When you drive into Astoria, Oregon, you might be on a mission to find the “Goon Docks”, aka the neighborhood where the children of the Goonies movie lived, including Mikey’s famous house, or one of the other filming sites. Or maybe you want to find the real-life elementary school used in Kindergarten Cop, or the view of the Astoria-Megler Bridge used in Short Circuit, as well as in additional films.
In 2025, Astoria’s annual Goonies Day in June will celebrate 40 years since the film’s premiere. Previous anniversaries, like the 25- and 30-year celebrations, drew crowds of 10,000 to 12,000 people. Which is impressive when you consider the population of Astoria is about 9,800, meaning the number of Goonies fans visiting outnumbers the total number of local residents.
If you’d like to visit Astoria in the pages of a book, you have options! Aiden Thomas’ Lost in the Neverwoods is set in Astoria, a dark retelling of Peter Pan. Five years before the start of the novel, Wendy and her two younger brothers were kidnapped, and only Wendy was found alive in the middle of the woods, but she doesn’t remember what happened. Now eighteen, Wendy is struggling with her past, and local children have started disappearing again.
Booklist said it best in their starred review of Lost in the Neverwoods, “A poignant novel about resilience, the magic of childhood, and the impossible choices that survivors often have to make in order to move forward, this will haunt readers long after they put it down―but will also leave them looking up at the stars.”
Deep River by Karl Marlantes follows three Finnish siblings who settle on the Washington side of the Columbia River, across from Astoria (which was known as “Helsinki of the West” due to the number of Finnish immigrants who settled there).
On the nonfiction side, Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival by Peter Stark entertainingly recounts the 1810 Astor Expedition’s race to build an American empire on the West Coast, leading to the ultimate creation of the Oregon Trail.
Now, let’s head to Southern Oregon, specifically to Ashland, Oregon. The town is known as the home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, but filmgoers have seen it in movies like Wild, and it was used as inspiration by Laika when adapting Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. In the adaptation, Coraline lives in a town with its own Shakespeare festival, and eagle-eyed viewers will see how Ashland’s downtown was one of the visual inspirations for the film.
If you’d like to visit Ashland in the pages of a book, check out Ellie Alexander’s Bakeshop Mystery Series. The twenty-first book in the series, Laying Down the Latte, comes out on August 26th, while the twenty-second, The Whisking Hour, comes out in February 2026. Ellie also organizes the Ashland Mystery Fest [https://travelashland.com/ashland-mystery-fest/] with Travel Ashland, and hordes of cozy mystery readers descend on the town for a long weekend each October for a festival focused on the reader experience.
Salem, Oregon, aka the state capital, served as the filming site for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which swept the Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay in 1976. The action of the film—and most of the filming—took place inside the Oregon State Hospital, which is still an active psychiatric hospital. Some of the hospital’s staff can be seen on screen, including the hospital’s superintendent, Dr. Dean R. Brooks, who played the role of Dr. Spivey. Patients were extra or paid assistants on the film, and the cast, including Jack Nicholson, even spent at least one overnight with patients in a locked ward. Brooks was a leader in decriminalizing mental illness and championed using the hospital as the primary filming site.
The Oregon State Hospital opened an onsite museum [https://oshmuseum.org/] which includes an exhibit on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, in addition to displays that take an unflinching look at the evolution of mental health treatment over the years.
If you want to read about Salem on the pages of a novel, start with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, as it’s a classic for a reason. You can also check out Megan Lally’s No Place Left to Hide, which starts out in an exclusive Salem prep school, but then the action moves onto a secluded highway between Salem and the Oregon coast. Lally’s debut, That’s Not My Name, also takes place in the woods of Oregon.
If more novels set in the dark woods of Oregon sound appealing, don’t miss out on The Child Finder by Rene Denfeld, the first book in the Naomi Cottle duology. Naomi is a former kidnapped child with an uncanny ability to find missing people. As she searches for missing eight-year-old Madison Culver, Naomi’s own past starts to catch up to her. The Child Finder and its sequel, The Butterfly Girl, tackle tough topics with sensitivity.
Let’s get sporty. When I think of movies filmed in Eugene, I immediately think of Without Limits, a biographical film about runner Steve Prefontaine, who set American records at every race distance between 2,000 and 10,000 meters between 1973 and 1975, and took fourth in the mile at the 1972 Summer Olympics. His life was sadly cut short after a car accident in 1975 at the age of 24. The annual Prefontaine Classic, one of the premier track events in the world, is held every summer in his honor.
Knowing this, you might not be surprised that two other films Eugene is known for—Tracktown and Prefontaine (yes, another sports biography about Steve Prefontaine) —were filmed in Eugene, including at the iconic Hayward Field.
But track films aren’t the movies Eugene can claim as their own. Animal House was filmed at the University of Oregon, and the final parade scene was filmed in nearby Cottage Grove. The iconic diner scene in Five Easy Pieces was filmed in the still-operating Dennys in Eugene.
Fans of Stand by Me might have noticed the Eugene scenes, as well as those in Cottage Grove and Brownsville.
If you’d like to visit Eugene in the pages of a book, you have plenty of choices. The iZombie graphic novel series, written by Chris Roberson and illustrated by Michael Allred, tells the story of a zombie who consumes the brains of homicide victims and then solves their murders, and it showcases Eugene locations in the illustrations. If you enjoyed this graphic novel, good news: it has been adapted into a TV show! Although it’s very different from the graphic novels (but it is equally fun and set in Seattle).
Kate Wilhelm is known for her Hugo and Locus Award-winning Where Late the Sweet Birds Sing and for receiving one of the inaugural Solstice awards from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, which was renamed the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award. Wilhelm was also a prolific mystery author. Her Barbara Holloway Mysteries tell the story of an attorney in Eugene who solves mysteries with a mix of detective fiction and courtroom drama alongside her semi-retired father, Frank.
Portland is Oregon’s biggest city and has been the filming site of numerous movies and TV shows. Some of the crime film highlights include Drugstore Cowboy, the 1989 crime comedy Breaking In, Foxfire, The Hunted, and more. TV viewers have seen Portland in Leverage, Grimm, and The Librarians, plus a few scenes in Stumptown, which was set in Portland but filmed primarily in Los Angeles.
If you were a fan of Stumptown (which, sadly, was renewed for a second season but was never filmed), you should read Greg Rucka’s Stumptown graphic novel series, which the show was based on. Alternatively, you can check out Chelsea Cain’s Heartbreaker series or one of Phil Margolin’s Robin Lockwood thrillers.
Central Oregon and Eastern Oregon have been in a surprising number of films, but if you want one of the weirder real-life stories, check out the Wild Wild Country documentary about the Rajneeshees on Netflix. This real-life group launched the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attacks and attempted to create their own utopia while taking over an Oregon town. If you’d prefer to visit in the pages of a book, check out The Rajneesh Chronicles by Win McCormack.
Last but not least, Oregon towns known for being the filming sites of iconic movies were an inspiration for my newest book, Mayhem at a Halloween Wedding, the second in my Halloween Bookshop series. The movie Halloweentown, which premiered on the Disney Channel in 1998, was filmed in St Helens, Oregon, a small town about a thirty-minute drive from Portland. The town has leaned into being a Halloween destination and hosts an annual festival from late September through Halloween each year. If you’re a fan of sparkly vampires, you should know St Helens was used in the Twilight films. The Swan’s House is in town and is now an Airbnb. The Thunderbird and Whale Bookstore is actually a lawyer’s office in St Helens, and there are a few more Easter eggs for the Twilight film fans.
My fictional version of St Helens has also embraced its background as the filming site of an iconic Halloween movie. However, Elyan Hollow has turned part of the town into a Halloween destination year-round, and it’s also a small town that’s starting to become attractive to families looking for affordable options near the city.
Halloweentown wasn’t my only inspiration. I’m impressed by the passion of Goonies fans, and I also spent my teen years in a coastal town that doubled in size during the summer when the local inns and hotels filled with tourists. The influx of visitors was an economic boon to the town, but it also created its own unique set of issues that were frustrating for locals. One of my goals for my series is to showcase the magic of Halloween, as well as the joy and frustration of living in a place people dream of visiting. All with cozy murder.
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