This lovable retro-Eighties sci-fi show, Stranger Things, has grown into a true phenomenon since its debut in 2016, but now it’s time for us to say goodbye. Arriving as a quirky little throwback to Spielberg and all things pre-tech, it’s created a host of new stars, made an icon of Winona Ryder for the second time and even turned an old Kate Bush track into a monster global hit, all while managing to rescue Middle America and the world from the invasion of an alternate-dimension evil.
We have much to be thankful for already, and we haven’t even seen the no-holds-barred Season 5, released in three deliveries on 26 November, Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. The trailer promises nothing less than a Final Battle between good and evil, with the gang we’ve come to know and love back together and back home after a previous season that saw them battling on several fronts.
Although the new season adds in a genuine ’80s star, The Terminator’s Linda Hamilton, it’s really a return to the show’s beginnings, and that includes the setting. After some recent travels, we’re back with old friends in the little town of Hawkins, revisiting some familiar haunts while also discovering new parts of the neighbourhood we’ve all come to know so well.
Here, we dig into the questions you’ll be asking when you watch, and run through all the major locations from each season, ready for our final visit.
Is Hawkins from Stranger Things a real place?
No, Hawkins was invented by series creators the Duffer Brothers as a classic all-American small-town backdrop, in the style of every Steven Spielberg or Joe Dante movie from the ’80s. In reality, it’s filmed in a series of small towns skirting Atlanta, Georgia – the state that became one of the most popular locations around the time Stranger Things began nine years ago, home to everything from The Walking Dead and Ozark up to recent hits such as horror breakout Weapons, Marvel’s Thunderbolts, The Naked Gun remake and TV comedy Chad Powers.
The notional heart of Hawkins is Jackson, a town south-east of Atlanta that gave the production a readymade, unreconstructed classic America. This provides Melvald’s General Store (really the former Jackson Drug on 2nd Street), where Joyce (Winona Ryder) works at the start of the show, the Public Library (in fact Butts County Probate Court on 3rd Street) and the local cinema, the Hawk Theater (really another empty lot on Oak Street).
Can you visit Stranger Things filming locations?
You certainly can. Though there’s no single official tour, a quick search will find numerous locals ready to show you round, or you can just head to Jackson and find the locations yourself – the town has even added giant QR codes outside the buildings featured in the show for extra info. Before heading further afield from Jackson, it’s worth noting that most of the family homes we know are privately owned – and some distance away in East Point, to the south-west of Atlanta. If you’re discreet, you can catch most of them along the same road, Piney Road Drive, though the interiors are all recreated at Atlanta studio Screen Gems (and Steve’s house, home to the infamous pool party where we last saw unlucky Barb, is in Riverdale, directly south of Atlanta). Also in East Point is the Hawkins General Hospital – though what we’re seeing is actually the First Baptist Church – and the interior of the library, at the Old East Point Library.
So, where is Stranger Things supposed to be set?
Hawkins is supposedly in Indiana, a state that’s often used as a sign of everyday, ordinary America, as in the classic sitcom Parks & Recreation. Series creators the Duffer Brothers have said they were inspired by two classic Indiana-set 70s movies, the coming-of-age tale Breaking Away and Spielberg’s sci-fi fable Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Before they settled on Middle America, the show was going to be set in Montauk, New York state, a place that’s linked to lots of government conspiracy theories – and also had a Spielberg connection, as the location for the film Jaws. They say they changed their mind after visiting the area in winter, opting instead for warmer climes down south.
Where is the Creel House in Stranger Things?
One of Season 4’s most memorable locations, the Creel House was the childhood home of Henry Creel, who grew up to become the gang’s biggest problem. The extraordinary building looks just like a set constructed for a horror show, but is in fact real: sited in Rome, Georgia, on East 2nd Avenue and known as the Claremont House, it dates back to 1882, and has been restored to its Victorian state by recent owners. Back when it was used for filming, it was operating as a bed and breakfast, but it’s now closed to visitors.
Did Stranger Things film in a Russian prison?
Season 4 saw Hopper under heavy guard in a grim jail, supposedly in Siberia. This was a real prison, though it wasn’t in Russia but in the very centre of Vilnius, Lithuania. The Lukiskes Prison was in operation from 1837 right up until 2019: while the exterior of what we see was filmed elsewhere, filming featured the actual cell blocks and most of the interiors. Despite its forbidding appearance, the building is now a cultural centre.
Season 5
Although much of the scenery will be familiar in the final season, there are some significant new locations. One of the stars is a radio station, WSQK 94.5FM, aka The Squawk, which the trailers make clear is going to be a very important part of the story. This was built in a field by Hutchesons Ferry Road in Chattahoochee Hills, south-west of Atlanta, complete with a giant radio mast.
Also featured are a big house called the Turnbow Mansion in Stone Mountain to the north-east of the city (and next to the cemetery we see in the finale of Season 4), as well as a farm in Brooks, to the south. We also see Dustin heading to college at real-life Oglethorpe University in Brookhaven to the north, and follow Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Max (Sadie Sink) on a date at the Tara Cinema in Lavista Park nearby. We can also look forward to a significant revisit to Enzo’s, the Italian restaurant seen in Season 3 that is really Dominick’s in Norcross, a venue that has loomed large in the complicated dating history of Joyce and Hopper (David Harbour).
Season 4
This is the season where Stranger Things goes on holiday, breaking out of Georgia to travel the world. For Hopper, Joyce and the conspiracy nut Murray (Brett Gelman), it’s a trip to snowbound Russia, as played by Lithuania. As well as the prison in Vilnius, filming took place on Kyviskes Airfield to the east of the capital for the Alaskan airport, and the church of St Nicholas in Semeliskes to the west, for the warehouse where we find rogue pilot Yuri.
We’re also supposedly in California, where Joyce and family – including Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) – have relocated, for which filming took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The new family home and the kids’ high school are both on Montgomery Boulevard in the far north-east of the city, a little north of retro-roller rink Skate-O-Mania, where we see Eleven bullied at an outing, while Surfer Boy Pizza (which loses its van to the cause) is in Los Lunas, about 25 miles to the south. The desert to the north of the city, close to Zia Pueblo, is also where filming of the secret underground silo was set.
Closer to home is Henry Creel’s home in Rome, about 70 miles north-west of Atlanta, and the Pennhurst Mental Hospital, which is really the Berry College in Mount Berry, an English-Gothic style private university built in 1902. For the finale of the season, when Max levitates over her brother’s grave, we’re over to the north-east in Stone Mountain, a popular hiking spot known for its stone carving of three Confederate generals.
Season 3
As well as new dangers, Season 3 introduces some major new locations. We see a protest outside the pillared City Hall in East Point and watch bad-boy Billy (Dacre Montgomery) exulting in his role as lifeguard at the Hawkins Community Pool, filmed at South Bend Pool on Atlanta’s Lakewood Avenue. The big one, though, is the aptly named Starcourt Mall, where Steve (Joe Keery) works with new cast member Robin (Maya Hawke) at the Scoops Ahoy Ice Cream Parlor.
This recreation of prime 80s real estate was filmed at Gwinnett Place Mall outside Duluth, north-east of Atlanta. The production took over an empty wing of the mall and recreated era-specific stores such as Sam Goody and RadioShack, creating a mecca for fans of the show. Sadly, though plans were mooted to preserve the rebuilt Starcourt as a permanent attraction, it remains dark and shuttered.
Seasons 1 & 2
Season 2 gives us one of the series’ classic locations, Hopper’s Cabin, where he lives with a very grumpy Eleven. This is in the middle of countryside to the east of Atlanta, on the magically named Sleepy Hollow Road – also the venue, incidentally, of the pumpkin farm where Hopper finds the crop in a supernaturally rotten state.
Otherwise, Seasons 1 and 2 are set in the family homes and shops of Hawkins, chiefly filmed in Jackson and East Point. Stockbridge, just north of Jackson, is home to Hawkins Middle School and High School, in another disused building, the former Patrick Henry High School on South Lee Street. The police station where Hopper sleeps off his hangovers is in Douglasville’s City Hall, to the west. The supermarket where Eleven steals her favourite Eggo waffles (and which returns in Season 3) is Bradley’s Big Buy in Palmetto, to the south-west, while Benny’s Burgers, where we first saw her, is really Tiffany’s Kitchen in Lithia Springs, to the west.
The other element of the Stranger Things landscape is deep country, which Atlanta also has in abundance. For the woods, the production headed east to the Georgia International Horse Park in Conyers, venue for equestrian events at the 1996 Olympic Games, and Stone Mountain Park, as seen in Season 4. This 3,200 outbound-adventure destination provided, among other shots, the train tracks we see the gang walking along in search of the Upside Down. For Sattler Quarry, where the body of Will is found in Season 1, they shifted north-west to the dramatic Bellwood Quarry.
For The Hawkins National Laboratory, the centre where the shady Papa (Matthew Modine) conducted experiments on Eleven and the Upside Down world, the production used the Briarcliff Campus of Emory University on Briarcliff Road, to the north-east. This Sixties-built block has a fascinating history: in a past life it was the Georgia Mental Health Institute, leaving it with a sinister One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest atmosphere, and it’s located on the grounds of the Briarcliff Estate, founded by Asa G Candler Jr, the Coca-Cola heir who ran a private zoo of exotic animals nearby and whose mansion contained a cathedral-sized organ. Quite creepy enough, without the demogorgons and telekinetic powers.
Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 1 (four episodes) is released on 26th November, Volume 2 (three episodes) on 25th December, and the finale on 31st December, on Netflix.