• Rachel Mullis
• Façades for the fictitious town of Winter River, Conn., on Village Road in East Corinth

Toward the beginning of Beetlejuice, the 1988 comedy-horror blockbuster directed by Tim Burton, the ghosts of Barbara and Adam Maitland (played by Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) look down in shock from their hilltop country farmhouse as another, living family arrives to move in.

In East Corinth, where the movie was filmed, residents have spent the past few months looking up at that hilltop for signs of activity as production began on Beetlejuice 2. The long-awaited sequel, due out in 2024, stars Jenna Ortega (of the recent hit Netflix series "Wednesday") as well as original cast members Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara. Last week, locals lined the streets to witness Burton's hush-hush return for filming from July 11 to 13. Photos posted on Facebook show that Ortega has also been spotted in town riding a bike.

East Corinth is a tiny village — population 545 — which made the construction leading up to the shoot hard for residents to miss. Production began picking up speed in May, as film crews cleared the hill where the Maitlands' farmhouse once stood, replacing 35 years of growth with newly planted grass. They constructed the temporary farmhouse and then rebuilt the fateful covered bridge from the first film, where the couple lose their lives. (The original covered bridge is now used as a shed at nearby Northeast Slopes.)

• Rachel Mullis
• Tim Burton (far left) on the set of Beetlejuice 2

By early July, the fictitious town of Winter River, Conn., had come back to life on Village Road, just south of its intersection with Chicken Farm Road.

Resident Anne McKinsey has been watching "the action" up on the hill, she said. "I think it's kind of cool to be living in a little town where what's going to probably be a blockbuster film is being produced."

"It's been amazing," Corinth resident Jennifer Graham Spanier, 58, said. "I watched the transformation from here. It's been really fun to come to work every day and watch the progress."

Spanier is the library director at the Blake Memorial Library in East Corinth. The film crew used its facilities and parking lot as headquarters while overseeing the set across the street, which included façades of the Winter River Fire Department and storefronts for Rewind Coffee Roasters, Pammy's Pet Parlour and Winter River Vintage.

But not everyone in town was thrilled. Eugene Goodell Jr. said there were "too many people" and didn't appreciate the food truck taking up space in the parking lot at his residence. A woman living on Village Road who did not wish to be named lamented the tourists parking in front of her home, some of whom had ignorantly exposed themselves to poison sumac.

Vermont is the backdrop for most of Beetlejuice 2's outdoor scenes, while interior scenes were filmed elsewhere. The filming itself spanned less than 48 hours last week. It began on Tuesday, a day after the East Corinth General Store lost its gazebo and parking lot to the Waits River, as catastrophic flooding rocked the state. Dozens of residents had pitched in on Monday to build a massive perimeter of sandbags around the general store, and it worked: The store's interior remained dry.

The shoot wrapped around 1 a.m. on Thursday morning, in advance of the SAG-AFTRA actors' strike. By that last night, most residents along Village Road were in relatively good spirits. The south side of Waits River Road and the parking lot for Kai's Cones across the street were crammed with parked cars. Farther north, drivers were banned from slowing or parking, so onlookers had to hike up Village Road for a closer look.

• Rachel Mullis
• The iconic Beetlejuice 2 house on the hill

As they walked, it was impossible to miss the Maitlands' farmhouse, now covered in creepy weathered wood. Eventually, a line of jack-o'-lantern streetlamps led the way toward Winter River's downtown set, where scores of fans eagerly awaited filming from behind orange cones and green-tape fences. One was Lou Garfield, 20, of Concord, who, as a devotee of Burton, has a dog named Hatter, after the director's version of Alice in Wonderland.

Another visitor was Mary Thomas, of Claremont, N.H., who was raised in East Corinth. Thirty-five years ago, she was one of a handful of students from Oxbow High School in Bradford who appeared in Beetlejuice as extras playing students of Miss Shannon's School for Girls. She had returned to East Corinth with her daughter to meet up with fellow extra Heidi Fulford, 50, who still lives in town.

"We just decided that we wanted to come up during the filming to see how it differed from way back in the day," Thomas said.

She and Fulford traded memories, remembering how they were picked through a lottery at the high school and had to make their own costumes. Thomas noted that the actors and crew from the original production "were much more interactive with the people in town," even playing football with them.

This time around, she'd "caught a glimpse of Tim Burton," she said. "He waves, and we've watched some filming from afar, but there have been no personal interactions."

A married couple from Corinth, Joyce McKeeman, 68, and Linda Weiss, 75, recollected how they'd moved to town just a few years after the original production and made friends with several folks who were extras.

Weiss, who volunteers at the library, shared that a previous library director had put a cover on a book to replicate the Handbook for the Recently Deceased from the original film.

"We have that on the library shelf," Weiss said. The book holds a hidden compartment for geocaching, making it a favorite destination for adventurous kids.

• Rachel Mullis
• A tribute poster to Beetlejuice star Winona Ryder

Plenty of tourists have asked library staff for details about the original production over the years. They've also contacted Sarah Polli, 74, whose home is "smack-dab in the middle" between the covered bridge location and the Winter River storefronts.

"I've had people come by on almost a daily or weekly basis for years," Polli said. "They'll come by and take photos of places in the original film." She's met tourists from Germany, France, Great Britain, Spain, Canada and all over the United States.

"They will drive a couple of states out of the way if they're on a trip," she added. "I never realized that Beetlejuice had such a following — or that it was that popular. It seemed to grow more popular by the year."

According to Variety, the film still had one Vermont sequence to film when production wrapped due to the actors' strike. Regardless of when or where the film will be completed, many hope the sequel will bring new visitors to East Corinth.

"It's nice to see so many people taking an interest in the town," Thomas said. "Hopefully, it will bring enough people to the area even after the filming is over and infuse money in the local economy."

Heather Pelham, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing, agreed that the production opens up more opportunities.

"Tourism is rural economic development," she said. "Sometimes that's folks coming to enjoy our outdoor recreational assets, and sometimes that can be because they love a film like Beetlejuice 2. It's just a really wonderful opportunity for some of our very small communities to have a reason for people to come visit them."