Chapelwaite: Why Whip-Poor-Wills Always Sing When The Vampires Appear

One of the most distinctive parts of moody horror series Chapelwaite‘s atmospheric eeriness is the cry of whip-poor-wills whenever vampires are near. The distinctive bird’s call creates a very unsettling effect. More than just being chosen for its auditory effect, however, the whip-poor-will has a symbolic meaning which involves Indigenous American folklore and may hold clues to what the series holds in the future.

Based on the Stephen King short story “Jerusalem’s Lot”, the Epix series Chapelwaite is set in the small Maine town of Preacher’s Corners during the 1850s. Having inherited the eponymous estate, the former sea captain Charles Boone (Adrien Brody) finds himself embroiled in dark secrets and enmity with a town that hates his family. All throughout, the whip-poor-will’s cry accentuates specific moments. In the fourth episode, for example. Charles finally confronts his long-thought-dead cousin, Stephen (Steven McCarthy) and a mysterious group called the Promise, all of whom appear to be vampires, always accompanied by the sound of the whip-poor-will.

It’s not by accident that the cry of the whip-poor-will accompanies every supernatural scene–the birds have a long been associated with ill omens and death in folklore, similar to hearing a banshee or seeing a spectral black dog. Some Indigenous cultures believed that the whip-poor-will could sense the soul leaving the body and that their cries were associated with death. This belief was taken up by settlers of New England, who believed that the bird was a bad omen if heard singing near a house. Other versions of the lore state that one should never return a whip-poor-will’s cry as, if it stops calling when one responds, that person is marked for death, and soon. This helps to explain the whip-poor-will’s role in Chapelwaite. The vampires are dead already, and where they go, death follows, making the whip-poor-will’s warning even more prescient.

It’s easy to see why whip-poor-wills were incorporated into the folklore of the Northeast and later woven into numerous examples of classic literature. Found across the Eastern United States and parts of Canada, whip-poor-wills have coloring that allows them to blend into their woodland environment. For this reason, their distinctive call is heard more often than the bird is seen, causing many to view them as spooky or ghostly. The whip-poor-will has been used by horror authors like H. P. Lovecraft and James Thurber as a symbol of impending death, as well as by other venerated authors like Kurt Vonnegut, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and William Faulkner to summon a New England atmosphere. This would make them a natural fit for an adaptation of Stephen King, whose New England roots often make their way into his stories and adaptations of his work.

The whip-poor-will’s cries are first heard in the Chapelwaite series premiere, where Charles comments on them to his children. Rebecca (Emily Hampshire), the town journalist and his children’s new nanny, describes the bird as an “omen of night and death” in the story she is writing about her time with the Boones, suggesting their thematic significance in Chapelwaite. The sounds later accompany appearances of the town’s mysterious vampires, such as when one of them kills a mill worker who threatened the family of Adrien Brody’s protagonist Charles Boone. The bird sounds also accompany other frightening incidents, as when the near-dead Susan Mallory appears at Chapelwaite in the middle of the night, and are often ratcheted up to a near-unbearable degree.

It seems unlikely that Chapelwaite will provide an in-universe explanation of why the whip-poor-wills sing when vampires approach. Rather, the birds’ song adds to the eerie ambiance of the story, and help to symbolize the story’s connection to its setting. New England legends about the whip-poor-will help demonstrate why the bird’s song is a crucial part of Chapelwaite‘s sonic landscape.

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