"My name is Marshall Teller. Not too long ago, I was living in New Jersey, just across the river from New York City. It was crowded, polluted, and full of crime. I loved it. But my parents wanted a better life for my sister and me. So we moved to a place so wholesome, so squeaky clean, so ordinary that you could only find it on TV: Eerie, Indiana."
That's from the prologue of the first book in a series which is based on the 90s TV show for kids "Eerie, Indiana". That means I can't talk about the book series leaving out the show.
As there are 19 episodes, though, and 17 books, I picked the just the first one of each for this post.
The book is called "Return to Foreverware", a nod to the first episode of the TV show called "Forever Ware". It's by Mike Ford who wrote nine of the books.
Let's begin with the TV show. How to describe "Eerie, Indiana" ...
"Statistically speaking, it's the most normal place in the entire country. Statistics lie."
Actually, the town is exactly what its name promises. "The King" lives on Marshall's paper route, people move strangely synchronized, a straitjacket hangs on a laundry line, and that's just the intro.
Marshall's mother works as a party planner, but being a busy lady she's not so good with her own groceries. How lucky when her neighbor Betty Wilson and her twins Ernie and Bert turn up with a solution. Mrs. Wilson's late husband has designed a series of vacuum sealed containers called Tu.... erm, Forever Ware.
As a little gift she leaves a bologna sandwich in a container, as fresh as it was when it was made. In 1974!
It's even more suspicious when one of the twins slips Marshall a note saying "Yearbook 1964" as the family leaves.
Marshall and his friend Simon check the yearbooks and find a picture of Ernie and Bert looking the same as now, so they decide to snoop around a bit.
They don't expect to see this, though ...
... Mrs. Wilson tucking the twins in, but these are not beds, they are giant Forever Ware containers!
I'm not going to spoil the ending (spoil, see what I did there?).
The book sees Marshall and Simon looking for a weekend job.
They answer to the ad of Mr. and Mrs. Stewart - James and Martha! - who seem to be stuck in the 70s, not only with their clothes, but also their furniture. They get asked to declutter the attic.
What's weird is that Mrs. Stewart seems to have an extra soft spot for Simon. The boys learn that the Stewarts had a son who died years ago - Rod(ney) - and Marshall can't shake the feeling that they'd like to replace him with Simon. But is he the first? Why do they find pictures from a birthday party that always looks the same, but it's a different boy every time. What happened to Rodney? And what's in the basement?
Then Simon suddenly disappears and the Stewarts deny having seen him although his bike is in their garage.
Will Marshall be able to save him and can someone help him doing it (spoiler: Ernie and Bert will)?
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| Omri Katz as Marshall (whom you probably know from Hocus Pocus) and Justin Shenkarow as Simon |
"Eerie, Indiana" first aired on NBC. Joe Dante of "Gremlins" fame directed several episodes and was a creative consultant.
From the start, the writers Karl Schaefer and José Rivera intended for the show to be more than merely for kids. I wasn't a kid when I first saw it although I can't remember when and where that was, and the mix of humor, spookiness, horror, science fiction, and innuendos drew me in very quickly.
In reviews it was noted that the show reminded of "Twin Peaks", "Edward Scissorhands", "Twilight Zone" - a seemingly "normal" town where there's a lot more going on underneath the surface than you would expect.
It certainly wasn't all fun and play. The second episode in which a boy finds that his retainer gives him the powers to read the minds of dogs who want to overthrow the humans is downright creepy to me, so much so that I often skip it, but I have also been traumatized by "Lady and the Tramp" (as an adult) or "Bambi".
Anyhow, as it's said in a lot of videos and articles, the show was ahead of its time. It was cancelled after 18 episodes were aired between 1991 and 1992 ending on an episode in which Marshall finds out by way of a script that his reality is in fact a TV show. Only in the re-run in 1993, the last episode was aired as well.
In 1997, the show was bought up and broadcast again and got popular enough again to not only inspire a spin-off produced in Canada (just as short-lived, but not as good), but also the book series. In fact, it gained kind of a cult following as you can also see from the many comments of people who had seen it as kids and still bemoan its short life.
Mike Ford writes on his homepage: "One day my editor called me and said, "We're doing these books based on this TV show, but none of the writers we know have ever heard of it." When she told me what it was, they probably heard me scream in space. I loved the show. And that's how I got the job."
I remember getting the books from the USA (at a time when postage was still affordable) and being called into the customs office. The lady asked me to show her the invoice and to her surprise, the whole stack of books had been so cheap that I didn't even get to the limit for having to pay tax.
"Eerie, Indiana" inspired other shows like it (the "Stranger Things" connection is mentioned a lot and Alex Hirsch said that his "Gravity Falls" (another one I'm a fan of) was "a blatant rip off of Eerie, Indiana") and still has its fans today, that's not a bad legacy.
You may recognize one or the other actor, by the way, for example "Gomez Addams" John Astin as the owner of the "World O' Stuff" store, a soul collecting René Auberjonois or young Tobey Maguire as a ghost.
How many people actually ever knew about the books or still do is difficult for me to say, I can't even say how I learned about them. Unsurprisingly, they are no longer in print, though.
Further reading:
1. Gwen Ihnat: Eerie, Indiana was a few dimensions ahead of its time. On: AV Club, October 30, 2017
2. Justin Young: Eerie, Indiana Paved the Way for Supernatural's Success. On: CBR, February 28, 2026
