If you can choose, in which fictional setting would you like to spend Halloween? Maybe in the upside down world of the Stranger Things series? In Dracula’s castle? Or in the land of the dead in Coco, that jewel of the Pixar factory?… The fact is that all these places have their reference in the real world.
Film, series and literary tourism offers more and more destinations to lovers of the fantastic and horror genre. A good occasion to visit them may be coinciding with Halloween. There are some ideas.
Georgia, USA
The world upside down
At first glance, the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, is indistinguishable from any mid-sized Midwest town in the 1980s. With its grid-lined streets where kids pedal to their heart’s content; a large shopping center with movie theaters and arcade machines; its municipal swimming pool, its farm fields, a forest, a lake… However, it hides a dark side. Under its surface there is a replica of the city dominated by evil forces, a gloomy city populated by monstrous beings.
This is the framework in which the successful Netflix series Stranger Things takes place. His exteriors have been shot in the state of Georgia. Mainly in and around Atlanta. Fans can find the mysterious Hawkins National Laboratory in the capital, that complex of gray blocks arranged in the shape of a cross and bristling with antennas (they belong to the Emory University campus or the municipal swimming pool where the protagonists used to go (in reality, the South Bend Pool.) Within a 25-mile radius of Atlanta, you’ll also find the Byers family home, the Starcourt Mall, and the police station.
East Point, Georgia, Atlanta is one of the settings of the series ‘Stranger Things’.
Romania
Dracula’s Castle
Perched on top of a cliff, in a dilapidated state and full of gloomy corridors. This is how Bram Stoker’s novel describes Dracula’s castle. Located somewhere in the Carpathians, in Transylvania, the dust that covers its furniture denotes decades of neglect. Its only inhabitant, the count, sleeps during the day in a chapel converted into a cemetery. His bed is among fifty coffins in a crypt.
This landscape has little to do with the Bran fortress, in the center of Romania, which is advertised as Dracula’s castle. In fact, there is no evidence that Stoker knew it, not even that Prince Vlad Tepes the Impaler – who inspired his sinister character – had stayed there. Still, it has become one of the first attractions in the country.
Dracula’s Castle from Romania.
There is no evidence that Stoker was aware of the fortress of Bran, nor that Prince Vlad Tepes the Impaler had spent the night there
It is a construction erected in 1377, by order of Luis I of Hungary, on the remains of a small fortification of the knights of the Teutonic Order. It houses some 60 rooms, now converted into a museum of armor, weapons and medieval furniture. They also offer information about Queen Maria of Romania, who used these rooms as a summer residence a century ago.
References to Dracula are concentrated in the souvenir shop, crammed with bats and heads of garlic.
France
The domains of the phantom of the opera
The most performed musical of all time faithfully reproduces the underworld created by the writer Gaston Leroux. His ghost inhabited the depths of the Garnier opera house in Paris. A network of galleries and false doors led to the fifth basement, where a lake stretched out between veils of mist. After crossing it, one reached the torture chamber, a hexagonal room covered with mirrors, which connected with the rooms of Erik, alias the ghost. He, like Dracula, also slept in a coffin.
Leroux drank from the history of the opera itself. His novel recalls the constant interruptions in the construction process –during the fall of the Second Empire, the Franco-Prussian War and the stage of the Paris Commune–, parentheses that Erik took advantage of to condition his domains. It is also inspired by a tragedy that occurred during the performance of Gounod’s Faust in 1896: the fall of a counterweight from a chandelier killed one person and injured several. The black legends of the Garnier opera were once the talk of Parisian society.
According to the novel, the Phantom of the Opera inhabited the cellars of the Opera Garnier.
Colorado, USA
The Overlook Hotel
It was precisely during a Halloween holiday when Stephen King began to conceive one of his most horrifying stories, The Shining. He had booked rooms at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, for his family. What was his surprise when he realized that they were his only clients…- Three characters were born from that experience –Jack Torrance, his wife Wendy and their son, Danny– trapped in a cursed hotel: the Over look.
The Overlook had a sinister past, plagued by deaths. At least 50. Among them, some certainly rough…
Located in the Rocky Mountains, in the state of Oregon, the Overlook was isolated by snow for half a year, from October-November to April. It had 110 rooms distributed in three wings with three floors. Built in 1909, it had housed numerous personalities: Presidents Roosevelt and Nixon, businessman Henry Ford, writer Truman Capote and actor Clark Gable, among others. But he also had a sinister past, plagued by deaths. At least 50. Among them, some certainly rough…
Both architecturally and historically, the Overlook bears striking similarities to the Stanley. Including its sinister room 217, which corresponds to the number of the suite where the Kings stayed. 
Colorado’s Stanley Hotel Inspired Stephen King’s Overlook.
Mexico
The land of the dead from ‘Coco’
“Remember me. Today I have to go, my love, remember me…” This is how the nostalgic song of Coco begins, the Pixar classic that calls to keep alive the memory of those who have left us. The film is set in a world beyond the grave where the sun’s rays do not reach but which is illuminated with multicolored lights. Their houses are piled on top of each other in apparent expansion, since new souls never stop coming.
