The teenage girls squeal as they arrive by the carload each weekend, brought to this small town of 3,000 by bedraggled and bemused parents.

"When she heard we were coming here my teacher started crying, she was laughing so hard," says Olivia Steinke, 13, of Seattle. "But it's so cool here."

To Steinke and thousands of other young fans of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight book series, Forks is much more than a small town on U.S. Route 101: It's the centre of a fantasy world outlined in the four-book series--a place where a kind-hearted vampire courts a human girl in a destined romance.

Twilight has quickly turned this soggy spot that gets almost four metres of rain a year into a strange tourist destination full of teenage fans. And with the release of a the Twilight movie, townspeople are bracing themselves for a larger influx.

"It's amazing for our town, nobody could have anticipated any of this," says Mike Gurling, who works at the local Chamber of Commerce.

Once known as a centre of the timber industry, the past few years have been difficult for Forks, both economically and emotionally.

The timber industry has been declining and the town has been hit by a series of tragic deaths. A young soldier with connections to the town died in Iraq a few years ago. Then one of his family members committed suicide. Most recently, a group of three young people died in a car crash.

So Twilight has been a salve of sorts for the hardy souls who call Forks home. While the first book was released in 2005, the phenomenon really took off last year. Though fans have been trickling in since the beginning, it wasn't until 2007 that teenage girls really began to arrive. Before long, they became a torrent.

Shopkeepers started stocking Twilight-related merchandise. The Chamber of Commerce launched a van tour that highlights sights in town related to the book -- even though the book's author didn't visit Forks before she wrote her story. Townspeople have picked out houses that resemble descriptions in Twilight to show visitors. And outside the community hospital, officials have created a reserved parking spot for Dr. Cullen, patriarch of the vampire family.

It's not just teens who have fallen in love with the series. Some particularly hard-core adult fans became so enamoured with Forks they even moved to the town. One transplant from Vancouver, Wash., created a store that sells only Twilight-related merchandise.

"There's just something about the way the book was written that makes it very appealing and real to me," says Annette Bruno-Root, the owner of Dazzled by Twilight, which is having its official opening this week.

Bruno-Root says she's considering leaving a job with the state government so she can work on Twilight-related projects full time.

Not everyone is enamoured with the influx of fans from all over the world, admits Charlene Cross, who owns the local flower shop.

"Some folks think it's all just silliness and want it to go away," Cross says. "But the business owners really love it."

It appears that shop and motel owners have benefited the most from the visitors. Twilight tourists have pumped thousands, and possibly hundreds of thousands, of dollars into the town in the past few years, says Marcia Bingham, who directs the Chamber of Commerce.

Officials are happily bracing themselves for the movie to bring even more crazed fans.

Tours lately have become so popular that Gurling says the chamber may have to hire somebody else to lead them.

"We don't want this to end," Gurling says as the girls on the tour squeal and shout in the wind. "This has been a blessing to Forks."