Is Midnight, Texas's Midnight, Texas, A Real Town?

If you were to check Google Maps right now, you would find out there are two Midnight Drives, two Midnight Lanes, one Midnight Pass, and one Midnight Circle in the Lone Star State of Texas. But, NBC didn’t name a brand new show after any of those places. The network named a show Midnight, Texas. The supernatural drama, based off of a book series by Charlaine Harris, the same author whose work inspired True Blood, is set in the eponymous town, which is filled with witches, vampires, and ghost grandmas. With Midnight, which follows town newbie and psychic Manfred Bernardo (François Arnaud) as he navigates the supernatural safe haven, set to premiere in a matter of days on July 24, we decided it was time to figure out if Midnight, Texas, exists, and if so, is it filled to the brim with nightmare creatures?

It may shock you to hear this, but a village inhabited by horror creatures called Midnight, Texas, is not technically real — in fact, there isn’t even a non-supernatural version of the town on the map. While Midnight, Texas, may not be an actual place, things aren’t as obvious as they seem, much like the Midnight, Texas The Series itself. Though Midnight doesn’t exist, source material author Harris certainly didn’t make up the NBC town out of the blue. The writer, who grew up in the Mississippi River Delta area, spent her childhood summers in Rocksprings, Texas. The town is smack in the middle of the Lone Star State, 175 miles to the west of Austin. “Midnight is a lot like the little town that I knew,” Harris told local Texas newspaper Star-Telegram. Although Rocksprings seemingly isn’t home to any werewolves, it does house the ominously titled Devil’s Sinkhole. The national park’s star attraction is its Mexican free-tailed bats colony, which is the largest in all of Texas. For months, the sinkhole “provides an amazing venue to witness over 3 million bats stream out into the evening sky,” according to the park's website. Yes, that definitely sounds like something haunting enough to influence a book series and TV show including vampires. On top of Harris’s girlhood summers staring at massive clouds of flying bats, she has lived near Fort Worth, Texas, since 2012.

Despite the fact that Harris has spent lots of time in two Texas towns, it is unlikely Midnight, Texas, is actually a stand-in for either Rocksprings or Fort Worth. As a fan detective on Wrote Trip blog pointed out, the fictional burg is supposed to be located “west of Fort Worth,” already proving Midnight is definitely not a thinly veiled, and deeply supernatural, version of its creator’s current hometown. The Fort Worth area is in the northern central portion of the state, so basically half of Texas is west of the city. To narrow down where Midnight would fall amid all that land, Wrote Trips reminds us the town is also 30 miles from the northern city of Lubbock, Texas. The blog claims Midnight might be a reference to Glen Rose, Texas, since the city is close to a state park known for its dinosaur tracks; similar footprints are mentioned in the Midnight, Texas series. However, Glen Rose is nearly 300 miles from Lubbock — not a short 30 miles away.

Instead, the small towns surrounding Lubbock would be the perfect place for supernatural creatures to hide out, as there are so many tiny burgs, it’s easy to miss one. In fact, the closest cities in either direction are a full 120 miles away, with Amarillo to the north and Midland to the south. Between the two, every supernatural creature under the sun — or avoiding the sun, depending on what we’re talking about — could go unnoticed in certain desolate areas. Interestingly, Lubbock already has a trail called "Hell's Gate," which is located under an old railroad bridge. Certain corners of the internet are convinced the area is a "hotspot" for the paranormal, including ghosts and satanism. To the north, Amarillo is home to tons of urban legends of its own, including an elementary school that's said to be haunted for various creepy reasons, an antique mall supposedly plagued with the spirit of a woman in a white dress, and an apartment building filled with apparitions, including a pregnant woman who can be seen jumping out of a window, but disappears before she hits the ground.

Yet, despite the fact Midnight, Texas has "Texas" in the name and all, the Lone Star State you’ll see on screen isn’t actually Texas. In reality, the new series filmed throughout New Mexico until February 2017, with Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Bernalillo, and Belen filling in for Midnight, the Albuquerque Journal confirmed. Even Midnight’s soundstage was in Albuquerque. The pilot, filmed in April 2016, was also shot in Las Vegas, New Mexico, as opposed to Las Vegas, Nevada.

So, Midnight, Texas, may not exist, but the world of Midnight, Texas is certainly rooted in some reality.