You Can Visit The Eerie Island Where Midnight Mass Was Filmed

At the center of Midnight Mass is Crockett Island, a sleepy town with one sheriff, one church, and two ferries to the mainland. It’s remote and isolated, with an aging community and a dying fishing industry. When a mysterious priest arrives, unexplained phenomena begin to happen — but as the residents soon learn, these miracles come at a price.

Though Crockett Island is not a real place, filming Midnight Mass was nothing short of its own miracle, according to creator Mike Flanagan (who’s most famous for his other Netflix shows Haunting of Hill House and Haunting of Bly Manor). “It has been an extraordinary, unprecedented production, and I cannot be prouder of this amazing cast and crew,” Flanagan tweeted on Dec. 16, 2020. “In fact — and I do not say this lightly — this has been the best production experience of my career.”

In the tweet thread, Flanagan explained that they were preparing to film Midnight Mass at Garry Point Park in Richmond, Canada (near Vancouver) in December 2019 when the pandemic shut everything down. Flanagan and his wife Kate Siegel (who plays Erin in the series) were “the last Americans from the show to leave Vancouver, and from the airplane window I could see our sets standing at Garry Point Park. They'd remain standing for months, at the mercy of the elements, and we had no idea when or if we'd be able to return.”

He said they resumed preparations for the season in July 2020, and actually began shooting the series on Aug. 17. “Our COVID safety protocols were thorough, scientific, and strictly enforced,” he wrote. “Our precautions paid off — we did not miss a single day of production, and unlike a lot of other shows, we did not shut down once. Not one time. 83 shooting days, without interruption.” Hand sanitizer and daily COVID tests became routine, and the only people allowed to be unmasked were the performers in the “red zone.” He joked that “the crew worked closely for months without knowing what some people looked like below the eyes. When we'd glimpse someone changing a mask or drinking water in one of the ‘green zone’ plexiglass booths on the outskirts of set, we'd be surprised to see each other's faces.”

Newcomers and background actors were all expected to adhere to the rules, and were let go if they didn’t. In the end, the stringent procedures paid off, and Flanagan announced they had hit their target wrap date on Dec. 16, 2020.

Though the area was closed to outsiders during filming, you can now visit Garry Point Park. Per the Richmond website, it’s a large waterfront park with numerous historical sites. It’s located at the southwest tip of Richmond and close to historic Steveston Village. The area where they filmed was originally built in 1899 as part of the Scottish Canadian Cannery operation. The website notes that “except for the boardwalk remnants, the Scottish Canadian Cannery has disappeared” and the boardwalk is “almost completely demolished.” But the beach, some structures, and the boat docks remain, which today are used by the fishing industry through the Scotch Pond Heritage Cooperative. As for the buildings you see in Midnight Mass, Vancouver-based filmmaker Elvira Lount posted on Instagram that “the set was built in studio with new wood that was then weathered.”