COUPEVILLE, Wash. — The charming Whidbey Island town of Coupeville is pleasantly haunted, especially in autumn. Not by ghosts, though, but by a movie.

The arrival of "Practical Magic 2" in theaters Sept. 10 is a reminder that, about 28 years ago, a Hollywood film crew descended upon Coupeville’s quiet streets to film the original “Practical Magic,” a drama/comedy/romance/fantasy starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as Sally and Gillian Owens, a pair of beautiful sisters who inherit their matrilineal family’s supernatural powers. The crew painted a number of storefronts white, added a few new signs and facades (Toby’s Tavern, in business since 1938, was restyled as the fish-and-chips shop Catch & Fry) and cast some intrigued locals as extras. After a few weeks of filming and (mostly) agreeable disruption, the crew packed up and left, leaving things just as they were before, as if waving a wand and restoring tranquility.

But movies have a way of lingering, of leaving a tiny bit of themselves in the places where they’re filmed. Maybe you’ve got a favorite place like that — somewhere captured on film that stays forever the same, frozen in time, even as the actual location changes. If you’ve seen “The Fabulous Baker Boys” (and if you haven’t, you should), you might think of its final scene, on 15th and Pine on Capitol Hill, where Jeff Bridges and Michelle Pfeiffer maybe find a happy ending. Though the neighborhood now looks nothing like it did then, I always think of them when I’m in the area, as if their invisible footsteps somehow stayed behind. It’s a tiny little moment of magic.

There are footsteps and moments like that all over town: the bar stools at the Athenian where Tom Hanks and Rob Reiner once perched in “Sleepless in Seattle”; the Capitol Hill apartment building where the “Singles” gang lived; the autumn-leaf-strewn South Seattle streets of “Know Your Place.” Those memories can pop up unexpectedly: Just the other day, I was in a boat on Lake Union and someone looked at Gas Works Park and made a “10 Things I Hate About You” paintball reference. And sometimes, they’re even phantom footsteps — a place so familiar on screen we think we know it. People tell me they know the Seattle park where John Cusack held up a boom box in “Say Anything,” even though the film was shot in California. Life goes on, but the movies hold still, letting us carry them with us.

Released in theaters in October 1998 (appropriately for Halloween season), “Practical Magic” is an odd little movie — it’s a strange mélange of genres, and occasionally its performers seem to be acting in different movies — but one thing it’s extremely good at is creating a world that you want to be a part of. Sally and Gillian, later joined by Sally’s young daughters (played by Evan Rachel Wood and Alexandra Artrip), live in a fairy-tale Victorian house with their eccentric aunts (Dianne Wiest, Stockard Channing). It’s a Victoria magazine dream of a home, filled with candlelight and dried flowers and far more decorative glass vessels than seem absolutely necessary, with a verdant garden that looks out over an impossibly blue bay, and the film’s various sister pairings giggling irresistibly together, drinking midnight margaritas and casting spells and adorably flinging their hair around.

And Coupeville, playing the role of the small New England town in which the house is located (which it actually isn’t; more on that a little later), gives a performance of uncanny charm. While the town doesn’t get an enormous amount of screen time — much of the action takes place in interior shots of the aunts’ home — all that white paint didn’t go to waste. You can practically feel the breezes off the water as Bullock and Aidan Quinn (as a detective investigating a crime too spoiler-y to explain here) converse in front of a picture-perfect bay, with an impeccably cued sailboat gliding up between them. And Front Street looks like everyone’s dream of a small-town business district, with white picket fences, a bustling farmers market (in a vacant lot that’s vacant no longer) and every window sparkling.

Inspired by the upcoming arrival of “Practical Magic 2” (filmed, alas, thousands of miles from the Pacific Northwest; specifically, in Hertfordshire, England), I visited Coupeville earlier this summer, on a very hot Tuesday that seemed a world away from crisp leaves and Halloween. It wasn’t really the right time to go: “Practical Magic” takes over the town in October, with special movie-themed events including a scavenger hunt, a parade, a street dance, guided “Practical Magic” walking tours, a pumpkin race (apparently pumpkins on wheels?) and, of course, multiple screenings of the film. It all takes place during Practically Magic Halloweekend, Oct. 22-25, and consider this your advance warning that it all sounds like a lot of fun.

So I wasn’t expecting much in July, other than a pretty town and a nice place to have lunch. And yet, “Practical Magic,” despite the season, was everywhere. It was in the self-guided walking tour brochure that you can pick up at the visitor’s center, which meticulously lists every Coupeville building that can be seen in the film, and its role in real life then and now. It was in the shops that, 28 years later, do a brisk business in “Practical Magic” T-shirts and DVDs and sticker books and tote bags. It was in the storefronts that still look like they did in the movie, even though Verbena Botanicals, the shop where Bullock’s character sold her handcrafted tonics and lotions, is now an enticing Mexican restaurant. It was in the painted ice-cream-cone sign hanging over Kapaws Iskreme shop — which wasn’t an ice cream shop at the time of the filming, but now uses a sign made for the movie.

And it was in that lovely, slightly shivery feeling I had of somehow knowing this place, as if I’d been there before, even though it was my first time in Coupeville. Movies can make us feel like we’ve traveled somewhere, like someplace else is our home for two hours. And if they do their job right, we remember the journey, tucked away somewhere in memory, just needing a bit of familiar scenery to retrieve it.

One thing, however, wasn’t there on my visit, and never was. The aunts’ beautiful Victorian house by the water, from which we see Bullock running directly to Front Street along a picturesque waterfront pathway, never existed in Coupeville. (The pathway’s there, but it leads to a park and a private home, presumably occupied by people who I’m sure are very tired of visitors asking where the Owens house is.) It was an elaborate empty shell, built for the movie on a waterfront setting on San Juan Island and then destroyed after filming; its lovely interiors were created on Hollywood soundstages. Though rumor has it that Barbra Streisand, after seeing the film, called up the producers to ask about buying the house (and who could blame her?), it wasn’t meant to last. The house was a pretty picture, long gone.

I knew all this before I went to Coupeville, and yet I couldn’t help looking up on the bluff, wondering if the ghost of that house might just be there, glowing quietly on an autumn night. The thing about movies is … well, they’re magic.

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‘Practical Magic’ in Coupeville

The Practically Magic Halloweekend in Coupeville takes place Oct. 22-25, with multiple special events including “Practical Magic” movie screenings, a townwide scavenger hunt, a pumpkin race, guided walking tours and a Halloween-themed torchlight parade (Oct. 24). Details on all events: practicallymagichalloweekend.com

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