For Halloween, let's do the fun thing and explain why a scary city name isn't actually scary
Have you ever looked at a city name and wondered to yourself, "Where exactly did they get that idea?" There are many cities in the United States that when you look at them it gives you an uneasy feeling, like visiting a place called "Murder City." What's probably ultimately dissapointing for some is the rather simple and mundance reasons for these names; like we've said before, most cities are simply named after a founder, the location, or what a person sees from where they're standing. However, some of our examples might surprise you in how they differ from this general rule of thumb.
So in celebration of Halloween (and maybe taking the fun out of it a bit), we're going to highlight some of the more unsettling names to find in the country and then deflate the unease by looking at where exactly that name came from.
Like with many small towns, Scarville started with a small population then only became smaller over the course of a century. Going from 129 people to 74 - it must be a curse, right? It all has to do with that name!
Truthfully, Scarville was named after a man - Ole Scar. He owned a large amount of land where Scarville would ultimately be founded, and thus was the town named after him. If there was more to the story we'd share it, but it really is that simple!
Slaughter Beach is possibly the most eye-catching name on this list. A beach of slaughter, you say? And there was a 5.3% population increase between 2010 and 2020? How is that possible with a name like that?
Slaughter Beach's origin is a bit more complicated than the Scarville example; there's a debate about where it came about, and the stories range from pretty mundane to more befittingly violent.
For one, early maps apparently showcase Slaughter Creek and Slaughter Neck adjacent to where Slaughter Beach was, so perhaps it was deemed appropriate to uphold the tradition. Another speculation is that the first postmaster here was surnamed Slaughter.
For a bit more of a fantastical take, it has been said that summer horseshoe crabs would, depending on the season, come ashore to spawn, but would then be flipped over by the waves and ultimately perish in the hot sun. To go even further than just crabs, one interpretation says that the name originated as the result of a battle between early settlers and Indians.
To this day, there hasn't been real confirmation about any of these, but the most likeliest has been said to be the postmaster theory - which checks off the part of our rule of thumb about cities named after people.
There are hills? And devils are killed there? Would it also surprise you to hear that this town in North Carolina has never experienced population decline as recorded by the United States Census?
Like Slaughter Beach, there are a few different stories that make up the origin of this city's name, and one is actually officially recognized: in the past, it has been said that ships carrying rum repeatedly ran aground on the barrier islands outside the beach. The "kill devil" part of it possibly comes from the perceived low quality of the liquor and how it was so bad it would kill the devil.
The unofficial stories also say that it was the difficulty of navigating the nearby waters that resulted in the name, or the Killdeer, a type of shore bird, that populated the area, resulting in the name "Killdeer Hills" that eventually morphed into its modern version.
There's a chance that hearing this town's name immediately draws your memory to The Munsters, a television series in the 1960s that aired opposite of Batman. Starring an unlikely crew of paranormal monsters, it was rebooted recently in 2022, and lives rather famously in television history. Therefore, this town must be named for it, right?
Well, perhaps there could be an argument for it if Munster, Indiana hadn't already been incorporated for 57 years by the time the show first aired (nevermind the fact that it had first settled in the mid-19th century). The truth is that a man named Jacob Monster had immigrated to the area from the Netherlands, and like many other immigrants had his surname anglicized to Munster. He would go on to run a popular store that became the center to the town that would be born with him as namesake. Once again, our rule of thumb.
We could have also highlighted popular cities like Salem, Massachusetts or Tombstone, Arizona, but those cities have already been enshrined in popular media for a century at this point. We wanted to take the time to point out some smaller cities with eye-catching names in the spirit of the season as well as highlight more unique origin stories found across the United States (but if you do spot a place named Murder City, do let us know - we'd love to figure out a name like that.)
Header image sourced with permission from torianime_677255.
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