Why I Set My Paranormal Stories in Real Places

There’s a place in East Haddam, Connecticut called Devil’s Hopyard.

The name alone sounds like somebody made it up for a horror story.

They didn’t.

You can get in your car, drive there, park, and walk into the woods yourself. There’s a waterfall called Chapman Falls where the water has carved strange potholes into the rock. There are old stories about how those holes got there, including one involving the Devil himself.

Depending on which version you hear, he either sat on the rocks and played a fiddle, accidentally got his tail wet, or became angry enough to leave marks in the stone.

New England is good for stories like that.

I’ve always loved strange stories. Ghosts. Monsters. UFOs. Places where something happened that nobody can quite explain. I especially love the stories that have been passed around long enough that nobody remembers exactly where the truth ends and the bullshit begins.

But what interests me even more is when those stories are attached to an actual place.

That changes something.

You can read a story about a fictional haunted forest somewhere in Maine and maybe it scares you.

But if I tell you something happened at Devil’s Hopyard State Park, you can look the place up.

You can see the waterfall. You can find the trail. You can drive there Saturday morning.

And if I've done my job as a writer, maybe when you get out of the car and start walking toward the woods, you'll remember the story.

That's the kind of strange paranormal stuff I love.

The Ground Is Part of the Story

I think writers sometimes underestimate how much a physical place can give you.

You can sit at a desk and invent a forest. I've done it.

There will be trees. Maybe some fog. Probably a branch cracking somewhere behind the character.

All the usual stuff.

But walking through an actual place gives you details you wouldn't necessarily think to invent.

The sound changes. The temperature changes. The ground shifts beneath your feet.

There are roots exactly where you want to put your foot. Rocks covered in moss that are more slippery than you imagined. Water somewhere nearby that you can hear before you can see it.

There might be an abandoned foundation twenty feet off the trail that makes you wonder what used to stand there. There might be a path you didn't expect.

There might be a place where the trees suddenly open and you realize you can see much farther than you thought.

Or the opposite.

You realize that twenty yards into the woods, nobody on the road could see you at all.

Those details matter.

Because when I eventually sit down to write, I'm not trying to remember what a creepy forest is supposed to feel like.

I'm remembering the forest that I walked through that felt creepy.

Hockomock Swamp Is Already a Strange Story

Then there's the Hockomock Swamp in southeastern Massachusetts.

"Hockomock" is commonly translated from an Algonquian term as something close to "the place where spirits dwell."

That's a pretty good start.

The swamp is enormous, and over the years it has become connected to stories about strange lights, giant birds, Bigfoot-like creatures, ghosts, UFOs, an ogre sighting, and just about every other bizarre thing New England can produce.

It's also part of the area people now call the Bridgewater Triangle.

You don't have to believe any of those stories. I'm not even sure believing them is the interesting part.

The interesting part is standing near a place like that and thinking about why people have been telling strange stories about it for generations.

Something about certain places gets us interested, curious. A swamp at night already contains everything your imagination needs.

Limited visibility. Unfamiliar sounds. Water you can't see through. Ground you can't necessarily trust. Things moving that you can't identify.

Then somebody tells you people have reported seeing something strange out there.

Now go walk around. Your brain will handle the rest.

I Want You to Be Able to Go There

That's becoming one of the things I love most about writing fiction set around New England.

I want the places to be real.

If I write about something happening in Norwich, Connecticut, I want you to be able to find the street.

If something happens near an old cemetery, I want that cemetery to exist.

If a character walks through Devil's Hopyard, I want someone who has actually been there to recognize pieces of it.

Maybe I'll change things. It is fiction after all. I'm going to lie to you, that's part of the arrangement.

But I want to build the lie on top of something solid. Because then there's always that little possibility sitting underneath the story.

You can go check. And I dig that.

Walk It Before You Write It

I've started thinking about this as part of the writing process itself.

If I'm going to write about a place and I can physically get there, I want to go. I need to walk it, take pictures, listen, look for the things Google Maps doesn't tell you.

Where would somebody hide? Where would somebody run? What can you hear from the road? Where does the light disappear first? What does the place smell like? What is completely ordinary about it? That last question might be the most important.

Because real places aren't creepy all the time.

There might be a family eating sandwiches fifty yards away. Or some guy walking a Labrador. A kid complaining that his feet hurt.

Then you turn down another trail and suddenly you're alone.

That contrast is where a lot of good stories live.

This Might Become Part of the Road

One of the reasons I've been writing more about The Road here is because eventually I want to spend a lot more time on it.

There are martial artists I want to train with. Dojo I want to visit. Towns I want to explore. Weird roadside places I want to find.

And there are stories scattered all over this country that I want to chase down.

Maybe one morning I'm training in somebody's dojo. That afternoon I'm hiking to a place where people have been reporting strange lights for fifty years.

That night I'm sitting somewhere with my dogs trying to turn what I saw into a story.

That sounds like a pretty good day to me.

It's also part of what Te Before Jitsu is becoming.

Training is a huge part of my life. But so is writing. So is wandering around strange places wondering what happened there.

I don't really see a reason to separate those things anymore. The world is full of places with stories attached to them.

Some of those stories are true. Some are folklore. Some are complete bullshit.

And some haven't been written yet. Those are the ones I'm looking for.