as capturing you know what we are human humans are doing right like the ideas even if there is nothing or there's like the things are valueless or things like i'm gonna forge something in this for this reason and like that's that that's that resonance to lean into and that's you know you being a filmmaker and wanting to wake up excited to
00:39:25
Speaker
not just do and create like this kind of like Pollyannish type of thing but you said fight because like it isn't like when you wake up and you're talking like horror films it's like the whole world rallies around you being like fuck yeah that's what we want to do it's like you have to get in there and get in there and do that um
00:39:43
Speaker
wanted to ask you just generally about those documentary videos, the mini docs, you go into locations outside of, you know, related to Blair Witch and such. You mentioned one that you've bumped into that you maybe didn't have any expectation, didn't know what you're going to see. And then it was like, whoa, and you captured it.
00:40:07
Speaker
That happens almost every time. People have asked me before, like, how do I find the locations? It's all different ways. And sometimes I do research beforehand. Sometimes I'll go to a diner at whatever place I'm at and ask the waitress, hey, what's the spooky shit in your town? So I typically don't
00:40:38
Speaker
over-research where I'm going so I can be surprised and be in the moment. One of the more terrifying ones that I did find was in Athens, Georgia. I was working for a company called Horror Pack at the time, and I was at their shipping facility. And I asked the workers there, hey, what's some spooky shit around here? And everybody kept mentioning the murder house.
00:41:08
Speaker
They told me the address after work. I drove over there and it was this big yellow house on the corner of this residential area. And it had this beautiful mosaic on the front of it with a sailboat in it. And I could tell immediately it was abandoned. There was nobody living there. Yeah.
00:41:27
Speaker
And it was really creepy because you could just tell there was something up with the energy of this house. So I pulled into the driveway and I started walking around it. I started filming it. And at this point, I didn't know the story at all. I just knew it was the murder house.
00:41:50
Speaker
And I walked up to the back porch, which had these beautiful, you know, very big glass doors. And I grabbed the handle just to see if it was open. And I immediately felt this like shock of energy and I pulled back and I just felt dread standing there in that moment. And I was looking into the living room
00:42:17
Speaker
from those glass doors. And what I later found out was where I was standing and where I was looking at was where they found the bodies of the homeowners, the husband and wife who had been stabbed to death with a spear and rolled up in their own carpet by a young boy who was 14 that had been hiding out in their basement for three days waiting to kill them.
00:42:39
Speaker
And it's called the Sutton Family Murder House. And that one was intense because I didn't know anything about it. I just knew something had happened. But to find out after the fact that I was staring into the exact location of where these poor people were found was intense.
00:43:02
Speaker
Wow, with the stories you tell, I need to allot myself dead air, dead space time to allow some of it to sink in. Wow. That's incredible. That energy. I wanted to tell you this.
00:43:20
Speaker
Just the locations and maybe it fits what we're talking about. Places where I felt I'm not particularly sensitive to those energies for myself and I've talked about this with folks. Empath and connects with the hundreds and thousands of people. Union Rep, the arts organizer and I connect in that way.
00:43:41
Speaker
I've never felt a strong sensitivity to the other or anything like that. But I tell you, in both places I have felt that were definitely south of the Mason Dickson was like Harper's Ferry.
00:43:58
Speaker
And I'm thinking, actually, maybe in my head, tied to the Civil War battlefields in Tiedem, kind of places of mass war death. I don't know, maybe I was more sensitive to it in that area. But, yeah, locations and the energy they have. And hey, once you told me, they're telling the story about Murder House, I'm like, okay, here we go. Hey, hey, hey, what is it? It's not like old old man Foster's, you know, rickety shack, it's Murder House.
00:44:27
Speaker
Well, I've been to, you know, I do believe that I don't know if you've ever seen the original or the remake of The Grudge, but that's what that movie is about is, you know, locations.
Energy at Sites of Tragedy
00:44:40
Speaker
It's almost like.
00:44:42
Speaker
the earth absorbs the energy of these tragedies. I've been to the UT clock tower shooting site, which was very intense, which was the largest mass shooting at the time in the US. There was the bell tower or something.
00:45:04
Speaker
Right. Yeah. The UT clock tower, former Marine went up there and shot a bunch of people. Um, and then he was killed. And then, um, I also went, so that's in Austin, Texas. And also in Austin, Texas, I went to the yogurt shop murders, which were infamous murders of four little girls in a yogurt shop in 1993, which is still unsolved to this day. Um, and it, and it's one of the most horrific crimes.
00:45:34
Speaker
I've ever read about. They were just brutalized, the poor kids. Places like that. What is strange sometimes when you go to these places like the UT clock tower and the yogurt shop, which is now a Persian rug store in a
00:45:58
Speaker
just a normal shopping center. Everybody's just be bopping around, living their life, of course. Sometimes I stand in these places and I'm like, do they know? Do they know what happened here? There's something eerie about that is that where we live and the places we go to every day, you don't know the history of these places sometimes.
00:46:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think about that a lot. And I think, you know, for you picking up some energies around that, I think there's a sensitivity where you're like, hey, folks, like something's off here. It's like, you know, and and you would have the perspective of people kind of, you know, walking their dog and you'd be like, oh, haunted spot, like just energies there.
00:46:43
Speaker
And those places are sometimes more creepy to me than some of the haunted houses I've gone to. Because I went to the Conjuring House in Rhode Island. I've been to the Bellaire House in Ohio, which is supposedly as a demon. And I went to Madison Seminary in Ohio, which is one of the most haunted places in Ohio.
00:47:06
Speaker
Those places are less scary to me than the Sutton family house or UT clock tower because it's like people are just walking by like nothing's happened. You're going to the haunted houses like expecting a ghost, but like just these random kind of innocuous locations. There's definitely something really creepy about that.
00:47:27
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I had one of the most fun experiences as a filmmaker and a graphic novelist, Jason Mayo, out in Rhode Island. And when I was a kid, I went to this Rocky Point amusement park in Rhode Island, super small. You can't drive unless you catch traffic. You're in and out in an hour, no matter which way you're going, right? And so small state, very unique culture. But this was the amusement park that was down in the mid part of the state.
00:47:57
Speaker
And, you know, mix of urban legend, mix of crime and mishap and mayhem and a mix of, you know, haunted rides. And he captured a lot of that mythos in Tales of Rocky Point. But it was so fascinating to me because it created a thread for me to see
00:48:19
Speaker
There was this one ride, it was like House of Horrors. I had like a Viking and the Vikings axe came down on one time on somebody and they thought it was real and weird mishaps on rides. But the thing is, these rides, because they're so expensive, they kind of repackage them, refurbish them, and then they show up in other places. So like the flume went to Japan.
00:48:40
Speaker
And then another one went to some other place. So like starting to fall, I'm like, there's something going on with these rides. Because when I was a kid, I was on it and it was, you know, just stuck in my head and then following, you know, even objects, right? Like you were talking about the museum of objects and what energy they hold, right? Of when you did that video of like,
00:49:03
Speaker
if it's tied to a serial killer or it's a unique piece of something that's connected to a tragedy. It's what do you do with that? It's like, you know, even in terms of art, like how do you handle it and approach it?
Unsettling Objects and Museums
00:49:20
Speaker
Yeah, they, uh, Grayface had actual from the site, uh, flavor aid packets, uh, from the, um,
00:49:33
Speaker
I'm blanking. The Kool-Aid, when they drink the Kool-Aid and the Kool-Aid. Oh, yeah, the Jones. The Jones. Jones Town. Yeah. Jones Town. Yeah. Yeah. So they had the flavor aid packets from Jones Town. You kidding me? No. And Ryan said he got it from a dirty cop that was on the scene. He had that that was just like
00:49:56
Speaker
creepy. There's some deep stuff about Jonestown, like people dying by drinking Kool-Aid, but he also had Eileen Wuornos' underwear that she wore right before she was executed. That was very strong, like just the presence of that.
00:50:20
Speaker
He had a ton of art from John Wayne Gacy and Charles Manson. And he had the shoes of Joseph Druce, who was an inmate that crushed the skull of another inmate who was a pastor that abused children. And he killed him in prison. And Ryan has the shoes that killed this man. So stuff like that. It's just like,
00:50:46
Speaker
Well, I think I enjoy the mere question of what to do with that stuff because I could say for myself, I'm not going to apologize for a deep morbid curiosity towards all of it. Now, what do you do with it or whether you want it or view it? Those are all questions for individuals, but it's a provoking territory. Oh, yeah. I mean, I've had
00:51:16
Speaker
I don't get as much hate as I thought I would making some of the videos I make. The true crime stuff is definitely more polarizing than the ghost stuff, which I find really ironic, honestly, because it's all about dead people. I mean, all of these stories are about people that have died, typically in tragic ways. And I never tell stories of recent murders and I don't talk about kids.
00:51:42
Speaker
Um, the only time I did that was about the yogurt shop. Um, and the only reason I did that was because it's still an unsolved case. Um, Oh, and I visited John Benet, Ramsey's grave site. Um, just cause I've had a fascination with her my whole life. Cause we're the, we're the same age or we would have been. Um, but yeah, I mean,
00:52:11
Speaker
The way I see it, what I do is no different than somebody that works in media for a news channel. In fact, I feel a little more respectful sometimes. Like I said, my dad worked in news media. They are on the scene mere minutes after somebody has been tragically
00:52:37
Speaker
maimed or killed or whatever the story is. And the whole point of being there is just to get the story. There's no regard for the family or anything like that. What happened? Who, where, when? Yeah, just the basic details to get it out. And it's salacious too. I mean, at the end of the day, the news has got to make money too. So my point is that I think
00:53:09
Speaker
I think with all of this stuff, kind of like you said, it's a choice. I think with the items, it's called murder billia. I think it's the right place for it as a museum because an individual can choose to go inside the museum and look at it. You know what you're getting when you buy a ticket to go to Grayface.
00:53:32
Speaker
Yeah, well, I find it fascinating.
Where to Find Blair's Work
00:53:37
Speaker
I mean, I talked just in a recent episode, you know, on the same point was Bobby Beausoleil. And I believe, you know, and he was an artist in prison. And those questions come up, right? Because if you think about art and art object,
00:53:52
Speaker
We do get attached to whose hand they came off. We know a Warhol is a Warhol and came out of the factory like we attached to that type of thing. And I find it always such a fascinating interaction with art is the thing in and of itself and then whose hand was connected to it and how.
00:54:14
Speaker
Blair, tell us where to find your work. You mentioned TikTok, your videos, and YouTube. Tell us where to find the things that you do and maybe things you'd like to point out in particular to folks.
00:54:32
Speaker
Sure. You can find me literally anywhere on the internet. If you just Google my name, you can find... I'm actually officially, according to Google, an internet influencer. So that's... Yes. Clear battery. Influencer. That's interesting. Yeah.
00:54:50
Speaker
But yeah, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, I post longer documentaries on YouTube. And then I post, like I said, my micro stuff on all the other platforms. And I mean all of the other platforms. I think maybe you found me through Instagram, but yeah, I post all that same content on TikTok with some additional stuff.
00:55:17
Speaker
I would say if anybody wants to
00:55:23
Speaker
dive deep, go to my YouTube, because I have some news documentaries coming out. And I also have a show on something scary that will be finally airing, I think, next month on their channel, which is called Fright Scene, which is all about what we've been talking about, spooky locations all over the world. And some of these places I went, nobody else has footage of. So it's some pretty unique sites.
00:55:52
Speaker
Hopefully very soon i can announce some other cool stuff some some bigger projects but yeah i'm all over the internet you can find me anywhere so it's
Cultural Perspectives on Morbid History
00:56:02
Speaker
so great on this question there's a certain randomness but i just wanted to ask you on and i'm that i didn't never seen any videos you familiar with the um
00:56:12
Speaker
uh the bone ossuary and said let's in um check republic it's a church yes with all bones that create all the objects like the religious objects and and such um i don't know i just thought of that maybe talking about videos i actually made a video not too long ago about sites i want to visit in 2023 like dream sites and that was included
00:56:36
Speaker
included in the video. But I also went to a church in Milan in 2018 before I was documenting all this stuff and it was similar. They had skulls from ceiling to floor, real human skulls in the church. It was
00:56:56
Speaker
i don't know if beautiful is the right word but it was i saw it so i saw it so so long ago i actually saw it about twenty five years ago i'm in in in listeners it's uh said let's uh in the check republic and it's called an ossuary and it's actually
00:57:15
Speaker
a religious Christian religious place of worship and for my sensibilities I'm like how the hell like I know Christianity is like bones and spirits like I get all that but I'm like Why is everything made up like and it was a place for folks to be interred in a particular way in Consecration but also to be a holy place much more maybe connected to bones and dirt so yeah
00:57:45
Speaker
There's actually, I've been all over Europe and I work with a lot of Europeans. There's a completely different acceptance and understanding of morbid, more, you know, life after death and a reverence that Americans don't have. And I don't think we understand, but you know, culturally, you know,
00:58:14
Speaker
They've just been around longer. I think, you know, when I go to the UK and Italy and stuff,
00:58:22
Speaker
They're just more chill about talking about this kind of stuff. You don't have to be super PC. I was in this place called Guernsey, which was famously occupied by the Nazis during World War II. Everybody just talks about it. It is what it is. It's just a matter of fact. I kept telling them, the people I was with, I was like,
00:58:45
Speaker
We would have to tiptoe around a lot of stuff if we were in America, because it's just different here. We just have a different way of dealing with these subjects. So yeah. Yeah. I much prefer going to places in Europe just because it's like, oh, you want to see where this crazy historical murder happened? Yeah, let's go. Come on up in the car.
00:59:12
Speaker
Yeah, I do enjoy that myself when I've been over there and I'm sure taking your words about some of the some of the different ways of talking about history or sharing and
Conclusion and Future Projects
00:59:25
Speaker
Blair Bathory. Blair, it has been a great pleasure to talk with you on the podcast. I enjoy everything that we were talking about. And yeah, and really appreciate your work and
00:59:43
Speaker
you know, what you create. And I will say just hearing about some of your talk of maybe creating found footage. It's in the works. I could not be more excited and we'll learn at appropriate times what the heck is going on. But Blair, thanks so much for coming on to the podcast. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. I really appreciate it. Awesome. All right.
01:00:18
Speaker
This is something rather than nothing.