Long before I had ever visited, I was in love with the Pacific Northwest.
A primary source for this ardor was — shocking no one — Twin Peaks, but the kindling was already there as early as Astoria’s Goondocks. Later, the temperate rainforests of British Columbia would further fuel the fire by standing in for everywhere from “Iowa” to “Georgia” in The X-Files.
And of course, I’m not alone in this love, or with these influences, with games such as Remedy’s Alan Wake series, Dontnod’s original Life Is Strange, and Ironwood Studio’s recently released Pacific Drive all serving as beautiful, if often horrifying, love letters to the region.
When the idea for Terror High first started percolating*, there was a temptation to take a page out of Stephen King’s book, or H.P. Lovecraft’s before him, and set the story somewhere in New England. But the siren song of the PNW could not be ignored, and soon the town of Pike’s Landing, Oregon began to assemble itself in my mind.
Of course, not living in the PNW myself, collecting good reference was going to be key.
As discussed several times previously, the bulk of my location “scouting” has come from our technological overlords over at GoogleCorp, and, while invaluable to the process, Google Maps can’t capture everything. There’s something to be said for getting out there and hitting the pavement yourself, so to speak.
I’ve been lucky enough to have visited Washington and Oregon a handful of times over the years, and since starting Terror High, I’ve made sure to have my camera (well, phone) and trusty Zoom H1n recorder by my side when I travel to gather all manner of reference. (I’ve now got quite the collection of photos of moss and lichen, let me tell you.)
Since Pike’s Landing is intended to be a small town (population 3,125), Portland and Seattle, while delightful stops in their own right, weren’t really going to cut it as far as reference points. We’d have to go smaller. And where better to get small town Cascadia reference than Twin Peaks itself?
In February 2023, and then again in February 2024, my partner and I spent several days in the towns of Snoqualmie, North Bend, and Fall City, the original filming locations for the Twin Peaks pilot, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and the Washington sections of Twin Peaks: The Return.
It’s quite surreal finally seeing a place in the flesh that existed for so long only on a screen — a feeling both wonderful and strange.
Naturally, a lot of this “location scouting” was just me being a huge dork ass nerd (complimentary). As much love as I have for Lynch & Frost and Twin Peaks, Terror High is its own beast. I have a keen interest in this story and these characters standing on their own, so you won’t be seeing any of these locations lovingly recreated for Pike’s Landing, beyond possibly the occasional, gestural nod. Not to yuck anyone’s yums, but I’m not interested in making Deadly Premonition.
That being said, being in the Snoqualmie/North Bend area was a delight, and provided other, less obvious inspirations for places and people that will no doubt find their way to Pike’s Landing. The Douglas firs, moss-covered stumps, and babbling brooks certainly will.
It should also be noted that Pike’s Landing is set in Oregon, not Washington, so some diversity in scouting locations was going to be required.
Luckily, in August 2023, some comrade besties and I also had the pleasure of visiting Astoria, Oregon, noted home of the Goonies and Cops What Teach Kindergarten.
(It is also home to John Jacob Astor Elementary, aka Silent Hill‘s Midwich Elementary, something my conscious mind had apparently forgotten when I used it as partial inspiration for Terrault High’s façade.)
The more I focus on environmental design, the more I find it curious how much more the seemingly mundane now excites me. Where I might have previously not batted an eye at a rusting fire hydrant or water-stained concrete, now I think, “Ooh, look at those textures!”
In fact, in Astoria, we stumbled across a house near where we were staying that I had previously built in 3D from Google Maps reference, and I got so pumped you would have thought I was meeting a celebrity.
And getting nerdy over buildings and textures isn’t the only source of excitement — there’s also ambient sounds!
A lot of the sound effects for Terror High have been sourced from generous people around the web, such as on FreeSound.org or FreeToUseSounds.com. These are great resources, but as with animation/motion capture, textures, etc. sometimes you can’t find exactly what you want and need to capture it yourself. A couple of years back I picked up a Zoom H1n recorder (thanks Mark from Sweetwater!) that I try to keep with me wherever I go, whether it be to record some footsteps, a creepy boiler room, or just some background traffic.
I was keenly interested in capturing the ambient sounds of Washington and Oregon specifically, for accuracy and verisimilitude. The more the real world feels real, in my mind, the more effective the horror elements will be when they start creeping in. (Plus there’s some small amount of pleasure in being able to maintain the suspension of disbelief for any ornithologists out there who might otherwise recognize the wrong bird calls in the background.)
I hope to travel to the PNW again soon, both for pleasure and research, but for now, it’s time to continue putting the reference I’ve already gained into action. Before we finish, though, I’d like to give a special shout out to Steven Miller over at TwinPeaksBlog.com, who has done a great job researching and compiling all the filming location information one could care to know about Twin Peaks, even going so far as to provide latitude and longitude for certain locations.
It’s a great website that proved extremely valuable in our travels.
But that about does ‘er, wraps ‘er all up for this devlog. Until next time, Terrorteers — I’ll see you in the trees.
* The first flicker of what would become Terror High came from a conversation between a friend and I while looking at a row of Goosebumps books she had recently purchased for her son. She commented on how “all the protagonists were redheads in high-waisted acid wash jeans and baggy school sweatshirts.” I don’t know if that statistic holds up to scientific scrutiny, but it sparked an idea.
Terror High 
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