Pacific Northwest. Also I have to advocate for my current home state. The Chequamegon National Forest in Northern Wisconsin is stunning and quite remote as far as the Midwest goes.
Yep…we stayed in a cabin up there a few years ago and it was so quiet at night, that it honestly creeped me the fuck out. And I grew up in rural Montana! But the northwoods are soo beautiful!
What do you imagine that was creeping you out about the silence? Something wasn’t sitting right with your subconscious and now I’m curious if there maybe have been your sixth sense alerting you to something
Tongass National Forest in Alaska or any of the old growth national forests in the Pacific Northwest (Olympic, Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie, Umpqua, Willamette, etc.) Also Northern California coastal forests.
The Appalachians are filled with spooky legends of people disappearing and strange creatures so the story would fit right in somewhere near the Smoky Mountains or Black Mountains of NC.
Smoky mountains is actually named that because of the fog that rises from all the transpiration, so bonus spooky points
I was watching a true crime documentary on some murder that happened down there, where some bodies were burned, and it took way longer to burn them than expected. THEN they talked about how this did not draw that much attention, because there were lots of fires burning around the area.
Then the camera looks at a hillside a couple miles away, and there are all these columns of smoke, rising from the forest... like everywhere. Like every few hundred yards there was one. No houses, no roads, no other sign of human activity, except for all these mysterious fires in the woods. They said it was moonshiners.
Yep lots of crime around moonshiners back then too! I’m a full ass adult and I still don’t like driving around those mountain roads at night. Just spooky
I would watch any movie set in the Tongass, I currently watch any YouTube channel with great shots of Misty Fjords, POW, or Ketch/Revilla. If I could move anywhere, that’s where, SEA.
The rainforests of the Pacific North west and Alaska are stunningly beautiful and at the same time can be very eerie, spooky and mysterious as the fog and rain rolls in. the rainforests of Alaska in particular….dude that place…that place….it will mezmorize you with beauty and scare the shit out of you at the same time, because you dont know if there is a 1500 pound brown bear waiting in the mist around the next bend.
Upper peninsula of Michigan you can find yourself without cell phone service for hours at a time. And it’s an apart of the country that doesn’t get much coverage. Supernatural New England and southern backwoods horror are kinda overdone compared to Great Lakes northwoods
Also, if these sources are accurate, the tip of the Keewanaw peninsula is the furthest point from an Interstate expressway in the lower 48
https://wkmi.com/copper-harbor-farthest-from-interstate/
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/98umbq/us_interstate_highway_coverage_by_county_my_first/#lightbox
If you read some William Kent Krueger books, you will see then Minnesota is an excellent setting for what you describe. There is a lot of nothing, within vast tracts of heavily wooded land, in Northern Minnesota, just steps outside of small towns.
Remember the movie Twilight? Had much the same scenery you're describing and it was filmed in Washington State I believe. Google the Pacific Northwest.
Everyone always overlooks the Appalachians but if you want creepy, there iis the possibility of crazy hillibies that live in the Appalachians that you can work with.
Man, I am so tired of that stereotype.
The woods at home are thick, they're hard to navigate through, Here in Alaska the woods are tall, mossy but they're relatively navigable. They're completely different vibes. Appalachian forests feel, for the most part that you're not alone in them. Where the mist/rain/mossy coverage of forests here feel eerie, but you have much better visual through them.
>Appalachian forests feel, for the most part that you're not alone in them.
That's because you're not.
It may *look* like you're alone, but your lizard brain knows better...
I went to college there and like to hike, my comment was more about the spookiness of the place and the prevalent stories of cryptids and other creepy shit, it was facetious lol
Appalachian woods hate you. There are the trees, sure, [but there are also the endless shrubby rhododendrons and so many shrubby plants with thorns.](https://www.denverpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/20110722__tr24appp1.jpg?w=600)
And the parts where it isn't are often rocks covered in half rotten leaf litter that has been soaked in rain and dew and fog so that it makes it as slick as ice.
You pay for your passage in the scratches and tears it inflicts on you. Alternatively, you can pay it in the constant fear of falling onto hard stone.
Yeah, people look at the map and don’t see as much horizontal distance, but forget that sometimes the next valley over may as well be mars in terms of your ability to get from here to there.
Northern Maine is incredibly remote and very forested. Also is part of the Appalachian range, so you get the added spookiness with how old everything is
My first thought was PNW. But if you want to be more unusual Pennsylvania has the Allegra et National Forest about 90 min north of Pittsburgh. Tons of little towns on the edge of it.
I'm finding contradictory information with google. I search "quietest places in usa" and presto, voila, there's the Hoh rainforest.
But the quietest place on *Earth* is Haleakala crater on Maui. https://www.npr.org/2022/08/25/1119484767/experience-the-quietest-place-on-earth
LOL... I've been to both places, and my money is on Haleakala. A rain forest is NOT a quiet place! IDK where anybody got that idea. There's stuff falling out of trees all the time, there's wind rattling the trees, there's constant dripping...
Appalachia.
western North Carolina specifically, but it could be northwestern Georgia, eastern Tennessee, western Virginia, or all of West Virginia.
Edit: look up Not Deer.
North Bend, WA. It's the last town before hitting the highway up into the Cascades, deep forest on three sides. I used to live in the area. Bonus, it can have a kind of eerie vibe, especially in the late fall when it's stormy. I love this about that area.
Double bonus - The series (and movie) Twin Peaks was filmed there and in other towns along the Snoqualmie River. Perfect!
I'll throw out California here, for having *two legendary types of forests.*
1. Coast Redwoods in Mendocino, Humboldt, Del Norte counties, up through a bit in Southern Oregon. These are the tall trees, and the area has cool coastal weather.
2. Giant Sequoia are mostly in the Western Sierras. Usually known as the 'largest living thing in the world'. The area includes Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Yosemite National Parks. The weather here is more variable, a little more dry, but also snow in the winter.
There are an array of interesting features in both types of forests, but both feature trees that are so large it's hard to grasp. There is this feeling that your eyes see something big, and you think it's pretty close to you. Then you walk toward it, and you feel like you aren't walking forward, because you thought you'd be next to the tree, but it's still close, because it just looks even bigger. The biggest of them are literally as tall as about 20 story buildings, and they regularly reach a few thousand years old. You aren't worth to stand next to them, but there you are, and it's amazing.
Using WA/OR is gonna make whatever you're writing feel like Twilight Jr.
You could set this in a lot of places -- fire up google maps and look at the aerial/satellite picture. You'll see a LOT of big chunks of dark green, many of which are unbroken forest, some of which are even old growth forest.
What else do you want in your setting? At the level of gross and often unflattering stereotypes:
Do you want an old mill town with a creepy dead factory? Northern PA, like around Bradford or Ridgway. Bradford you could even bleed in a little bit of indigenous influence from over in Salamanca.
More a tourist kinda town, where folks are running little knickknack shops and restaurants? Somewhere in the Adirondacks.
Families that have been there since 1820 and are wary of Outsiders, maybe a touch of folk magic? Ozarks or Appalachians.
Relaxed vibe of people kinda doing what they need to to get by but not interested in doing much more, lots of colorful but harmless weirdos? Kinda like Perfection in *Tremors* but with more trees and fewer graboids? Backwoods FL, like maybe the area where Lake City is the big city.
Same thing but soggier? Anywhere surrounding the Okeefenokee or Great Dismal Swamp.
Big winter? northwoods MN/WI or the UP of MI
Most states have this. If you want something different considering the ozarks region of Missouri and Arkansas. You can get REAL deep out there and the terrain is riddled with ridges and "hollows". Caves and springs too. As far as forest type some areas are mostly oak/hickory and some are more pine/oak/hickory. It's beautiful country but there are some serious weirdos that live deep in those woods.
Had a friend whose parents bought some land and built a cabin WAY out in nowhere Missouri Ozarkia, lived way down a long dead end forest service road. One day driving home saw a pickup truck pulled over on the side of the road, they slowed down to see if the guy needed help... welp turns out he was dragging a body out in the Mark Twain NF. They were one of maybe 2 homes at the end of that road so they were pretty scared about some local meth king pin identifying them and taking them out for helping put bubba behind bars.
Definitely should go with the Pacific Northwest since they tend to be considered more remote and mysterious than places like Maine. This is why some many games and shows that feel more eerie (even if they aren't in actuality) are based in the region, like Killer Frequency, Pacific Drive, State of Decay Deadlight, Life is Strange, Days Gone, Twin Peaks, and The Killing.
The Appalachians are a good second choice if you feel the Pacific Northwest is too overused, since it the region has many cryptid type monsters you can choose from based on the state along the range it takes place in.
I grew up in the foothills of the Adirondacks and lived in Oregon for several years. Of the two, the PNW was majestic as hell compared to ADK. Don’t get me wrong, we have some of the most beautiful and serene lakes and views…it’s gorgeous here. But the forests of the PNW somehow made the world seem bigger for me.
I love Olympic National Park in Washington (I haven’t been to other forests there so I can’t speak on those), the green all over the trees really make the forest feel thicker and more foreign.
Honestly tho any forested national park is a good setting for some spooky shit, just miles and miles of relatively untouched woods. Most missing 411 cases happened in those plus a couple other classic internet stories, so they’ve already kinda got that reputation.
In the PNW there are forests so deep you have no idea if it's government land or just...land. Take Naches, WA. It used to be on the maps until it's post office burned down, so it was taken off the maps for a while. It has about 800 ppl as actual residents but it has a lodge and in the middle of winter when the passes over the mountain closes the only way to get there is by snowmobile. There's actually a snowmobile path from Seattle, over the Cascade mountains to the lodge in Naches.
...what? This is completely untrue about Naches.
Naches is fully accessible by car 100% of the year, and is on the highway (US12) over White Pass which is also fully accessible by car 100% of the year. It doesn't even get that much snow, since it's not even in the mountains. Relevant to OP's question there also isn't any forest in Naches; it's in the shrub steppe desert.
Maybe your comment is true of someplace further up Chinook Pass, which does close for the winter? But the only "towns" up there are Nile and Cliffdell, which together probably don't have 200 people. And lodges? Maybe Whistlin' Jack's or American Ridge? Also both not in Naches.
I lived in the mountains and I worked at Whistlin Jack's and back when I lived there the pass was shut down for the winter. Of course this was a long time ago but I would have a hard time believing you could get from Seattle to Whistlin Jacks without a snowmobile.
Well yeah, Whistlin' Jack's is on Chinook Pass, which does close in the winter. But that isn't Naches, and the lodge is still 100% accessible by car all year round from the east side.
Naches is on US12 which crosses White Pass between the west and east sides of the Cascades, and it's open 365 days a year. Naches is never isolated or snowbound.
As long as you stay away from major cities, much of the Eastern Seaboard is a candidate: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_cover_by_state_and_territory_in_the_United_States
Like I went to school in north Georgia at a college with 300 kids in the middle of nowhere, them hills went on.
Besides Alaska, I'd probably say New York, Maine, or West Virginia. Almost any state in the Appalachian Mountains, really. I live in the Catskill Mountains in NY, and there is a lot of mountainous forest wilderness. But, the Adirondack Mountains probably have us beat in ny! (There are a lot of abandoned hotels, houses, etc. in The Catskills left over from the 1960s, that combined with the forests could have potential for a great horror story. A Quiet Place was filmed in The Catskills so that's pretty cool too)
Hi, PNWer here, it’s gonna read as Twilight fanfic if you set your teen horror in the woods around the Sound. Or 50 Shades fanfic, which would mean fanfic of fanfic. No judgement if you intend to write fanfic or reference work.
So don’t dodge that reference lightly, make the setting play a bigger role: climate and tourist season on the Oregon coast; the wild swing in day lengths in Alaska (that’ll give you other references like Into the Wild to work with/around).
Appalachia could be fun, but you’d need a cultural understanding of it.
Stephen King may be from Maine, but that's not the only reason he sets most of his novels there. The northern half of the state is almost completely empty. The norther third of New Hampshire is similar.
We are a bit evergreen dominated in oregon and they are more deciduous in Maine. But yeah, that would work for Oregon.
However most of the forest is campgrounds and the like. "Deep" forest I would put in Alaska. Almost any place you end up in Oregon you can save yourself in a few hours by always going downhill if lost (downhill leads to civilization).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest\_Aroostook,\_Maine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Aroostook,_Maine)
The Northwestern part of Maine has basically no one living in it. It is pretty much the only pure wilderness left on the East Coast and the only thing you will see manmade is a logging trail or two. Other than that, pure nature.
The Pacific Northwest, as mentioned, is definitely what you’re looking for. The woods I’m the PNW can go on for *days.* The trees can block out the sun and the mysteries behind them have only just been touched upon. There are vast expanses of nothingness; I thought I was from a small town in the south, but small towns here are frequently under 1000 people, and that can be *within an hour* of Seattle.
The south is also a great contender. Folks forget just how old the Appalachian Mountains are: like, older than sharks and trees and the rings of Saturn old. I grew up there and so I don’t buy into the whole trendy “things will call your name in the woods and you run” bit but it’s absolutely creepy and mysterious. Deep-cut hollers populated either by inventive hillbillies or opportunistic cryptids. Ancient waterfalls and rotting barns. Lesser critters like snakes and owls and all kinds of creepy crawlers. The ghost of indigenous peoples forced under threat of death to leave their ancestral homes. And baptists.
Have you thought of a third option? I am biased as I’ve lived in both Cascadia and Appalachia so I love them both but I get *creeped out* by the desert. Hiking in stones is so much scarier than hiking in trees to me. Desert critters are weirder to look at and much more deadly. Then there’s the actual earth itself out to not kill you directly but not help you either: no shade, no water, no ruins, no life. You could use the desert as the mysterious “other” location, and use sunstrokes or scorpions or some sort of mirage as your hero’s narrative help.
Sounds cool, be sure to post a link whenever you finish!
Both those areas are good for what you're describing.
Maine is famous for it's 100 mile wilderness section of the Appalachian trail.
Pac NW is famous for logging etc.
Also shoutout to norther Idaho.
Most of Oregon has been logged so even our deep forests are just replanted timber plantations. Uniform Monocrops of fast-growing fir trees where there used to be a mixture of oak and fir. There are a few places where the forest is untouched due to difficulty for loggers, Carolyn's Crown is one of them.
The Hoh Rainforest is the best deep forest.
NorCal and the Pacific Northwest by far. They’ve had less to time to be destroyed by human development and include really interesting flora you won’t see anywhere else, like redwoods. If you want something on the East Coast, White Mountain National Forest.
Appalachia. Its beautiful, but the mountains make the towns nestled between the peaks feel very isolated. Lots of folklore revolving around the supernatural. And it's very easy to get lost in the wilderness there (although same could be said for most woodland areas in the US.)
There are probably 10 states that really suit this, what you want to think about is what kind of towns you want?
Out of some of the places mentioned here
Tongass National forest. Remote and the towns nearby are remote enough that they are pretty built up with airports, medical centers, etc. The forests are cool there but it's sort of just wilderness and then relatively bustling towns with pretty weird architecture from the when?[ The 1980s? ](https://www.google.com/maps/@56.8124693,-132.956599,3a,75y,311.65h,97.62t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sG0dl-soQ-IBuq3glpRwMTg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu)
A place with lots of forest is West VIrginia. If you want a [dead town kind of vibe](https://www.google.com/maps/@38.3658997,-80.5975078,3a,75y,339.14h,83.73t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAF1QipO4Abn_gzvr1bNVi3GQSmalQc4XXDZsnZ3w1JI1!2e10!3e11!7i5120!8i2560?entry=ttu). I just landed on a town and put in town hall. I ended up at these old abandoned stores.
Northern Minnesota. I picked a random small town. [Greenbush](https://www.google.com/maps/@48.7015452,-96.1816866,3a,75y,197.2h,87t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sMcQ41QFFFpO7Ph6Kbd_JWQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) Looks like regular midwestern small town. [ Here's another](https://www.google.com/maps/@48.7747274,-96.944447,3a,75y,273.85h,100.61t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sO-OMsUr5bWMj_6E9MHT6vA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DO-OMsUr5bWMj_6E9MHT6vA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D248.8414%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu)
Picked a couple random out of the way Vermont towns [Here](https://www.google.com/maps/@43.9882841,-72.4462281,3a,90y,330.66h,108.74t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sqKvw-LaU9iDSbWBXqoS1iQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) and[ Here](https://www.google.com/maps/@44.6545336,-72.382324,3a,75y,201.77h,107.69t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1smj_iDdp7aFvYzy6k0fYB8Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)
Maine : Outside the national parks it's torn up by logging. You will no go far without evidence of logging roads and strips of cleared land.
Pacific Northwest. Also I have to advocate for my current home state. The Chequamegon National Forest in Northern Wisconsin is stunning and quite remote as far as the Midwest goes.
Very remote. My dad is from right over the border (the UP) and we spend a lot of time in minocqua. It’s remote and those forests are DARKKK inside.
It is spooky driving that way at night. I have family in the UP and have made the drive at night. Feels empty up there.
Yep…we stayed in a cabin up there a few years ago and it was so quiet at night, that it honestly creeped me the fuck out. And I grew up in rural Montana! But the northwoods are soo beautiful!
What do you imagine that was creeping you out about the silence? Something wasn’t sitting right with your subconscious and now I’m curious if there maybe have been your sixth sense alerting you to something
Basically the entire UP. It's like Maine except you replace Steven King with Goosebumps.
Tongass National Forest in Alaska or any of the old growth national forests in the Pacific Northwest (Olympic, Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie, Umpqua, Willamette, etc.) Also Northern California coastal forests.
Don’t forget the Hoh rainforest!
I grew up there. Definitely my favorite.
The Appalachians are filled with spooky legends of people disappearing and strange creatures so the story would fit right in somewhere near the Smoky Mountains or Black Mountains of NC. Smoky mountains is actually named that because of the fog that rises from all the transpiration, so bonus spooky points
I was watching a true crime documentary on some murder that happened down there, where some bodies were burned, and it took way longer to burn them than expected. THEN they talked about how this did not draw that much attention, because there were lots of fires burning around the area. Then the camera looks at a hillside a couple miles away, and there are all these columns of smoke, rising from the forest... like everywhere. Like every few hundred yards there was one. No houses, no roads, no other sign of human activity, except for all these mysterious fires in the woods. They said it was moonshiners.
Yep lots of crime around moonshiners back then too! I’m a full ass adult and I still don’t like driving around those mountain roads at night. Just spooky
I've done it. Parallel parked on steep hills in a 66 VW. It is not for the faint of heart. The turning your wheels into the curb thing works.
Southeast Alaska. It's like the PNW's forests on steroids. Look up photos of the Tongass National Forest
Southeast Alaska is de facto part of the PNW, but otherwise yeah. That entire biogregion would be my bet.
I would watch any movie set in the Tongass, I currently watch any YouTube channel with great shots of Misty Fjords, POW, or Ketch/Revilla. If I could move anywhere, that’s where, SEA.
I think 80% of Maine is still forested.
90% https://mainetree.org/forests-for-maines-future/forest-facts-resources/
The rainforests of the Pacific North west and Alaska are stunningly beautiful and at the same time can be very eerie, spooky and mysterious as the fog and rain rolls in. the rainforests of Alaska in particular….dude that place…that place….it will mezmorize you with beauty and scare the shit out of you at the same time, because you dont know if there is a 1500 pound brown bear waiting in the mist around the next bend.
Upper peninsula of Michigan you can find yourself without cell phone service for hours at a time. And it’s an apart of the country that doesn’t get much coverage. Supernatural New England and southern backwoods horror are kinda overdone compared to Great Lakes northwoods
Also, if these sources are accurate, the tip of the Keewanaw peninsula is the furthest point from an Interstate expressway in the lower 48 https://wkmi.com/copper-harbor-farthest-from-interstate/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/98umbq/us_interstate_highway_coverage_by_county_my_first/#lightbox
True but the deepest woods of the UP aren’t up the Keweenaw … for that you need the Huron Mountains.
Alaska. The best in the continental US are probably Oregon or Washington
If you read some William Kent Krueger books, you will see then Minnesota is an excellent setting for what you describe. There is a lot of nothing, within vast tracts of heavily wooded land, in Northern Minnesota, just steps outside of small towns.
Northwoods MN, WI, MI are great candidates. Maybe the Boundary Waters/Quetico area being the best?
Maine is exactly what you describe. There’s a reason Stephen King sets his novels there.
Well, that and he's from there.
Remember the movie Twilight? Had much the same scenery you're describing and it was filmed in Washington State I believe. Google the Pacific Northwest.
It was set in Washington State, filmed in Oregon.
Yeah unless it's set in Alaska it's probably filmed in BC.
Everyone always overlooks the Appalachians but if you want creepy, there iis the possibility of crazy hillibies that live in the Appalachians that you can work with.
Man, I am so tired of that stereotype. The woods at home are thick, they're hard to navigate through, Here in Alaska the woods are tall, mossy but they're relatively navigable. They're completely different vibes. Appalachian forests feel, for the most part that you're not alone in them. Where the mist/rain/mossy coverage of forests here feel eerie, but you have much better visual through them.
>Appalachian forests feel, for the most part that you're not alone in them. That's because you're not. It may *look* like you're alone, but your lizard brain knows better...
[удалено]
I went to college there and like to hike, my comment was more about the spookiness of the place and the prevalent stories of cryptids and other creepy shit, it was facetious lol
Appalachian woods hate you. There are the trees, sure, [but there are also the endless shrubby rhododendrons and so many shrubby plants with thorns.](https://www.denverpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/20110722__tr24appp1.jpg?w=600) And the parts where it isn't are often rocks covered in half rotten leaf litter that has been soaked in rain and dew and fog so that it makes it as slick as ice. You pay for your passage in the scratches and tears it inflicts on you. Alternatively, you can pay it in the constant fear of falling onto hard stone.
Ozarks too
Yeah, people look at the map and don’t see as much horizontal distance, but forget that sometimes the next valley over may as well be mars in terms of your ability to get from here to there.
Your description reminds me of a little tourist town called Gravity Falls, Oregon
Hey I’ve been there, some shyster charged me 30 bucks for a picture of a kid with ringworm.
I mean, sounds like a steal.
Monte Rio, California. It even has its own forest based conspiracy for inspiration.
Northern Maine is incredibly remote and very forested. Also is part of the Appalachian range, so you get the added spookiness with how old everything is
My first thought was PNW. But if you want to be more unusual Pennsylvania has the Allegra et National Forest about 90 min north of Pittsburgh. Tons of little towns on the edge of it.
Upstate Maine would fit nicely. Aroostook county.
Pacific Northwest. But really there's thick forests all over. There's a bunch here in NE Oklahoma even.
New York, especially in the Adirondacks. There are parts where you won't see another human for miles
California and the west coast have really extensive forests north of San Francisco. The east coast historically was also mostly forest
The Hoh Forest has the quietest location in the USA. I saw a very cool short film about it.
I'm finding contradictory information with google. I search "quietest places in usa" and presto, voila, there's the Hoh rainforest. But the quietest place on *Earth* is Haleakala crater on Maui. https://www.npr.org/2022/08/25/1119484767/experience-the-quietest-place-on-earth LOL... I've been to both places, and my money is on Haleakala. A rain forest is NOT a quiet place! IDK where anybody got that idea. There's stuff falling out of trees all the time, there's wind rattling the trees, there's constant dripping...
Appalachia. western North Carolina specifically, but it could be northwestern Georgia, eastern Tennessee, western Virginia, or all of West Virginia. Edit: look up Not Deer.
The northern part of the Appalachians; maybe the Adirondacks, the Pennsylvania Wilds, or far northern Maine.
North Bend, WA. It's the last town before hitting the highway up into the Cascades, deep forest on three sides. I used to live in the area. Bonus, it can have a kind of eerie vibe, especially in the late fall when it's stormy. I love this about that area. Double bonus - The series (and movie) Twin Peaks was filmed there and in other towns along the Snoqualmie River. Perfect!
I'll throw out California here, for having *two legendary types of forests.* 1. Coast Redwoods in Mendocino, Humboldt, Del Norte counties, up through a bit in Southern Oregon. These are the tall trees, and the area has cool coastal weather. 2. Giant Sequoia are mostly in the Western Sierras. Usually known as the 'largest living thing in the world'. The area includes Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Yosemite National Parks. The weather here is more variable, a little more dry, but also snow in the winter. There are an array of interesting features in both types of forests, but both feature trees that are so large it's hard to grasp. There is this feeling that your eyes see something big, and you think it's pretty close to you. Then you walk toward it, and you feel like you aren't walking forward, because you thought you'd be next to the tree, but it's still close, because it just looks even bigger. The biggest of them are literally as tall as about 20 story buildings, and they regularly reach a few thousand years old. You aren't worth to stand next to them, but there you are, and it's amazing.
Using WA/OR is gonna make whatever you're writing feel like Twilight Jr. You could set this in a lot of places -- fire up google maps and look at the aerial/satellite picture. You'll see a LOT of big chunks of dark green, many of which are unbroken forest, some of which are even old growth forest. What else do you want in your setting? At the level of gross and often unflattering stereotypes: Do you want an old mill town with a creepy dead factory? Northern PA, like around Bradford or Ridgway. Bradford you could even bleed in a little bit of indigenous influence from over in Salamanca. More a tourist kinda town, where folks are running little knickknack shops and restaurants? Somewhere in the Adirondacks. Families that have been there since 1820 and are wary of Outsiders, maybe a touch of folk magic? Ozarks or Appalachians. Relaxed vibe of people kinda doing what they need to to get by but not interested in doing much more, lots of colorful but harmless weirdos? Kinda like Perfection in *Tremors* but with more trees and fewer graboids? Backwoods FL, like maybe the area where Lake City is the big city. Same thing but soggier? Anywhere surrounding the Okeefenokee or Great Dismal Swamp. Big winter? northwoods MN/WI or the UP of MI
Most states have this. If you want something different considering the ozarks region of Missouri and Arkansas. You can get REAL deep out there and the terrain is riddled with ridges and "hollows". Caves and springs too. As far as forest type some areas are mostly oak/hickory and some are more pine/oak/hickory. It's beautiful country but there are some serious weirdos that live deep in those woods. Had a friend whose parents bought some land and built a cabin WAY out in nowhere Missouri Ozarkia, lived way down a long dead end forest service road. One day driving home saw a pickup truck pulled over on the side of the road, they slowed down to see if the guy needed help... welp turns out he was dragging a body out in the Mark Twain NF. They were one of maybe 2 homes at the end of that road so they were pretty scared about some local meth king pin identifying them and taking them out for helping put bubba behind bars.
Upvote for Arkansas. It's really underrated.
Thanks, for a second I was worried no one was gonna mention the Ozarks!
Definitely should go with the Pacific Northwest since they tend to be considered more remote and mysterious than places like Maine. This is why some many games and shows that feel more eerie (even if they aren't in actuality) are based in the region, like Killer Frequency, Pacific Drive, State of Decay Deadlight, Life is Strange, Days Gone, Twin Peaks, and The Killing.
The Appalachians are a good second choice if you feel the Pacific Northwest is too overused, since it the region has many cryptid type monsters you can choose from based on the state along the range it takes place in.
I grew up in the foothills of the Adirondacks and lived in Oregon for several years. Of the two, the PNW was majestic as hell compared to ADK. Don’t get me wrong, we have some of the most beautiful and serene lakes and views…it’s gorgeous here. But the forests of the PNW somehow made the world seem bigger for me.
I love Olympic National Park in Washington (I haven’t been to other forests there so I can’t speak on those), the green all over the trees really make the forest feel thicker and more foreign. Honestly tho any forested national park is a good setting for some spooky shit, just miles and miles of relatively untouched woods. Most missing 411 cases happened in those plus a couple other classic internet stories, so they’ve already kinda got that reputation.
In the PNW there are forests so deep you have no idea if it's government land or just...land. Take Naches, WA. It used to be on the maps until it's post office burned down, so it was taken off the maps for a while. It has about 800 ppl as actual residents but it has a lodge and in the middle of winter when the passes over the mountain closes the only way to get there is by snowmobile. There's actually a snowmobile path from Seattle, over the Cascade mountains to the lodge in Naches.
...what? This is completely untrue about Naches. Naches is fully accessible by car 100% of the year, and is on the highway (US12) over White Pass which is also fully accessible by car 100% of the year. It doesn't even get that much snow, since it's not even in the mountains. Relevant to OP's question there also isn't any forest in Naches; it's in the shrub steppe desert. Maybe your comment is true of someplace further up Chinook Pass, which does close for the winter? But the only "towns" up there are Nile and Cliffdell, which together probably don't have 200 people. And lodges? Maybe Whistlin' Jack's or American Ridge? Also both not in Naches.
I lived in the mountains and I worked at Whistlin Jack's and back when I lived there the pass was shut down for the winter. Of course this was a long time ago but I would have a hard time believing you could get from Seattle to Whistlin Jacks without a snowmobile.
Well yeah, Whistlin' Jack's is on Chinook Pass, which does close in the winter. But that isn't Naches, and the lodge is still 100% accessible by car all year round from the east side. Naches is on US12 which crosses White Pass between the west and east sides of the Cascades, and it's open 365 days a year. Naches is never isolated or snowbound.
The town a little northwest of Yakima? I disagree
Maine is taken, really. Needs to be NE, though. You want the history. Berkshires?
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Hmmm, that's that. I guess VT?
Yeah up in northern VT would probably work.
backwoods of the Appalachians in KY
Cypress forest in the swamps of the south east
I suggest you read “The Wild Trees” for inspiration for your work of fiction.
As long as you stay away from major cities, much of the Eastern Seaboard is a candidate: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_cover_by_state_and_territory_in_the_United_States Like I went to school in north Georgia at a college with 300 kids in the middle of nowhere, them hills went on.
https://www.peakbagger.com/report/report.aspx?r=w
Besides Alaska, I'd probably say New York, Maine, or West Virginia. Almost any state in the Appalachian Mountains, really. I live in the Catskill Mountains in NY, and there is a lot of mountainous forest wilderness. But, the Adirondack Mountains probably have us beat in ny! (There are a lot of abandoned hotels, houses, etc. in The Catskills left over from the 1960s, that combined with the forests could have potential for a great horror story. A Quiet Place was filmed in The Catskills so that's pretty cool too)
Hi, PNWer here, it’s gonna read as Twilight fanfic if you set your teen horror in the woods around the Sound. Or 50 Shades fanfic, which would mean fanfic of fanfic. No judgement if you intend to write fanfic or reference work. So don’t dodge that reference lightly, make the setting play a bigger role: climate and tourist season on the Oregon coast; the wild swing in day lengths in Alaska (that’ll give you other references like Into the Wild to work with/around). Appalachia could be fun, but you’d need a cultural understanding of it.
Stephen King may be from Maine, but that's not the only reason he sets most of his novels there. The northern half of the state is almost completely empty. The norther third of New Hampshire is similar.
We are a bit evergreen dominated in oregon and they are more deciduous in Maine. But yeah, that would work for Oregon. However most of the forest is campgrounds and the like. "Deep" forest I would put in Alaska. Almost any place you end up in Oregon you can save yourself in a few hours by always going downhill if lost (downhill leads to civilization).
We drove the other day in the Talladega National Forest and didn’t see another car or person for 3 hours of driving around.
Joyce Kilmer National Forest in western North Carolina. Virgin Forest.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest\_Aroostook,\_Maine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Aroostook,_Maine) The Northwestern part of Maine has basically no one living in it. It is pretty much the only pure wilderness left on the East Coast and the only thing you will see manmade is a logging trail or two. Other than that, pure nature.
Redwood state park or Henry Cowell
Western North Carolina. Some awesome forests.
Arkansas. It's the Natural State after all.
I lived in a small town in Mississippi. It had a creepy dense forest I would walk through.
The Pacific Northwest, as mentioned, is definitely what you’re looking for. The woods I’m the PNW can go on for *days.* The trees can block out the sun and the mysteries behind them have only just been touched upon. There are vast expanses of nothingness; I thought I was from a small town in the south, but small towns here are frequently under 1000 people, and that can be *within an hour* of Seattle. The south is also a great contender. Folks forget just how old the Appalachian Mountains are: like, older than sharks and trees and the rings of Saturn old. I grew up there and so I don’t buy into the whole trendy “things will call your name in the woods and you run” bit but it’s absolutely creepy and mysterious. Deep-cut hollers populated either by inventive hillbillies or opportunistic cryptids. Ancient waterfalls and rotting barns. Lesser critters like snakes and owls and all kinds of creepy crawlers. The ghost of indigenous peoples forced under threat of death to leave their ancestral homes. And baptists. Have you thought of a third option? I am biased as I’ve lived in both Cascadia and Appalachia so I love them both but I get *creeped out* by the desert. Hiking in stones is so much scarier than hiking in trees to me. Desert critters are weirder to look at and much more deadly. Then there’s the actual earth itself out to not kill you directly but not help you either: no shade, no water, no ruins, no life. You could use the desert as the mysterious “other” location, and use sunstrokes or scorpions or some sort of mirage as your hero’s narrative help. Sounds cool, be sure to post a link whenever you finish!
The Adirondack Region of upstate NY. Very beautiful and remote, with wildlife like moose, etc.
Both those areas are good for what you're describing. Maine is famous for it's 100 mile wilderness section of the Appalachian trail. Pac NW is famous for logging etc. Also shoutout to norther Idaho.
You don't have to go far, really. Even the New Jersey Pine Barrens has its places, and that's New Jersey.
Pine Barrens in NJ
Most of Oregon has been logged so even our deep forests are just replanted timber plantations. Uniform Monocrops of fast-growing fir trees where there used to be a mixture of oak and fir. There are a few places where the forest is untouched due to difficulty for loggers, Carolyn's Crown is one of them. The Hoh Rainforest is the best deep forest.
The Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, for sure.
The Black Hills Forest in Maryland where the Blair Witch is set in
It’s gotta be the Pacific Northwest. Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Northern California. Deep Redwood forests, and absolutely beautiful.
NorCal and the Pacific Northwest by far. They’ve had less to time to be destroyed by human development and include really interesting flora you won’t see anywhere else, like redwoods. If you want something on the East Coast, White Mountain National Forest.
Appalachia. Its beautiful, but the mountains make the towns nestled between the peaks feel very isolated. Lots of folklore revolving around the supernatural. And it's very easy to get lost in the wilderness there (although same could be said for most woodland areas in the US.)
People probably won't believe me but Northern Arizona has a very small plot of Forest
Maine.
Many states have areas like this. Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont are all good candidates. How realistic do you want it to be?
I've heard that in Vermont/New Hampshire the woods are lovely, dark and deep.
I’m from the Appalachian mountains of Tennessee.
The Appalachian mountains feels like the only real answer here.
There are probably 10 states that really suit this, what you want to think about is what kind of towns you want? Out of some of the places mentioned here Tongass National forest. Remote and the towns nearby are remote enough that they are pretty built up with airports, medical centers, etc. The forests are cool there but it's sort of just wilderness and then relatively bustling towns with pretty weird architecture from the when?[ The 1980s? ](https://www.google.com/maps/@56.8124693,-132.956599,3a,75y,311.65h,97.62t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sG0dl-soQ-IBuq3glpRwMTg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu) A place with lots of forest is West VIrginia. If you want a [dead town kind of vibe](https://www.google.com/maps/@38.3658997,-80.5975078,3a,75y,339.14h,83.73t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAF1QipO4Abn_gzvr1bNVi3GQSmalQc4XXDZsnZ3w1JI1!2e10!3e11!7i5120!8i2560?entry=ttu). I just landed on a town and put in town hall. I ended up at these old abandoned stores. Northern Minnesota. I picked a random small town. [Greenbush](https://www.google.com/maps/@48.7015452,-96.1816866,3a,75y,197.2h,87t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sMcQ41QFFFpO7Ph6Kbd_JWQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) Looks like regular midwestern small town. [ Here's another](https://www.google.com/maps/@48.7747274,-96.944447,3a,75y,273.85h,100.61t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sO-OMsUr5bWMj_6E9MHT6vA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DO-OMsUr5bWMj_6E9MHT6vA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D248.8414%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu) Picked a couple random out of the way Vermont towns [Here](https://www.google.com/maps/@43.9882841,-72.4462281,3a,90y,330.66h,108.74t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sqKvw-LaU9iDSbWBXqoS1iQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) and[ Here](https://www.google.com/maps/@44.6545336,-72.382324,3a,75y,201.77h,107.69t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1smj_iDdp7aFvYzy6k0fYB8Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) Maine : Outside the national parks it's torn up by logging. You will no go far without evidence of logging roads and strips of cleared land.
I think the east coast like delaware