Here’s Everything You Need to Know about Crystal Lake’s Iconic Location
Jason Voorhees’ home sweet home.
In a franchise full of iconic figures and imagery — hockey masks haven’t been the same since Friday the 13th Part III in 1982 — Camp Crystal Lake stands on its own. Although not all of the movies in the franchise take place there (don’t forget about Manhattan and space!), the once-thriving summer camp that was turned into the Voorhees family’s own personal slaughtering ground is an important location in Friday the 13th lore.
The new series Crystal Lake takes us back to camp, for a series that Inverse’s Dais Johnson says “incorporates [complications that] are just as weird as the original movies themselves, all leading up to a timeline that makes even less sense than before.” But before diving in to the new series (pun intended), let’s go back to where it all started for camp cook Pamela Voorhees and her sweet little boy Jason.
Where is Camp Crystal Lake?
Camp Crystal Lake is located in the fictional town of, you guessed it, Crystal Lake, in the fictional county of Cunningham, New Jersey — a reference to the film’s director and producer, Sean S. Cunningham. Although the exact location of Cunningham County is unclear, it’s presumably a lot like the Kittatinny Mountains area where the movie was shot: Rural with lots of remote wooded areas and lakes, but close enough to civilization to attract city-dwellers looking for some fresh air in the summertime.
Founded in 1935 by the Christy family, Camp Crystal Lake was a totally normal, thriving summer camp where no one ever got murdered until Pamela Voorhees came to work as a cook at the camp. She brought along her young son Jason, whose developmental disabilities made him a frequent target of bullying from campers. One day, a gang of kids took Jason and threw him in the lake while his mother and the counselors weren’t looking; he drowned, and Pamela Voorhees lost her mind.
In the original movie, these events occur in 1957. But Crystal Lake pushes them up to 1971, for reasons that seem to be mostly about cooking up a psychedelic-era origin story for Jason and his mom. The broad beats remain the same, however, telling a very bloody story of twisted motherly love.
What Happened There?
A bunch of murders. Like, soooo many murders. The bloodshed actually began long before the events of the original Friday the 13th, earning Camp Crystal Lake the nickname “Camp Blood.” What we see in the first movie is yet another attempt to reopen the camp, this one spearheaded by Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer), the son of the original owners. Nine people were killed that night, shutting down Camp Crystal Lake yet again — until five years later, when Jason himself first debuted as the killer in Friday the 13th Part II. (Although the movie was set in 1984, it was released in 1981, beginning the series’ many continuity problems.)
They actually shut down Camp Crystal Lake for a while after that, although that didn’t stop Jason from killing an impressive 45 people in Friday the 13th parts III, IV, and V. Camp Crystal Lake returned under a new name, Camp Forest Green, in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, although the indiscriminate slaughter of its counselors kinda gave away its true identity. Last we checked — at least in the original continuity — Camp Crystal Lake was sitting in disrepair, having been damaged by the supernatural showdown at the end of Freddy Vs. Jason in 2003.
Is It a Real Place?
The original Friday the 13th was filmed at Camp NoBeBoSco in Hardwick Township, New Jersey, which was a functioning Boy Scout camp when Sean S. Cunningham and his crew shot their soon-to-be-infamous slasher movie there during the offseason in the fall of 1979. It still is a functioning camp, which means you can’t just drop by there and take pictures whenever you want. To see the cabins — or even stay in one of them overnight — you’ll have to sign up for a tour, unless you happen to know any former Boy Scouts who went to camp there. It still looks a lot like it did in the movie, although the Camp Crystal Lake sign is reportedly now hanging in the camp mess hall.
The towns surrounding the camp have also learned to embrace their Friday the 13th history (and the tourism that comes with it), hosting screenings of the movie and welcoming visitors to locations like the Blairstown Diner, which is where camp owner Steve spends the evening before coming back to Camp Crystal Lake to get murdered at the end of the original film.
