‘Stranger Things’ is back and so are the Durham references. Here’s what we found.
Netflix dropped the first volume of new episodes from Season 4 of “Stranger Things” last week, so of course we were all over it, scouring scenes for local references inserted by the show’s creators, Durham natives Matt and Ross Duffer.
The Duffer Brothers, as they are professionally known, have set their wildly popular retro-horror-sci-fi-coming-of-age-adventure series in Hawkins, Indiana (with excursions this season in California and Russia), but from the beginning they’ve made sure their family, friends and fans back in Durham know they haven’t forgotten their roots.
The series, which the brothers have said was inspired by the movies and books they consumed growing up, is set in the 1980s, following a group of nerdy friends as they battle evil from a hellscape beneath their town.
Here’s a look back at some of the Durham references from Seasons 1 through 3 of “Stranger Things,” plus the references we managed to catch in Season 4 (maybe you spotted more?).
Note: The second part of Season 4 (two more episodes) will premiere on Netflix on July 1, 2022.
Also note: You may find spoilers ahead, but nothing too major.
Durham NC references in Season 1 of ‘Stranger Things’
▪ Durham roads: Some major Durham roads get mentioned in “Stranger Things,” and maybe none more often than Cornwallis. That’s probably because the Duffer Brothers grew up in a neighborhood off West Cornwallis, near Duke Forest.
- In one instance, the kids tell the police that the place where Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) went missing, which is referred to by the kids as “Mirkwood” (a J.R.R. Tolkien “The Hobbit” reference), is a wooded area at the intersection of Cornwallis and Kerley roads in Hawkins. West Cornwallis and Kerley Roads do intersect in Durham and it’s a mostly wooded area near Duke Forest.
- The series has also mentioned Mt. Sinai and Kerley roads, which also intersect, and which are not far from W. Cornwallis Road.
▪ Childhood friend: In an episode in which the kids are playing “Dungeons & Dragons,” the name “King Tristan” is mentioned. Matt Duffer told The News & Observer in November 2017 that Tristan was a friend.
“Tristan, he was our next-door neighbor,” Duffer said then. “And he made movies with us all throughout childhood, and he was our closest friend.”
▪ An owl attack? No, false alarm. In the first episode of Season 1, Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) goes to visit police chief Jim Hopper (David Harbour) to report that her son Will has gone missing. Hopper tries to convince her it’s probably nothing and that she shouldn’t worry: “Joyce, this is Hawkins, OK? You want to know the worst thing that’s ever happened here in the four years I’ve been working here? You want to know the worst thing — was when an owl attacked Eleanor Gillespie’s head because it thought that her hair was a nest.”
Many people are aware that following the 2001 death of Kathleen Peterson in Durham (for which her husband Michael was later convicted of murder), a theory that she actually died following an owl attack (to the back of her head) gained popularity.
We reached out to the Duffer Brothers through their assistant in 2017 and they said that the reference was not intentional.
Durham NC mentions in Season 2 of ‘Stranger Things’
▪ The Eno River and Jordan Lake: While Bob Newby (Sean Astin) helped Joyce try to figure out where Hopper was trapped, he recognized two bodies of water from some of Will’s drawings, and realized the drawings were a map of Hawkins. “And if that’s Lake Jordan, then you can probably find ... the Eno River,” Bob says to Joyce.
▪ Neighbors: In an interview with The News & Observer in 2017, Matt Duffer revealed that a second character in “Stranger Things” was named after a Durham neighbor. “When Dustin’s talking on the phone and pretending to talk about the cat, he’s talking to Mr. McCorkle,” Matt Duffer said. “Mac MacCorkle was our neighbor next door.”
▪ Trick-or-treat with the rich: In Episode 2, the Lochn’ora neighborhood in Durham is mentioned. In the episode, the kids are deciding where to go trick-or-treating and one character suggests they go to Lochn’ora: “That’s where the rich people live, right?” Later, a neighborhood sign reading “Loch Nora” is shown. John Snyder, then president of the Lochn’ora Home Owners Association, told The N&O at the time that the spelling was off, but the distinctive font was correct.
Durham references in Season 3 of ‘Stranger Things’
▪ Cornwallis, again: In Episode 2, Nancy and Jonathan, both now working at the Hawkins Post newspaper, interview a woman living at 4819 Cornwallis Road.
▪ Hungry for barbecue? In Episode 4, Hopper and Joyce study a map and point out important locations close to Jordan Lake. One of the spots Joyce mentions is “Bullocks,” but she doesn’t say if that’s a road or farm or business or a person’s property. But anyone the least bit familiar with Durham will think of the famous barbecue spot on Hillsborough Road as soon as they hear that name.
Season 4 mentions of Durham in ‘Stranger Things’
▪ Go Falcons! We heard from a couple of different alert readers about this one: In the first episode, the Hawkins High basketball team plays in the championship game against the Falcons, which is the same mascot for Charles E. Jordan High School in Durham, where the Duffer Brothers graduated.
▪ Actually Durham! Hands down the best Durham reference in “Stranger Things” comes in Season 4, when the actual city of Durham is referenced. It happens in Episode 2 when Joyce and Murray Bauman (Brett Gelman) are making a phone call from Lenora Hills, California, to Russia, and Murray “spoofs” the number to make it look like they are calling from Durham, NC. BONUS: Brett Gelman is a graduate of the UNC School of the Arts.
▪ Forest Hills. A tipster on Instagram spotted that the name of the community where Max and Eddie Munson live is called Forest Hills Trailer Park. We see the “Forest Hills Trailer Park” sign in Episode 2, when Nancy is stopped by a policeman as she tries to enter. The name given to the rundown trailer park is especially funny because Durham’s Forest Hills neighborhood is part of a national historic district known for beautiful, older (very expensive) homes.
▪ Enzo? A few different readers made the connection between a Russian character who calls himself Enzo, first seen in Episode 2, and the Durham pizza restaurant called Enzo’s.
▪ El Rodeo. Also in Episode 2, when Mike arrives for his spring break vacation with El in California, she tells him she has their whole visit planned out, including a trip to El Rodeo for “the best burritos.” El Rodeo is a popular Mexican restaurant in Durham, N&O reader Jacob Haigler pointed out. In fact, there used to be two locations: one on Roxboro Road at Duke Street and one in Brightleaf Square (that one is now closed).
▪ Can’t party without Cornwallis. In Episode 6, Dustin, Steve, Nancy, Lucas, Max and Robin get a call from Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn) who is hiding at Skull Rock. Eddie asks if they know where that is and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) says, “Yeah that’s near Cornwallis and —” then Steve (Joe Keery) adds: “Garrett — yeah, I know it.”
Cornwallis and Garrett Roads are not too far from each other, but they don’t meet. They almost run parallel to each other. The closest the two roads meet would be on at the end nearer to Cornwallis Road Park or Duke Forest, both off West Cornwallis Road.
▪ Cole Mill Road. On Twitter, @_erin_rachel let us know that in an early Season 4 episode, Dustin is talking to his mother on the phone and mentions Cole Mill Road, which runs from Eno River State Park to Hillsborough Road in Durham.
Is the town of Hawkins, Indiana, based on Durham, NC?
Hawkins is a mix of things, The Duffer Brothers previously told The N&O.
The town of Hawkins is a combination of conspiracy theories, fictional towns in Stephen King books, suspense scenes in 1980s horror movies, and locations in Georgia (where the show is mostly filmed), as well as Durham, Matt Duffer said.
Duffer Brothers memories of growing up in Durham
In a November 2017 interview with on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” the brothers talked about growing up in Durham and how they started making short films in the third grade — sometimes for fun, sometimes to help classmates with school projects.
From that interview: “We flirted with popularity in high school, which was when people realized that our videos, if used for a class assignment, would get you an automatic A,” Matt Duffer told interviewer Sam Briger. “It took me a few months to realize I was just being used,” he laughed.
“They would only hang out with us while we were making the film for them. And then once they got their A, I would never hear from them again until they needed another video.”
For a WWII history project in high school, Ross said a “cool kid” called one day and asked him to film the storming of Normandy at Jordan Lake. It’s the scene that opens the Steven Spielberg film “Saving Private Ryan,” which was enormously popular in the late ‘90s and early 2000s.
Ross describes adjusting the color and shutter speed on his camera, and then shaking the camera as the kids “with squirt guns and rafts” ran around. Then he ripped the audio from “Saving Private Ryan” in editing, he said.
“If you put that with a shaky camera of kids, suddenly this thing came alive. For ten years, history class still showed that project. I’m sure maybe now they’ve stopped,” Ross continued. “But that was the catalyst ... after that every weekend we had to film a movie for people.”
Why isn’t ‘Stranger Things’ filmed in NC?
The Hawkins scenes in “Stranger Things” are filmed in Georgia, but Season 4’s scenes in California were filmed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, reports Decider.
The Duffer Brothers told The N&O in a previous interview that “tax incentives made the production more feasible in Atlanta.”
This story was originally published May 31, 2022 at 3:43 PM.
