August 2 of 2023, I found myself in Acheron River, in Preveza Epirus (north-west Greece) with the first challenge to continue writing my feature film script, while at the same time doing the location scouting for my film.

Without any touristic pretensions, I mainly had to allow the landscape to effect within me to affect in my as an inner chemistry with the myth. Two destinations in mind: the Necromandeion and of course the Acheron Springs.

From the panoramic view of the hill at the Tsouknida location, my wide-angle gazed for points in the river that stretches from the river’s outfall at Ammoudia location to its sources through the mountains of Souli.

The Acheron river (52 km long) is a traditional and environmental value in Greece, with a large number of visitors (by default lovers of alternative tourism) from its sources to its outfall.

According to the Greek myth, the river Acheron is the passage of the gates of Hades. This puts you on a different “metaphysical” route, which you admire from land, as in the summer most parts of the river are shallow.

People. In these hotspots they are used to tourists and therefore friendly.

The landscape. Kalamies in front of the sea in the estuary and tourist shops and taverns of the classic Greek seaside village of Ammoudia, nothing impressive from a quick outside glance. But a few kilometers further, going up the hill of Nekromanteio, the experience really becomes metaphysical.

According to the mythological tradition, the Necromanteion is a channel of communication between the living and the dead. The space had extraordinary multiprismatic potential, born of poetic imagination or wish projection or not, it works like the crystals that project to you what you want to project to yourself, depending on the crystal you look into. The peripheral low lighting makes the faces change shape depending on the angle at which they were facing.

From the outside it looks like a museum with different interventions over time, from ancient Greece to the Byzantine era.

But inside, at the point of the crypt that you go down with a ladder below the ground, it is imposing and does not seem to have undergone many changes since ancient Greece. Once in the Mycenaean era (14th -13th BC) there, the invocation of the souls with the established ceremony, the space has excellent sound and zero reverberation, if you quietly listen to the space, you might see any form you want. As for the ambiguous oracles received by those present, I imagine they were as multi-prismatic and ambiguous as the space itself.

On the way out, the museum guard asked us about our experience and told us that quite a few northern Europeans come, some every year, and often leave that place ticked off.

So my impression was consistent with that of his special visitors