FORKS, Wash. — Pounding rain and heavy mist are constant in this timber town where logging's decline left a graveyard of rusting timber mills and unemployment. Businesses shut down. Parts of the local high school were condemned. Residents started to drift away.

Until an unlikely cast of vampires breathed new life into the town.

"I fell in love with it," says 18-year-old Samantha Cogar, who dragged her grandparents on a 2,500-mile road trip to Forks from Louisville, Ky., this summer. "I can't wait to go back."

Thousands of visitors have flocked to Forks in response to the Twilight book series, the hottest to hit shelves since Harry Potter. Set in Forks, on the gritty edge of the Olympic Mountains, the books have captured the hearts of readers around the world.

In a town framed by towering Douglas firs, hemlocks, spruce and the occasional red cedar, where rough, blue-collar edges are tangible, the unexpected attention seems to be a second chance for the economy. Twilight fans are bringing the town back to life.

Four years ago, author Stephenie Meyer introduced the world to Bella Swan, a 17-year-old who moves to Forks and is torn between the love of classmate Edward Cullen and best friend Jacob Black. She finds out that Edward is a vampire and Jacob a werewolf.

Readers were hooked, and three more books followed. "Breaking Dawn," the fourth and final book of her Twilight series, came out in July and has remained at the top of best-seller lists. Teens throughout the country celebrated the release of the book by dressing up as series characters for midnight parties at bookstores — much the way Harry Potter books were launched.

When fans started showing up in Forks, what they found was a two-stoplight town where more than a foot of rain falls each year. A place where success is measured in sweat and four-wheel drive.

But Forks was quick to embrace the frenzied fans.

Forks' Twilight-inspired turn has been nothing short of magical, says Marcia Bingham, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce.

"We've probably had more than 100 people a day," says Bingham, who has eagerly watched van after van of giddy readers — mostly female — pull up in front of the town's visitor center.

For many fans, the line where reality ends and imagination begins is starting to blur, says Michael Gurling, who started his own Twilight Tours.

Enlisting a few locals, he asked for help in picking out houses that could serve as stand-ins for Bella and Edward's houses, and a field where vampires play baseball. Other locations, such as the police station, where Bella's father works, and the hospital, where Edward's father is a doctor, chipped in, providing police cruisers near which fans can take pictures and reserving a spot for "Dr. Cullen" in the parking lot.

"The most popular spot is probably the beach, in LaPush, where Bella finds out the truth about Edward," says Gurling.

Gurling's van heads out of the visitor center parking lot packed, as it is most every weekend, with teenage girls. Outside the stand-in for Edward's house, a sign on the door says the "Cullens" are volunteering in a blood drive.

"It's not quite how I thought it would be," says Yena Hu, a University of Washington sophomore who made the four-hour trek from Seattle to visit. "They're always talking about all the windows — and in the book, the house is on the water."

But it's surprising how much Meyer did get right, considering she'd never been to Forks when she wrote the first book. A quick Internet search revealed that Forks is one of the rainiest places in the world, and from her home in Arizona, the stay-at-home mom began rewriting history.

Almost everyone who lives in town has a Twilight story: the teen who dropped his library card, only to discover Twilighters had found it and kept it; the cheerleader who has out-of-town mothers stop her on the street offering cash for her uniform; the Quileute native, who heads to LaPush to chop wood and sees giddy teenagers snatching up driftwood as souvenirs.

Jessica Hartman, an 18-year-old who works at the town's pharmacy, says Twilight has more than doubled profits at the corner store.

Flipping through a guest book for Twilighters, the recent Forks High School grad smiles as she touches signatures from around the globe — Europe, Asia, South America. Those tattered pages spell out the town's fame.

Wander down the town's main drag and you'll see "We Love Edward and Bella" signs in store windows and a Forks Speedway sign welcoming "Vampires and Racers." Stacks of Twilight T-shirts sit behind almost every counter in town.

Restaurants offer Twilight-themed options: Subway's Twilight Special oozes marinara.

At Sully's Drive-in, 32-year-old customer Eleanor Currit waves a pair of plastic vampire teeth in the air — a standard side for any customer who orders the Bella Burger.

"When I go back to my book club, I'm definitely going to have bragging rights," she says. "The women in my group are honestly crazy about these books."

Currit, a stay-at-home-mom with a master's degree in English, says being in Forks is like opening a page of the book and jumping in.

"This town just has a pretty primal way about it," she said. "It's really a mysterious beauty."

Gurling, a former national park guide, says he thinks the release of the "Twilight" movie, set for early November, will generate even more attention for Forks.

"It seems like we're Twilighting all the time," says Charlene Cross, the town's florist. "But at the end of the day, it makes you feel like we're part of something bigger — and I think that makes it worth it."