I’m Portuguese and prior to researching for this article, I hadn’t really heard of Teresa Fidalgo.

Perhaps I have at one point but my memory is failing me. I may once have been the target of one of those creepy you’re-going-to-die-if chain messages and deliberately ignored it and deleted it from my recollections. I live in the same district — Lisbon — where the accident supposedly took place, in the gorgeous Sintra hills I can see from my balcony, usually enshrouded by a misty aura.

So, what has my research revealed to me? Has it struck fear into my heart to never drive through Sintra at night ever again? Well, not really.

The Blair Witch Project, but Portuguese style

I watched the original short film, A Curva (The Curve), without first watching an interview with the director, and supposed sole survivor of the paranormal event, David Rebordão. I immediately recognized the style of film students and aspiring filmmakers, who had clearly seen and been inspired by The Blair Witch Project, a groundbreaking horror film that had come out a few years prior. I recognized the tone, choice of words, and upward inflection of amateur actors trying their best. I noticed each deliberate cut and rudimentary glitch-like effect. There was no doubt in my mind this was a short film posing as the real deal to gain traction and public attention — and undeniably successful at that, even though the director wasn’t anticipating it.

Teresa Fidalgo was a young woman who supposedly died in a car accident in Sintra in 1983. The Curve follows Tânia, Tiago, and David — the latter who is filming and testing out his new camera — as they pick up a hitchhiker, Teresa, who is suspiciously standing on the side of the road wearing a plain white dress. Before the movie is abruptly brought to an end, Teresa lifts her arm, pointing, and tells the group to be careful of the curve ahead as that’s where she had the car accident and died. We’re made to think that the ghost then attacks the trio. The film closes with David – assumedly – writing about how Tânia and Tiago died and he was the lone survivor — such a stroke of luck! Also, one would need to be quite the unfeeling jerk to be capitalizing on their two friends’ deaths if this were true.

But it isn’t. The movie’s director never actively intended for it to be taken as such, although, he clearly welcomed the fame.

When fiction, stranger than truth, gains life on the internet

In an interview, David Rebordão candidly explained that this short film was done to promote another movie he was producing at the time.

He had no clue of the impact his 3-minute-and-a-half-long film would have, much less that it would be felt outside of Portugal. The director talks about The Blair Witch Project — in The Curve, the group even discusses witches early on — and how in the wake of it, he wasn’t expecting people to take his short film as seriously as they did. He was surprised to see it subtitled by netizens in so many languages and even advertised as real in certain countries like, for instance, Mexico.

But that’s precisely what Rebordão thinks is the most fascinating aspect surrounding the film: How it acquired a universe of its own through the reactions, interactions, and overactive imagination of the netizens.

Rebordão’s YouTube channel even includes a sequel – which, the comment section below was quick to point out, features the same people who “died” in the first film.

Watch it, or your cousin’s elderly pet parrot’s cousin’s hamster’s imaginary friend will perish on the next Feb. 30. It’s your call.

ncG1vNJzZmivlZy8tcDHoqqcp6aav6awjZympmeemsS0e9ahpmaho2LBpr7ErJhmnpmZrq2zzmaYp5xdnsButMSrZKysn6fGbr7EmqNo