‘Halloween’ Might Be Set in Illinois But You Won’t Find Haddonfield Here

The new Michael Myers flick, Halloween Kills, is officially out today so I figured I needed to do some research.

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For me, there's always a bit of hometown flavor with the Halloween movies, namely because they are set in Illinois.

The town of Haddonfield is where Michael wreaks havoc through most of the Halloween films.

So today I set out to find out just where Haddonfield, Illinois is located.

First, I have to say "great job, internet" because devoted fans have really fleshed out Haddonfield so much so that for a minute there I thought it was an actual town.

Haddonfield is located in Livingston County, a for-real county in Illinois, it's just that, for all intents and purposes, Haddonfield isn't real. Well, at least not real in Illinois.

However, there's a very real Haddonfield in New Jersey.

So armed with this newfound information, I asked my 11-year-old son, who is an absolute Halloween nut, if he knew the truth about Haddonfield. I'm not kidding about his fandom either. For reals, his big gift this year for his birthday was a Michael Myers mask. I shared it on my Instagram because he wore it nonstop.

Anyway, I thought it might be a "Cool Dad" thing to say "Hey, did you know Halloween is set in Haddonfield, Illinois, even though Haddonfield isn't a real place in Illinois?"

He said, "Yeah, I already knew that." So I followed up because I really didn't know the answer to this question, "Why didn't they just set it in New Jersey then?" My son replied because the co-writer Debra Hill is from Haddonfield, New Jersey but they wanted to move it to Illinois."

I believed him and he was right. Mental Floss says "Haddonfield is named after co-writer and producer Debra Hill’s hometown of Haddonfield, New Jersey."

Long story short, Haddonfield, Illinois exists only in the Halloween flicks but really exists (minus an unkillable psychotic murderer) in New Jersey.