Is Silent Hill based on a real place?
While the supernatural and religious elements of Silent Hill are fictional, the story of a town ravaged by the fires of its own mining industry is true. Centralia, Pennsylvania was a coal mining community of some 1,000 people. In 1962, a trash fire set in an abandoned mine site ignited a dormant vein of coal. Fumes from the underground blaze, cracks and sinkholes formed in the unstable earth, and other problems eventually led to the evacuation of the town. Although millions of dollars were spent trying to extinguish the blaze, it still burns beneath the town, making it nearly uninhabitable. Despite this fact, some residents, including the town’s longtime mayor, remain firmly grounded in Centralia. One of Silent Hill’s screenwriters, Roger Avary, encountered the story of the town while working on revising the screenplay and incorporated elements of its history into the film.
