Stranger Things: Hawkins in Georgia

Stranger Things opens in a laboratory on the edge of Hawkins on 6 November 1983, when a scientist runs from something unseen. The building is the Georgia Mental Health Institute, a psychiatric hospital that operated from 1965 to 1997 near Emory University in Druid Hills. On screen it becomes the Hawkins National Laboratory — officially a Department of Energy research site, secretly experimenting with the paranormal and with human test subjects. Eleven, the girl with psychokinetic powers, grew up here, and it was her contact with another dimension that tore open the Upside Down.

The show's Hawkins is the town square of Jackson, Georgia, a small city that has stood in for the fictional Indiana town since 2016. Its 1898 Butts County Courthouse, designed by Bruce & Morgan, sits at the centre of the square where the series films its downtown exteriors; some buildings were freshly painted for the shoot. Other Jackson locations included a furniture store used as a cinema front and the probate court. In the story, Hawkins is the quiet town where, as the show puts it, nothing ever happens — before the disappearances begin.

Visitor guidance: The courthouse square is public ground in downtown Jackson; it is an ordinary working town.

Patrick Henry High School in Stockbridge, Georgia, stood in as both Hawkins Middle School and Hawkins High School for the series. The alternative school closed after the 2015 school year, but on screen it is where the boys sneak Eleven in to use the school radio and try to reach Will. By season four the older characters attend Hawkins High, home of the Dungeons & Dragons club the Hellfire Club, led by the eccentric Eddie Munson.

The quarry scenes were filmed at Bellwood Quarry, the granite pit on Atlanta's west side listed among the first season's locations. In the story it is the quarry just outside Hawkins where Will's body is pulled from the water — except Joyce refuses to believe the body is her son, and Hopper learns from the morgue that it is a fake. The real quarry closed in 2007; the site is now Shirley Clarke Franklin Park, a public park on the edge of the city.

Visitor guidance: Shirley Clarke Franklin Park is open to the public.

The third season's centrepiece, Starcourt Mall, was filmed at a re-dressed Gwinnett Place Mall in Duluth, Georgia. The mall opened in 1984 and by the time the show arrived was nearly empty, which suited the production. On screen, Starcourt is where the summer of 1985 turns: Dustin, Steve, Robin and Erica uncover a secret Soviet laboratory beneath the food court trying to reopen the gateway to the Upside Down, and Hopper seemingly dies when the Soviet gate is finally closed.

The season-four mansion is the Claremont House at 906 E 2nd Ave in Rome, Georgia, filmed for the exterior of the Creel House. In the story, the Creel family moved into a house in Hawkins in 1959; their son Henry killed his mother and sister there, and the house became the centre of Vecna's killings decades later. Max's friends explore the abandoned Creel House for clues to Vecna's whereabouts, and Max recognises parts of it from her visions.

The Pennhurst Mental Hospital scenes were shot at Berry College, at its Ford Complex in Mount Berry near Rome. On screen, Pennhurst is the asylum where Nancy and Robin, posing as university students, interview Victor Creel. From him they learn that the Creels were troubled by supernatural occurrences and illusions at their home, that his wife and children were murdered, and that music was the key to his own survival — the clue that later saves Max.

Hopper's imprisonment was filmed at Lukiškės Prison in Vilnius, Lithuania, a former prison that operated from 1837 until 2019 and was then turned into a cultural centre. On screen, it is the prison camp in Kamchatka where Hopper is held and forced to battle a captured Demogorgon. Joyce and Murray Bauman travel to rescue him from the gulag.

Visitor guidance: The former prison is now a cultural centre in central Vilnius; check its opening times before going.