Blair Witch: The Secret Confession of Rustin Parr
by D.A. Stern

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Book Reviews of Blair Witch: The Secret Confession of Rustin Parr

Book Review: Well-crafted genre piece
Summary: 5 Stars

Rustin Parr is the recluse hung by the State of Maryland in 1941 for the murders of seven children in the basement of his house in a forest near Burkittsville. Parr's final confession is given to a young Roman Catholic priest who has some sins of his own that he carries with him from Burkittsville. Sixty years later, an acquaintance of the priest, who has long since renounced his holy orders, struggles to find out why the old man burned his house down, killing his beloved wife in the process and leaving him comatose with third-degree burns.

You won't need to be a Blair Witch fan to enjoy this novel, which can be read in one sitting. Stern gives you everything you need to understand what happened in Burkittsville and why the evil there found its way to the home of an elderly couple in Florida. Horror fiction rises or falls on a few key points. One involves whether the supernatural action arises from simple human frailty, a dark force entering through a chink in the armor of an otherwise decent, normal person. Good horror hews close to reality -- at all points, we must be able to empathize with the human targets of evil, which requires them to act and react in ways that we ourselves would react if faced with the same situation.

D.A. Stern accomplishes both of these goals here. He also doesn't condescend to the reader with a neatly-wrapped ending. You'll be able to figure out what happened in Rustin Parr's basement, but only if you pay attention, catch the clues Stern provides and put them together on your own.

For a book no doubt designed simply to keep public interest alive in a popular horror movie, D.A. Stern has gone above and beyond the call of duty. "The Secret Confessions," with its echoes of Nathaniel Hawthorne, is one of the best piece of horror fiction you will run across this year.

Summary of Blair Witch: The Secret Confession of Rustin Parr

BUT THE NIGHT BEFORE HE WAS HANGED, PARR TOLD HIS PRIEST AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT STORY.

NOW -- NEARLY SIXTY YEARS LATER -- THE DETAILS OF RUSTIN PARR'S FINAL CONFESSION CAN BE REVEALED.

It was the most shocking crime imaginable: the kidnapping and brutal murder of seven innocent children. The particulars of Rustin Parr's crime made the case even more horrifying: the ritual nature of the killings, the strange symbols carved into the children's bodies, Parr's revelation that voices in his head told him to commit his foul deeds. Some whispered that Parr's crime was just the latest in a series of murders attributed to Maryland's infamous Blair Witch. But when Parr went to the gallows, all agreed that justice had been served; evil had been put to rest. All, that is, but one man.

Dominick Cazale was the priest who heard Parr's confession. He heard Rustin, a man who before the killings was generally acknowledged as the gentlest of souls, talk about the bodies found in his basement, and about Kyle Brody, the eleven-year-old sole "survivor" of the killings. What Parr told Cazale that night was a shockingly different account of what happened to those seven children. Yet the words that passed between the two men remained a mystery..until now.

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