How does The Times of London expect to assist world travelers trying to find vampires and Bigfoot-type creatures when they are sending people to Caddo Lake via Shreveport, which they inform us is in Mississippi?

The new movie, Twilight: New Moon, apparently, is causing the media overseas to make some rather bad cryptogeographic mistakes.

In the Sunday Times of November 15, 2009, we find this:

Twilight isn’t the only vampire franchise causing a stir in the travel and tourism industry. The internet and twitterverse are full of questions about the locations used in Twilight’s far sexier, sultrier Southern cousin, the HBO series “True Blood.” Although much of the show is filmed in Los Angeles (just as New Moon was mostly shot in Vancouver), fans of the telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse and the cute (for 173 years old) bloodsucker Bill Compton head for Shreveport, in Mississippi (aka Hollywood South), to soak up some of the show’s steamy gothic atmosphere. This is where the source books, by Charlaine Harris, are set and many of the establishing shots are filmed here, including the exterior of Bill’s home, Lucky’s Bar, and the antebellum mansions along Austin Street.

About 25 miles northwest of the city is mist-shrouded Caddo Lake, featured in the opening credits and a favourite for Bigfoot sightings. For down-home Southern hospitality, stay at Fairfield Place B&B (2221 Fairfield Avenue; 318 222 0048; doubles from £100), two elegant 1870s mansions in Shreveport’s Historic District.

Of course, Shreveport and Caddo Lake are in Louisiana!