The term became associated with ghost stories and horror novels because early Gothic novels were often associated with the Middle Ages and with things wild, bloody, and barbarous of long ago as J. A. Cuddon puts it in his Dictionary of Literary Terms (381).
Hatfield, Massachusetts. Hatfield is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 3,249 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. Part of the town is included in the census-designated place of Hatfield.
The Hatfields lived in Logan (now Mingo) County, West Virginia, and the McCoys were across the Tug Fork River in Pike County, Kentucky. http://www.blueridgecountry.com/hatmac/hatmac.html.