By Alex Welch

For nearly 20 years, “Widow’s Bay” was nothing more than the project that Katie Dippold kept in her drawer — and the project that Dippold, who created, showruns and executive produces the Apple TV hit, had been thinking about since her childhood.

“The inspiration was really a feeling,” she said, recalling the sensation she experienced growing up in New Jersey in the 1980s whenever she and her friends would walk past the local (supposedly) haunted house. “I would be so giddy going out on a summer night because I knew I was going to be scared, but we would also laugh and it was very communal,” she said. “That’s been something I’ve wanted to capture my whole life.”