Kooky Cascadia

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Ah, the Pacific Northwest, a land of gloomy weather and isolation from the rest of North America that many people have found nonetheless enchanting… in some cases, literally so.

Kooky Cascadia corresponds to what is commonly known as the Cascadia bioregion👁 Image
, which formally extends from northern California to the Alaska Panhandle, but most famously consists of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. The trope portrays it as a Cloudcuckooland, a Weirdness Magnet, and/or a setting for Horror or New Weird stories.

In more grounded examples, this may come in the form of the region being home to a disproportionate number of Quirky Towns and offbeat weirdos and eccentrics who don't fit in anywhere else, some of whom may have moved there from other parts of the US to either be around others like them or simply get away from everyone. It may not be unusual for a random person you meet on the street to be in a Punk Rock band, publish a 'zine, or have some kind of geeky interest that would be seen as just weird anywhere else.

In other versions, this manifests in explicitly supernatural form, with each little town's quirks being of the sort that attract unexplainable phenomena, Sasquatch living in the towering forests surrounding those towns, the weirdos from the rest of the country drawn to the region being people with strange abilities, the myths and legends of the local indigenous tribes turning out to be very real all while their artistic touches (especially totem poles) are embedded throughout the landscape, and Government Conspiracies lurking in the background keeping track of it all and possibly being responsible for some of it.

This trope also has a dark side, one that horror fiction has exploited to great effect. The constant rainy, overcast weather and forbidding woods create a grim aura, the locals are distant and standoffish and will greet you with the "Seattle freeze", those aforementioned weirdos include Serial Killers,^note An Urban Legend repeated on many schoolyards in Washington is that the state has the highest rate of serial murder in the nation. It's not quite #1 (that would be Alaska), but it is in the top five and includes notorious killers like Ted Bundy, Robert Lee Yates, and the "Green River Killer" Gary Ridgway, while neighboring Oregon is in the top ten. those quirky towns may turn out to be Towns with Dark Secrets, and the strange things you'll find in those towns and forests — including Sasquatch — may want to eat you or claim your soul. In this version, the Pacific Northwest becomes the West Coast's counterpart to the East Coast's Lovecraft Country.

While this trope has roots going back earlier, it really took off in The '90s, a decade when the Pacific Northwest, particularly the city of Seattle, became a major hub for the counterculture in the United States thanks to the explosion of the Grunge and Riot Grrrl scenes in rock music and the success of shows like Twin Peaks. As such, one can expect a lot of allusions to '90s pop culture in the Weird Northwest, to the point of it feeling like a place where the '90s never ended.

Kooky Cascadia may sometimes overlap with the Weird West, especially in either period settings or stories where Old West legends and myths otherwise come into play. That said, it's hardly necessary for this trope, which is more likely to be set in either the present or the recent past with little in the way of New Old West motifs.

Compare and contrast Fantasy Americana, Lovecraft Country, Southern Gothic, Weird West, and Sinister Southwest for counterparts in the rest of America, and Campbell Country for its similarly wet and misty weather. See also Supernatural Scandinavia for another cold region associated with weirdness.

Examples: