[For previous entries, click the "Most Gothic Place Names" label under Features in the right sidebar.]
The Hoosier state has more to offer than basketball and John Mellencamp. It sports such wonderful place names as Massacre (you can bet this town has a bloody history), Mace (a real eyesore), Gnaw Bone (a carnival for carnivores), Chase (just conjures images of heroines on the run), Shadeland (what a perfect name for a ghost town), Manson (wonder if the high school band plays "Helter Skelter"?), Antiville (where they're against everything), Koontz Lake (Dean's vacation destination?), and Dead Mans Crossing (you'll have to yield the right of way here to the unliving). But the most Gothic place name of all is found in...
Stony Lonesome. A name that is at once rhythmic and imagistic.
I can't help but envision a small, isolated town, centered around a headstone-sprouting graveyard. The kind of place where the dead outnumber--and weigh heavy on--their still-breathing brethren. Indiana's answer to Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River, Illinois.
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