SOURCE: "Inherited Haunts: Stephen King's Terrible Children," in Extrapolation, Vol. 26, No. 1, Spring, 1985, pp. 43-9.

In the following essay, Magistrale explores the role of children in King's work.

On March 25, 1984, in Boca Raton, Florida, Stephen King delivered the closing address at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Following a discussion about King's childhood readings in the horror genre, someone in the audience asked the author the question, "What terrifies you the most?" King's reply was emphatic and immediate: "Opening the door of my children's bedroom and finding one of them dead."

King's dread that his offspring could be harmed has not inhibited his use of infantile and adolescent characters throughout his writing, which has achieved wide notoriety and brought a degree of untoward fame on its author. It is a fiction centering on excursions into terror, surreal fantasies which spring suddenly to life, the dark spirits...