The AV club on 17 fictional towns that are characters in their own right

[froodle]

Though it only lasted 19 episodes in its initial run on NBC, the horror-comedy series Eerie, Indiana spawned a short-lived spin-off in Fox’s Saturday morning lineup and a series of young-adult paperbacks. Credit the weird pull of Eerie itself, a heartland small town that looks like it was transported whole from a ’60s sitcom, only with monsters, cultists, aliens, and mad scientists behind every door. The premise of the show has new Eerie resident Marshall Teller trying to convince his skeptical parents that they’d moved to The Twilight Zone, as he and his best friend Simon solve the town’s many mysteries. Eerie, Indiana appealed to kids everywhere who felt like the “normal” streets and houses of their neighborhoods were hiding terrible secrets. The town itself seemed to be whispering truths that only the young could hear.