The Alabama Weird

Several stories take place in Alabama—The GLOW, Eustace Delmont, Gareth Hendrix, others—but this should known as an alternate version of the state. With The GLOW it is fairly obvious being a completely new timeline, but all the stories in Alabama have several consistent deep differences in general.

All of these elements are considered CC-BY Doug Bolden except Maidenstead which is an Alabama twist on the default setting. 

The Alabama Weird originated decades ago as a setting for my own horror short stories that have been broadly set in a collective universe centered around three rough nexuses: Cresthill to the southern third of the state (which is the hub of the original stories), Armitage roughly in the upper part of middle third of the state, and Huntsville to the north. Mobile, AL has also shown up a couple of times so it is being included here. 

Bonus facts: the Cresthill name originally showed up as a one-off pun about my high school, Hillcrest. It just happened to stick across later stories (very few "Cresthill" stories actually take place in the city, they just reference it as a strange place where strange things happen). Armitage (and its name swapped head librarian) was used as a super-quick joke background for Nathaniel Yeoman stories that was originally going to be called Dunwich (the in-universe joke about Lovecraft being too prejudiced against the South to be honest about the name/location was included but I took it a step further to give love to the librarian). 

While I do not write many short stories now, these settings and changes to the state's history—for reasons it tends to be treated as vague rather than definite set trends and concepts in my games—frequently show up in my campaigns. A really quick breakdown of some key places that have shown up somewhere on this blog include:

• Cresthill: A small city located roughly in the same location of Evergreen, AL but several times larger. Featured in several short stories I wrote before this blog, and even more frequently referenced in passing, it was my non-geographic-specific version of a kind of "Alabama Arkham" with several southeastern/Alabama touches. In the context of this blog, it is mostly referenced in passing. A couple of other towns nearby have had significance. 
• Bunker: a small town south of Cresthill where not much happens besides some stuff involving a werewolf attack in the 2020s and a claim to being The Big Foot Capital of Alabama. Size and layout it is completely based on Evergreen, AL and my photos from Evergreen have been used to illustrate it.
• Antioch: the site of a mass-suicide in the 1910s, this strange town in the woods sometimes exists and sometimes does not. An even stranger garden near Antioch Church is rumored to the garden. Anything else would be spoilers.
• Armitage: in the eastern side of the upper middle part of the state, it is roughly in the same place as real-world Guntersville and also is known for its large lake and it's Brichester Community College. Several paranormal research agencies are housed here. One of its oddest sights is a large, classic-styled lighthouse in the woods a couple miles from the lake. Was the site of the Armitage Horror which was solved by Henrietta Dunwich, the head librarian. Lovecraft took liberties with the names. The current head librarian is Nathaniel Yeoman. Rumors abound about the strange, black-eyed librarian and his night-time activities. 
• Huntsville: which is the actual city but a bit more paranoid. The hub of moon missions in the 1970s, several buildings on the Redstone Arsenal include relics and artifacts from that time period under strict lockdown. Frequent references to "The Child" and "The King of Yellow" clash among its college campuses. "The Child" has been linked to many old fairy-tales (never the nice ones) and poems such as "The Erlking". If you see a small pale child, never ever play a game with him (or her, appearances vary), especially not chess. You will not like the pieces.
• Leftfield: A rundown town in the eastern side of the north section of the state. Known mostly for scraggly hiking trails and a failed zipper industry. The town's past has references to "The Devourer" and its local cult who believes some ancient alien being sleeps in the limestone caves beneath the town. The cult has been disbanded since incidents in the 1930s. The site had two high profile outbreaks of murders and disappearances in the 2020s.
• Mobile: Like Huntsville, this is mostly the city as is but with a few odd additions including the standard deep ones inserts, a few strange research stations along the Gulf Coast (especially Dauphin Island) and an incident involving The Drummers who took over the city's parks in the early 2000s with their claim that Mana-Yood-Sushai was soon to awake now that Skarl had grown tired.
• Maidenstead: (note: while the others are original creations from old and more recent short stories of mine, or obvious references to generally older public domain stories, Maidenstead is directly related to the much more recent Maidenstead Mysteries one-sheet from Tricube Tales by Richard Woolcock). A sleepy Gulf Coast town across the Bay from Mobile. Known primarily from a century old hotel called the Rambler's Inn whose weird architecture and haunted stories are a local legend.