Silent Hill fans just realising true story behind game ahead of new release

Silent Hill is one of the most popular horror franchises in gaming. The franchise currently boasts seven main games and over 20 games in total, as well as a film series and a line of comic books and novels.

This week, fans of the franchise will be treated to the 8th main game in the series when Silent Hill f releases on Thursday (September 25th). The game will follow high school student Shimizu Hinako and will be set in a rural Japanese town called Ebisugaoka, making it one of the very few games that is not set in the fictional town of Silent Hill.

But did you know the eerie ghost town that most of the games use as their setting can be found in real life?

While Silent Hill is a fictional town in West Virginia, US, the location there is another town that really exists and is eerily similar to Silent Hill. That town is called Centralia, and it can be found in the state of Pennsylvania.

You won't find monsters in Centralia like you would in the fictional Silent Hill, but the story behind the town follows many of the same traits - and it's attracted many video game fans to visit the location.

If you've ever played Silent Hill, you'll know one of the key features is the fog that hangs in the air. And that fog also exists in Centralia - all thanks to a devastating fire that still burns to this day.

In 1962, Centralia's local government burned the local landfill in an attempt to clean up waste. The fire spread through the unsealed tunnels that led into an abandoned coal mine, which ignited a fire that is still burning today, over 60 years later.

Local firefighters could not put out the fire, so the government decided that Centralia needed to be evacuated for the safety of its citizens - just like in Silent Hill. The air in Centralia is considered dangerous, and it is recommended that people avoid exposing themselves to the environment for long periods of time.

Most people left Centralia when it was evacuated, but a few stayed, and one of the remaining buildings is a church that is still in use. This is also very similar to the story of Silent Hill, as only a few citizens remain in the fictional town and continue to attend church services.

The developers of Silent Hill did not base their game on Centralia, but the film series did take inspiration from the real-life location, and it has been dubbed the "real-life Silent Hill".

Centralia has attracted many video game fans to visit the location because of its connection to Silent Hill, including one TikTok user who posted a video last year in which he made the journey to the so-called ghost town.

Footage of Centralia showed smoke still billowing from the Earth in a forest area full of dead trees, as well as empty streets and a shot of the operational church standing as one of the only remaining buildings.

He captioned his video: "I visited the real-life Silent Hill. Centralia, PA, was abandoned due to an underground coal fire that's been burning since the 1960s. Very few buildings remain in the town to this day, including a church, a municipal building, and houses."

The Department of Environmental Protection in the US maintains that the area encompassed by the Centralia Mine Fire is extremely dangerous, and they "strongly discourage" anyone from visiting. They state that not only are there "dangerous gases" caused by the fire, but the ground is "prone to sudden and unexpected collapse".

Silent Hill f releases for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows on September 25th.