Stanford

 is a census-designated place (CDP) in Santa Clara County, California, United States and is the home of Stanford University. Its resident population consists of the inhabitants of on-campus housing, including graduate student villages and the "Faculty Ghetto" of single-family homes owned by their faculty inhabitants but located on leased Stanford land. A residential neighborhood adjacent to the Stanford campus, College Terrace, featuring streets named after universities and colleges, including Oxford, Harvard, Yale and Columbia, is not part of the Stanford CDP but of the city of Palo Alto.

In the horror genre, Stanford played a key role in the pilot episode of the CW Network television series Supernatural. One of the two main characters, Sam Winchester, was a student at Stanford University with dreams of pursuing a career in law. He lived on campus with his girlfriend, Jessica Moore. Sam's elder brother, Dean, called Sam away on Halloween night to help him locate their father, who had gone missing while on a "hunting" trip (the Winchester family were monster hunters). Sam made Dean promise that he would bring him back by Monday morning if he agreed to help him. Dean delivered on his promise, and Sam returned to his apartment in the wee hours of the morning. When he arrived however, he found that a demon known as Azazel had murdered Jessica Moore by suspending her body across the ceiling and lighting her on fire. This incident prompted Sam to abandon his dream of living a normal life and he returned to the career of being a demon hunter.

Characters from

 * Jessica Moore