Hollygrove is home to a very active supernatural community, people who have been touched by the otherworldly, some of whom have chosen to live mostly ‘out and proud’ in a world that does not embrace the supernatural as real. So they’ve decided to capitalize on the situation by allowing their little town to be known as a kitschy tourist spot, while serving as a relatively safe haven for Inhuman Americans.

Hollygrove has always been a center for supernatural activity from its very early days in the mid 1600s. Early sailors and fishermen who settled the area spoke of ghostly presences and strange occurrences. There are records in journals dating back to those times about mermaids off the coast, otherworldly lights in the woods, and unusual animals that could be seen from the windows of homes at night, lurking on the edges of town. The forests are haunted. Don’t walk alone at night.

Soon, the residents who settled the area began showing signs of what the locals call The Curse. It was unpredictable. Sometimes it would strike everyone in an entire family, sometimes a single member. There was no predicting when it would happen either—in childhood, adulthood, and even, very rarely, the elderly in the town. A transformation would begin, and they would find themselves gradually changed into something more than human.

At first, the locals tried to hide it. They protected their cursed members by hiding them and keeping it secret for a very long time. The town did everything it could to discourage people from settling there including being downright unfriendly to those passing by on their travels. And for quite a while throughout the 1700s and into the 1800s, this was very effective. Most people avoided Hollygrove, not even stopping on the road that passed through if they could avoid it. Those who stayed at the inn or ventured into businesses reported the service was near non-existent and the locals strange, suspicious, and unfriendly.

But times were changing, and as the 1900s came, Hollygrove became a bit of a tourist destination quite in spite of itself. The town’s population swelled in the summer months and tourists flocked to the Cape Cod shoreline to enjoy the beaches, the breezes off the Atlantic Ocean, and Hollygrove’s beautiful forests and conservation areas. Unfortunately, a lot of tourists also went missing during those times. Developers who came to the area found that their projects met with a lot of strange sabotage, sabotage that they largely suspected was the work of disgruntled locals, but that they could never quite pin on anyone specific. Despite efforts to stop it, the tourist industry only continued to grow in the area, with people moving in from out of town to set up shop and serve the needs of vacationers.

This meant that it became harder and harder to hide an increasing supernatural population. The number of strange “sightings” drew far too many curious “ghost hunters” and locals seeking to poke about in places where they oughtn’t. And so it was in the 1980s that the town as a whole decided that they would do something radical: they’d simply embrace who they were and tell the world that, yes, the supernatural is real and that it can be found in Hollygrove, MA. What happened wasn’t quite what they’d intended. Tourists did embrace the town, but they still didn’t believe it was real. And so Hollygrove found itself advertised as a “reenactment” area similar to destinations all over the US like Old Sturbridge Village, an 1830s Massachusetts settlement.

So it remains to this day. Popularity of the town waxes and wanes, Hollygrove falls in and out of the news every so often. The occasional “ghost hunter” style show will highlight it, renewing interest, and then it will drop off again. There are families that summer in the town every year as they have since the 1950s, and then there are those who are “true believers” who come seeking the truly unusual, and never leave.