During a delightful (and mysteriously sunny) Sunday afternoon on the outdoor deck of the Oarhouse in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, I sat down with Chase Bailey, writer and director of Crooked Lane, over a light lunch and asked him about the inspiration behind the movie.

He leaned forward with a slight smile and breathed sharply through his teeth. “Ah, that,” he said at last. “A few years ago, I remember running across this remote graveyard in Brookfield, New Hampshire. I was with my wife and brother-in-law at the time, and they told me [that] this was one of the ‘unmarked’ cemeteries. I asked them why they weren’t marked, and they told me it was because there were no bodies buried there.” A slight wind picked up off the glassy surface of the Piscataqua, momentarily chilling the exposed skin of my forearms. I shivered briefly. No bodies?

No bodies. “I have now seen four of these cemeteries in various remote locations, and I began to hear this phrase – what was it again? – oh, yes … Les Cimetieres des Abbatus. Cemeteries of the Culled, is what it roughly translates to. I naturally began investigating.”

I asked him if the Internet was any help. “Funnily enough,” he said, “I couldn’t find much information on the web, but by talking to old-time residents whose roots stretch back generations, I found that these gravestones were put there for missing people. Missing people, all from the same families – and they all turned out to be women and children! Something was taking place in these families, [something] was just decimating [them].”

He sat back in his chair and took a sip of his wine. “Especially,” he said, “the women and the children. And that’s what piqued my curiosity and helped me start the process of writing Crooked Lane.”

… to be followed, again, shortly …