Ten Years Later: How Pokémon Go Haunted a New England Road Trip

July 19, 2026 - 20:16

A decade ago, Niantic released Pokémon Go and turned the world into a digital playground. I was behind the wheel of a rental car on the New England coast, and I watched the transformation happen in real time. What should have been a quiet drive through historic fishing villages and lighthouses became something else entirely.

Every few miles, my phone buzzed with notifications. A rare Pokémon had spawned near a clam shack. A gym battle was happening at a Revolutionary War monument. The game pulled me off course again and again. I stopped at a rest area in Rhode Island where a dozen people stood in a circle, phones out, chasing the same digital creature. In Maine, a family had pulled over on a narrow road, their minivan blocking traffic while they tried to catch a Vaporeon near a tidal pool.

The game changed how I saw the landscape. A cemetery in Massachusetts was no longer just a cemetery. It was a nest of Gastly and Haunter. A lighthouse in Connecticut was a gym controlled by Team Mystic. The road trip became a haunted tour, not by ghosts but by the constant pull of the game. I missed exits. I skipped planned stops. I spent an hour in a parking lot outside a Dunkin' Donuts because a Dragonite had appeared.

Ten years later, the memory of that trip is less about the coastal views and more about the strange way a phone game could reshape a journey. The Pokémon are still there, lurking in the same spots. But the road feels emptier now. The crowds are gone. The haunting is quieter, but it never really left.