How 'House' Led To All Things 'Supernatural' #HouseWithAClock

Entertainment Weekly discusses how 10-year-old Eric Kripke discovered The House With a Clock in Its Walls as a child and how it led to other Supernatural things:

Kripke was drawn to the young protagonist of The House With a Clock in Its Walls, a 10-year-old orphan named Lewis who goes to live with his uncle, only to discover that his estranged relative is a warlock. “I really saw the world through his eyes,” Kripke says, “and how wonderful it would be to experience this world of magic and danger, and to have your family to guide you through it.”

When it came time to create Supernatural, the CW drama about two adult brothers battling occult-ish things that go bump in the night, these concepts were still fresh on his mind. Kripke says he borrowed several specific details from Bellairs’ book, including how iron is used as a repellent for evil.

“It established rules that I carried with me into Supernatural,” he explains. “Rule 1: I didn’t realize it until years later, but it blew me away that every bit of folklore and every occult object that is mentioned in John Bellairs’ book is something that exists out there in the world, in legend somewhere. So when I sat down with my writers to make Supernatural when I was running it, I said every piece of lore has to really exist somewhere. The term that came up out of Supernatural was it all has to be ‘Google-worthy.’”

Then there was the tone. “Look, it’s a book for kids,” Kripke says, “but the tone of the book and the tone of Supernatural are very, very similar in that it’s a balance of genuine scares, genuine humor, and genuine heart.”