Haakon Forwald, a Swedish electrical engineer, promoted the idea that a person could manipulate gravitational fields by mentally agitating the atoms and neutrons inside an object.2

Tabitha Spruce met Stephen King in the library of the University of Maine, where they were both students, in the 1960s. Both being writers, they attended each other�s poetry readings and read each other�s work. They married in 1971 and Tabitha encouraged King to write instead of taking a promotion that would leave less time for his craft. This fact led to King�s first novel, Carrie, being saved from the trash. He had begun writing a story from a woman�s perspective, something he took on as a personal challenge after feedback from a reader of his previous work accused him of being scared of women. The story was inspired by an article in LIFE magazine that touched on the power of telekinesis. If the power existed, the article purported, then the power would be strongest with adolescent girls. King�s first time being in a girl�s locker room as a custodian also left an impact on him. Seeing a pad and tampon dispenser seemed almost alien compared to what he was used to.

King wrote three typed pages and then immediately threw them in the trash. The plot seemed to be moving too slowly and he was beginning to doubt his ability to write from a woman�s perspective. �I couldn�t see wasting two weeks, maybe even a month, creating a novella I didn�t like and wouldn�t be able to sell,� King wrote in his memoir On Writing (2000). �So, I threw it away � after all, who wanted to read a book about a poor girl with menstrual problems?�3

Tabitha retrieved the crumpled pages from the trash and gave him some feedback. In fact, throughout his career, Tabitha is credited with useful, truthful feedback that helps shape characters and mold King�s stories. Carrie was finished within nine months and sold to Doubleday for a $2,500 advance. Months later, the paperback rights were sold to Signet Books for $400,000. The movie rights sold later, and by 1980 Stephen King was a worldwide bestselling author. As he told the New York Times, �the movie made the book and the book made me.�4 The dedication you�ll find in every copy of Carrie reads �This is for Tabby, who got me into it�and then bailed me out of it.�

Carrie was reportedly popular among teen and young adult readers, especially those who could relate to being an outsider. According to Stephen King�s website:

In honor of their favorite sci-fi author, the crew of Apollo 15 named a crater on the moon �Dandelion� after Ray Bradbury�s novelDandelion Wine(1957).

It is, in fact, a Ray Bradbury story that first motivated King to form the first buds of what would become The Shining. Bradbury�s science-fiction short story �The Veldt� published in the 1951 anthology Illustrated Man centers on the Hadley family who live in a future where their house does everything for them, including providing a sort of virtual reality that creates your dreams. This concept, of someone�s dreams coming true, was at the forefront of King�s creation of the novel. King started the story, centering on a psychic boy in an amusement park, in 1972, but was inspired to change the setting when he and Tabitha visited the historic Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. One night, King walked the empty hotel as his wife slept. Later, he recounted a strange nightmare:

To prove a woman was a witch, the �touch test� was used in Salem. When an accused was brought close to an innocent, if that person seized in a fit and then halted at the touch of the defendant, the woman was considered proven to be a witch.

It was in the real town of Salem, Massachusetts, that true horror unraveled in the 1690s. Many have learned about the Salem Witch Trials, an unsettling piece of New England history which exposed the settlers� very archaic beliefs in witchcraft. Innocent people (mostly women and children) died because of both lack of scientific understanding as well as mass hysteria, or group think, in which beliefs are intensified within a community. Lesser known is a similar panic that echoed the witch trials. Nearly two hundred years after supposed �witches� were hanged by their neighbors and loved ones, a vampire panic overtook another sleepy community in New England.

In 1990, children playing near a gravel mine in Griswold, Connecticut, found a haunting discovery. In order to convince his mother that the skeletal remains were indeed authentic, one boy brought home a skull as proof. The macabre burial site caught the attention of archaeologist Nick Bellantoni, who soon discovered that the bodies had been interred in the early nineteenth century, based on the decay of the skeletons, as well as their meager wooden coffins. Yet, as described in the Smithsonian�s �The Great New England Vampire Panic� there was a peculiarity to one grave that intrigued Bellantoni:

The thing is, one book is all most writers want to produce or can produce in the course of a year and some of them only publish a book every two years. Ed McBain is another novelist who publishes multiple books in some years and his original name was Evan Hunter. That�s the name he�s always published under and he adopted the pen name of Ed McBain for the same reason I adopted Richard Bachman and that was what made it possible for me to do two books in one year. I just did them under different names and eventually the public got wise to this because you can change your name but you can�t really disguise your style. The name Richard Bachman actually came from when they called me and said we�re ready to go to press with this novel, what name shall we put on it? And I hadn�t really thought about that. Well, I had, but the original name�Gus Pillsbury�had gotten out on the grapevine and I really didn�t like it that much anyway, so they said they needed it right away and there was a novel by Richard Stark on my desk so I used the name Richard and that�s kind of funny because Richard Stark is in itself a pen name for Donald Westlake and what was playing on the record player was �You Ain�t Seen Nothin� Yet� by Bachman Turner Overdrive, so I put the two of them together and came up with Richard Bachman.1

Written in first person, Rage chronicles the mental deterioration of Charlie Decker, a high school student who has lived through an abusive childhood, thus he is drawn to hateful speech and violence. The novel crescendos when after expulsion by the principal, Charlie chooses to take his misdirected revenge out on his teachers and fellow students. After setting his locker on fire, Charlie, armed with a pistol he had kept at school, shoots and kills both his algebra and history teachers.

For a long time, ten years, at least, I had wanted to write a fantasy epic like The Lord of the Rings (1954), only with an American setting. I just couldn�t figure out how to do it. Then, slowly after my wife and kids and I moved to Boulder, Colorado, I saw a 60 Minutes (1968�) segment on CBW (chemical-biological warfare). I never forgot the gruesome footage of the test mice shuddering, convulsing, and dying, all in twenty seconds or less. That got me remembering a chemical spill in Utah that killed a bunch of sheep (these were canisters on their way to some burial ground; they fell off the truck and ruptured). I remembered a news reporter saying, �If the winds had been blowing the other way, there was Salt Lake City.�1

What was the chemical spill Stephen King was referring to? The Dugway sheep incident took place in 1968 in Utah when six thousand sheep were killed due to chemical and biological weapons testing. The Dugway Proving Ground had been testing nerve agents in the days prior. One test involved the firing of a chemical artillery shell, another the burning of 160 gallons of nerve agent in an open-air pit, and a jet aircraft spraying nerve agent in a target area.2 Although the sheep were grazing twenty-seven miles west of the testing area, over six thousand died as a result of the nerve agent. Answers about the incident aren�t definitive, but some people believe a malfunction of a nozzle could explain what happened.

I took the bike out there, and I just barely made it. And this huge Saint Bernard came out of the barn, growling. Then this guy came out and � I was retreating, and wishing that I was not on my motorcycle, when the guy said, �Don�t worry. He don�t bite.� And so I reached out to pet him, and the dog started to go for me. And the guy walked over and said, �Down Gonzo,� or whatever the dog�s name was and gave him this huge whack on the rump, and the dog yelped and sat down. The guy said, �Gonzo never done that before. I guess he don�t like your face.� And that became the central situation of the book, mixed with those old �movies of the week,� the made-for-television movies that they used to have on ABC. I thought to myself, what if you could have a situation that was an extension of one scene. It would be the ultimate TV movie. There would be one set, there would be one room. You�d never even have to change the camera angle. So, there was one very small place, and it became Donna�s Pinto�and everything just flowed from that situation�the big dog and the Pinto.1

The novel is written without chapters, akin to a stream-of-consciousness flow. �There�s one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing at all. I don�t say that with pride or shame, only with a vague sense of sorrow and loss. I like that book. I wish I could remember enjoying the good parts as I put them down on the page.�2 Some view the novel as one of King�s greatest metaphors for addiction. This beast is lurking, trying to kill us, and we may feel completely helpless against it.

I can remember crossing the road, and thinking that the cat had been killed in the road and (I thought) what if a kid died in that road? And we had had this experience with Owen running toward the road, where I had just grabbed him and pulled him back. And the two things just came together: on one side of this two-lane highway was the idea of what if the cat came back, and on the other side of the highway was what if the kid came back, so that when I reached the other side, I had been galvanized by the idea, but not in any melodramatic way. I knew immediately that it was a novel.1

That night he dreamt of a reanimated corpse and that spurred him to thinking about death and burial customs.

Is it possible for corpses to be reanimated? Although reanimation has been talked about in myth and legend for centuries, it wasn�t until the 1700s that experiments were documented. Lazzaro Spallanzani, a Catholic priest and natural history professor, believed that the dead could be reanimated using water. He noticed that microscopic life, which appeared dead, seemed to come back to life when water was added to it. Spallanzani never observed reanimated life but did end up observing white blood cells. In 1794, the Royal Humane Society of London carried out experiments on corpses in the hopes to alleviate the public�s fears about premature burial. This process included pouring liquor down the corpse�s throat, blowing smoke up the rectum, and massaging the dead body to attempt to awaken it. In the 1800s, physicist Giovanni Aldini became famous for his demonstrations of �reanimating� human and animal corpses. The process involved stimulating them with electrical shocks that would cause the corpses to convulse as though they were alive. In the 1930s Robert E. Cornish, a biologist at the University of California Berkeley, began experiments to bring dead dogs back to life. He used a contraption that would swing the corpse around, as if riding a seesaw, while he administered oxygen, adrenaline, liver extract, and anticoagulants. Cornish was able to bring two dogs back to life who reportedly both lived for several months afterward. Animal experiments of this type continued in Russia and the United States throughout the subsequent decades.

I used to weigh two hundred and thirty-six pounds, and I smoked heavily. I went to see the doctor and he told me, �Listen, man, your triglycerides are really high. In case you haven�t noticed it, you�ve entered heart attack country.� I used that line in the book. He told me that I should quit smoking and lose some weight. I spent a very angry weekend off by myself. I thought about it and how awful they were to make me do all these terrible things to save my life. I did lose the weight, and pretty much quit smoking. Once the weight actually started to come off, I began to realize that I was attached to it, somehow, that I didn�t really want to lose it. I began to think about what would happen if somebody started to lose weight and couldn�t stop. It was a pretty serious situation at first. Then I remembered all the things I did when I weighed a lot. I had a paranoid conviction that the scales weighed heavy, no matter what. I would refuse to weigh myself, except in the morning, and then after I had taken off all my clothes. It was so existential that the humor crept in after a while.1

This journey of weight loss led to the novel Thinner being born.

The tramp, or hobo, archetype was popular during the Depression era. It includes Charlie Chaplin�sThe Tramp(1914) and Emmett Kelly�s circus act �Weary Willy.�

The history of the clown is varied. It is said to have been derived from an archetype known as Zanni, an Italian comic character who was portrayed as foppish and jester-like, in the Commedia dell�Arte. The Zanni was known to act like a drunkard to amuse the rich Italian class. He was also constantly hungry, willing to eat almost anything, which is ironic in the context of It, as the creature behind Pennywise has a hankering for innocent children! Those acting as Zanni would often dress in baggy, white clothes, similar to the peasant class at the time. This is reminiscent of the clothes later worn by more modern clowns.

In the early days of Commedia dell�Arte, the Zanni mask used in the theater was a full face mask with a long nose. It developed from here into a half mask covering the upper half of the face only with an extended, long nose. The longer the nose on the mask, the more stupid was the character. The costume of the Zanni character reinforced for the audience the nature of this character. Usually dressed in sacking and hunched over, carrying heavy loads as a porter, with knees in a �bowed� position and feet splayed apart. This was in sharp contrast to the aristocratic characters in the Commedia dell�Arte who always carried themselves with erect deportment. Zanni was always highly animated, waving arms and gesticulating with hands when speaking in a coarse manner with erratic body movements thrown in! Some Zanni characters were known for their acrobatic feats, including handstands and flips.3

As comedies developed across the world, different types of the jester, or Zanni, came to be. Today, France is known for their silent, white-faced mimes. While in America, through the popularization of the circus, our tastes changed from the �hobo� or �tramp� character, to the Auguste, meaning �red clown� in the bright wig, red nose, and oversized shoes. This style of clown fully infiltrated American culture with the advent of The Bozo Show (1960�2001) as well as the instantly recognizable fast food mascot, Ronald McDonald.

With every joyous clown, intent to evoke smiles, there seems to be a contrasting evil clown. These clowns may dress and paint their faces with the same vivid colors, yet their intentions are far more nefarious. In 1940, Batman villain the Joker was introduced to comic readers across the world. Like Pennywise, the Joker has become an American icon, appearing in numerous TV shows and films. In all his iterations, he retains the Auguste aesthetic, yet is murderous to the core. In 1982, a clown toy terrorized children in the film Poltergeist, not long after the apprehension of the real killer clown.

John Wayne Gacy, one of the most notorious serial killers of the twentieth century, was caught in 1978 after a reign of terror that shocked not only his local Chicago suburb, but the world. Convicted of thirty-three murders, Gacy had hidden twenty-six of his victims in the crawl space of his home. His victims were all male, many of them teenagers. At a time when serial murder was rather a new concept, the notion that Gacy was a successful businessman and community volunteer made the reality all the more terrifying. And on top of it all, the images of Gacy as �Pogo the Clown� brought goosebumps. Gacy enjoyed performing for children as Pogo, dressing in the typical Auguste style with his signature triangular eye paint. Along with the Joker and Pennywise, Pogo has joined the pantheon of evil clowns, all the more horrendous, as he did not spring from the imagination, but is the real thing.

In the winter of 2017, before It hit theaters, researchers published a study in the European Journal of Pediatrics. Their aim was to discover if children in pediatric wards were scared of medical clowns, and if so, why. Medical clowns have long been a hospital tradition, think Robin Williams�s wacky character in Patch Adams (1998). The researchers used a sample of over one thousand children, and involved the medical clowns in the study. After the clowns entertained the children for about ten minutes, with the typical tricks and prop gags, they filled out a form about how many of the young patients experienced coulrophobia, or a fear of clowns. Children and parents voiced their opinions as well.

Out of the 1160 children, only 14 children experienced coulrophobia of any severity (1.2 percent). The average age of children experiencing coulrophobia was three and a half years (range one to fifteen years). Most of the children who experienced coulrophobia were girls (twelve out of fourteen). Of the fourteen children experiencing coulrophobia, six had it in a severe form (43 percent) responding to the clown�s visit with significant fear, crying, and apposition behavior. The rest of the patients exhibited moderate fear (eight children, 57 percent). Based on the a-priori determined criteria, none responded with mild coulrophobia. The anxiety responses observed by the research assistant were variable: crying, anger, standing still, and holding on to the caregiver. Eight out of the fourteen participants in the coulrophobia group responded with crying during the medical clown visit. Out of fourteen participants in the coulrophobia group, twelve were reported as trying to avoid further contact with the medical clown (hiding, staying in the room, etc.)4

This led the researchers to conclude that it was a relatively low number of patients who had actual coulrophobia. Their reasoning was that evil clowns were not as prevalent in the media as they had been in the 1980s. Also, the medical clowns in the study wore little makeup, which may have been a contributing factor. We have to wonder, with the advent of the two new It films, if the study would have different results now?

Thus, I had so long suffer�d, in this quest,

Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ

So many times among �The Band��to wit,

The knights who to the Dark Tower�s search address�d

Their steps�that just to fail as they, seem�d best.

And all the doubt was now�should I be fit?1

The poem has been interpreted by many and after Stephen King read it in the late 1960s, it stuck with him.

Browning never says what that tower is, but it�s based on an even older tradition about Childe Roland that�s lost in antiquity. Nobody knows who wrote it, and nobody knows what the Dark Tower is. So, I started off wondering: What is this tower? What does it mean? And I decided that everybody keeps a Dark Tower in their heart that they want to find. They know it�s destructive and it will probably mean the end of them, but there�s that urge to make it your own or to destroy it, one or the other. So, I thought: Maybe it�s different things to different people, and as I write along I�ll find out what it is to Roland.2

This journey to discover the Dark Tower along with Roland is one that has captivated readers for decades and concluded in the final novel of the series, The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower in 2004.

Sally Mapp was a famous bone setter in eighteenth-century UK. Known as �Crazy Sally,� she earned up to a hundred guineas a year because of her impressive skills.

Through writings, researchers have been able to discover how the rather common accident of a broken limb was tended to. In the Netherlands, an audience can watch a reenactment at the Archeon museum. Based on their understanding of the medieval times, �archeo-interpreters� as they call themselves, showcase what would happen to a man with a broken leg. By studying the thirteenth-century manual Cyrurgia, by surgeon Jan Yperman, they perfectly reconstructed the medieval bone-setting contraption, down to the same ash wood.

Yeah, it did. I mean, The Tommyknockers is an awful book. That was the last one I wrote before I cleaned up my act. And I�ve thought about it a lot lately and said to myself, �There�s really a good book in here, underneath all the sort of spurious energy that cocaine provides, and I ought to go back.� The book is about seven hundred pages long, and I�m thinking, �there�s probably a good three-hundred-and-fifty-page novel in there.�1

Despite King�s harsh criticism of The Tommyknockers, many constant readers have found appeal in one of the author�s few sci-fi works. NBC produced a miniseries in 1993 starring Marg Helgenberger and Jimmy Smits. In 2018, writer and director James Wan (Saw [2004], The Conjuring [2013]) announced he was working on a film adaptation of The Tommyknockers.

Like most works of creativity, there were influences that helped carve the narrative of The Tommyknockers. Stephen King pointed to the 1927 H.P. Lovecraft story �The Colour Out of Space.� In the story, a meteorite is found that has caused every living thing in a local area to become deformed, or die. This meteorite stumps scientists, and eventually it is agreed that it must be alien in origin. This mirrors The Tommyknockers, in which Bobbi Anderson stumbles across a mysterious piece of metal in the dirt behind her home. As Bobbi digs up what we learn is a piece of an alien ship, the denizens of Haven, Maine, become exceedingly crazy, influenced much like the people in �The Colour Out of Space.� When he wrote the story, which became one of his most famous, H.P. Lovecraft pointed to his own inspirations. He mentioned the building of the Scituate Reservoir in Rhode Island, in which the town of Scituate was flooded, causing buildings to erode and a quarter of the population to move away.

One recent news development in the 1920s that was connected to �The Colour Out of Space� was the scathing truth about the Radium Girls written in the New York Times. The Radium Girls were a group of women, mostly young and of the lower-middle class, who were employed by the US Radium Corporation to paint clock dials with luminous paint. This paint was absolutely brimming with deadly radium, a substance that the women didn�t know was going to cause them to die painful, gruesome deaths. In a review for the book Radium Girls (2017) by Kate Moore, the ignorance of the effects of radium is on full display:

One cause of auditory hallucination is Musical Ear Syndrome (MES) in which people with hearing loss purport to hear music, though there is no external source.

Centering on author Thad Beaumont, a father and former alcoholic, The Dark Half is an exploration of our disparate selves. As Smythe points out, it would be difficult not to draw comparisons between Stephen King and his character. Thad writes esoteric literature, worthy of critical praise, yet his novels receive little interest and disappointing sales. Therefore, Thad begins to write about the tales of Alexis Machine, a rough-and-tumble gangster who is the macho male ideal, right down to the bumper sticker on his slick, black Toronado which reads HIGH-TONED SON-OF-A-BITCH.

These highly successful novels about Alexis Machine�s violent exploits are written under a pseudonym, George Stark, which allows Thad to separate his two distinct writing styles. Despite the money that George Stark�s pulp novels provide, Thad has come to loathe this aspect of himself. Alexis Machine�s casual cruelty has taken a toll, and he believes it is time to give up Stark and focus on his literary novels. Thad�s wife, Elizabeth, could not agree more, as she is disturbed by Thad�s behavior when he works on the Machine novels. Sometimes, it feels to her as though he is inhabited by another soul, someone with a quick temper and a sullen attitude.

There is another impetus to the metaphorical death of George Stark, and that is the inclusion of character Fredrick Clawson. Frederick has read novels by both Thad and George, and has discovered an undeniable connection in tone and style. He has uncovered that George Stark and Thad Beaumont are one and the same, and wants to cash in on this new-found information with a spot of blackmail. Rather than allow Clawson to expose him, Thad takes the matter into his own hands, inviting People magazine to reveal the truth with a splashy photo shoot of Thad and Elizabeth �burying� George Stark in a mock funeral.

While Clawson, later killed in a brutal and bloody manner by the physical manifestation of George Stark, is fictional, he is based on a real person in King�s life. Several years before the release of The Dark Half, a book clerk named Steve Brown made the exact same sort of connection as Clawson. After reading the Richard Bachman novel Thinner in 1984, Brown came to draw comparisons between Bachman and King that led him on a trail of research all the way to the Library of Congress to search through copyright documents. With proof in hand that Stephen King was indeed Richard Bachman, Brown sent a letter to the novelist, asking if he could write an article on his literary discovery. Steve Brown described what happened next in his article �Bachman Exposed�:

Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease in which the body attacks the joints. It is characterized by stiffness and often debilitating pain, particularly in the hands and wrists.

Shop proprietor Leland Gaunt is considered one of King�s most terrifying villains. Although at first glance he may look like a harmless old man, many people in Castle Rock are unnerved by both his stolid glance and the feel of his bony hand on their skin. As the novel continues, Gaunt�s evil nature is exposed, and by the climax, in which Sheriff Alan Pangborn must vanquish him from Castle Rock, it is clear that Leland Gaunt is either a demon, or the Devil himself.

Hungry for souls, Leland Gaunt has discovered a way to convince the unsuspecting residents to give them up. He simply offers them an item, a manifestation of what they desire. For Polly Chambers, it is a necklace that inexplicably heals her crippling rheumatoid arthritis. For eleven-year-old Brian Rusk, it is a priceless Sandy Koufax baseball card that will make his collection the best in town. One fascinating find is a supposed piece of Noah�s Ark, that when touched, makes the owner feel as if she is really there, perceiving the swaying of the ship and the murmur of the animals. Religious school teacher Sally Radcliffe easily gives up her soul, though she doesn�t consciously understand the trade, in order to get her hands on this splinter of religious history.

Gaunt�s presence ultimately causes chaos. While many of his customers kill themselves, others commit murder, and there are some, like Sheriff Pangborn, who are working to take back the stolen souls. This led us to examine the concept of the soul. Is it simply a religious or cultural belief, or is there real science to the soul?

A soul is defined as �a non-material essence of a living human that generates consciousness. It can also be considered as the spiritual principle of human beings; or, the moral and emotional nature of human beings.�1 In the Journal of Religion & Psychical Research, Dr. Donald R. Morse attempts to simplify how each religion views the soul. For instance, in Christianity, the typically held belief is that each human has one soul, and that once a person has accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, that soul will be allowed into heaven. In Islam, there is a widely held belief that the soul will stay with the body until the �end of days.� At that time, there will be consequences based on whether the person was good or bad. Morse explains the more complicated concept of the soul in Hinduism:

The record for the longest time going without sleep is held by Randy Gardner who stayed awake for eleven days and twenty-five minutes.

How much sleep does the human body need? Experts say adults between the ages of twenty-four and sixty-five need between seven to nine hours of sleep per night. Newborn babies and up to three months old require fourteen to seventeen hours per night while teenagers require eight to ten hours. Why is sleep so important? Our bodies use sleep as a time to repair itself and store up energy for the following day. Our minds and our moods are also affected by the quality and quantity of our sleep and sleep deprivation can have lasting negative effects.

How much sleep do other living creatures need? Cats sleep an average of fifteen hours a day while rats sleep a whopping twenty hours per day. Some animals are able to sleep using unihemispheric slow wave sleep, which allows half of their brain to stay awake while the other half sleeps. Dolphins utilize this type of sleep as well as some other aquatic mammals and birds. Imagine how much we could get done if we could utilize this strategy! Studies show that this type of sleep also improves memory, brain plasticity, and overall immune system health.2

A study found that the DNA of a 103-year-old man has fewer chemical modifications than that of a newborn baby.2

One of the unexpected characters in the book is a mouse named Mr. Jingles. He is trained and also has magic in him after being healed by John. Is it possible to train mice? It is, but it takes patience and about two weeks of consistent practice. Mice, just like other animals, prefer to be rewarded with food for good behavior. By luring a mouse with food and getting them comfortable with you, they will be more likely to follow directions. Use a similar tone of voice when offering a command and only move on to the next trick after one is mastered. All sorts of animals can be trained to accomplish varying degrees of tricks or duties. Companion animals, show performers, and police dogs all undergo training that they learn through routine. Not all animals can be trained, though. Based on their personality or temperament, it may be easier to forego the tricks and let them be themselves!

John Coffey can be seen as a healer in The Green Mile. He fixes Paul�s bladder infection, brings Mr. Jingles back to life, and even removes a brain tumor from a woman. What is the history behind folk healers? People over the centuries have been seen as having otherworldly powers and the ability to heal. Some women who aided in midwifery or used herbal remedies were accused of witchcraft. Others simply used the knowledge passed down to them through generations to provide health care that may not have been available otherwise. There are those who claim to be healers but are proven to be frauds. For example, psychic surgery began to gain popularity in the mid-1900s. Surgeons would supposedly be able to penetrate a person�s body without surgical tools and remove any lesions or foreign objects that were making the patient sick. Investigations have found that these pseudo surgeons were actually using fake blood and animal parts with a sleight of hand to make money off desperate people.

In Sleeping Beauties, the fictional disease is called �Aurora� in which women become homicidal when their cocoon is disturbed. It is named afterSleeping Beauty (1959) herself, Disney Princess Aurora.

The other collaborative work in 2017 was the novella Gwendy�s Button Box. Set in the 1970s in Castle Rock, Gwendy�s was written with a longtime friend of King�s, Richard Chizmar. It is the story of a middle schooler named Gwendy who is given an odd, magical box by a stranger. This box, which she keeps a secret from her parents and friends, is both a blessing and a curse. It gives her small chocolates that once eaten, make her life better. She loses her extra weight, gets straight A�s, and is a star on the track team. Yet, there are buttons on this box that carry a considerable burden. The stranger who gives her the box, mysterious much like the man who gives Jack the magic beans, explains that each button corresponds with a particular continent of the world. And if pressed, chaos will ensue. A curious child, Gwendy eventually presses the button that represents South America.

A 2017 survey reported that 47 percent of Americans believe in aliens, which is about 150 million people.2

The novel was turned into a movie in 2003 and although Stephen King didn�t write the screenplay adaptation for it, he has adapted many of his stories for the big screen. In order to understand this process, we spoke to writer Kara Lee Corthron about her experience working on the television series You (2018�).

Special effects supervisor Roy Arbogast used hydraulics and rubber molds in the 1983 film adaption ofChristineto make the vehicle look like it was crumpling in on itself.

Centering on a troop of Pennsylvania cops, the novel unravels the narrative of when the car was abandoned in 1979, and all the chaos it has caused until present day, through multiple perspectives. In fact, it doesn�t seem to be a car at all. As described in her review for the New York Times, Laura Miller explains the odd nature of the car in question. �Everyone who sees the car instantly knows that it�s �wrong.� It�s got an exhaust system made out of glass and a dashboard full of phony controls, for example�and it just gives people the creeps.�1 The Buick in the novel, described as similar to the make of a Buick Roadmaster, is not just murderous like the Plymouth in Christine. It seems to be a portal between worlds; our own, and another that is frightening and vastly different from what the cops are used to. This theme of a schism between two worlds has been explored numerous times in King�s work, including in the novella The Mist (1980) and the Dark Tower series.

While walking on the sidewalk in New York, Steve saw a man dressed in a business suit approaching him and seemingly engaged in conversation with himself. Since people talking to themselves on a public street would usually be among those whose �reality� was a bit different than the norm, Steve became a bit apprehensive. He realized as the man got closer, however, that he was talking on a cell phone using a headset. It was the incongruity of a person who may not be in touch with reality, but dressed in a business suit that sparked the idea for Cell.�1

From the car accident, Stephen King suffered broken ribs, a broken hip and leg, and a punctured lung. He spent three weeks in the hospital and endured five surgeries.

Snowbirds, those people who live in a warmer climate during the winter months, raise Florida�s population by about a million each year.2

How common is amputation currently in medicine? There are nearly two million people living with limb loss in the United States and among those, the main causes are vascular disease (54 percent), trauma (45 percent), and cancer (less than 2 percent).3 Approximately 185,000 amputations occur in the United States each year. Amputations date back to the time of Hippocrates and were performed most often due to injury or war. With loss of blood, though, amputations were often dangerous and not necessarily lifesaving. Not until the 1500s did physicians begin using ligatures to restrict a patient�s blood vessels. Tourniquets were introduced in 1674 and continued to be used during the period of World War I, which saw an unprecedented number of amputations.

Edgar experiences phantom limb sensation due to his amputation. Is this common? It was first reported in 1551 by surgeon Ambrose Pare. He noticed that patients would complain about pain or a sensation in a limb after it had been removed. Studies show nearly all people who undergo an amputation experience this phenomenon. Why is that? Understanding the way our brains work, phantom limb sensations could be due to reorganization in the somatosensory cortex. This part of the brain receives and processes sensory information for the entire body including the sensations of touch, pain, and vibration. Doctors don�t agree on exact causes for this phenomenon but treat it using medications, hypnosis, and biofeedback. Mirror therapy, in which a person views their working limb in a mirror and mimics the movement with their phantom limb, is sometimes used but has not proven to be entirely effective.

From the very beginning, I saw it as a chance to write about the serious ecological problems that we face in the world today. The fact is, we all live under the dome. We have this little blue world that we�ve all seen from outer space, and it appears like that�s about all there is. It�s a natural allegorical situation, without whamming the reader over the head with it. I don�t like books where everything stands for everything else. It works with Animal Farm: You can be a child and read it as a story about animals, but when you�re older, you realize it�s about communism, capitalism, fascism. That�s the genius of Orwell. But I love the idea about isolating these people, addressing the questions that we face. We�re a blue planet in a corner of the galaxy, and for all the satellites and probes and Hubble pictures, we haven�t seen evidence of anyone else. There�s nothing like ours. We have to conclude we�re on our own, and we have to deal with it. We�re under the dome. All of us.1

This humbling realization, that we are likely alone in the universe, is what makes the parables in Under the Dome so powerful. No matter how big or small our personal �bubble,� we eventually have to come to terms with our own human vulnerability.

But what about the vulnerability of the planet? When an explosion kills hundreds of residents in Under the Dome, the toxic air lingers, not able to escape the barrier. If Earth is, indeed, our shared dome, how have humans destroyed it, both unknowingly and brazenly?

Global warming is a scientific term that has been gaining popularity in the last several decades. It refers to the proven increase of Earth�s temperature caused by humans. While global warming has occurred in the prehistoric past, the rise in the twentieth century is the most markedly dramatic. This is due to carbon emissions. Since the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century, humans have increased our carbon emissions into the atmosphere by 45 percent. This is because of our use of fossil fuels, as well as extreme man-made changes in the planet, like deforestation. In a study focusing on the US mid-Atlantic region, researchers pinpoint the problems with increased carbon (CO2) emissions:

Four sitting presidents in the United States have been assassinated: Abraham Lincoln (1865), James A. Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901), and John F. Kennedy (1963).

North Bimini is home to the �healing hole,� a well of sea water made naturally by limestone. It is at the end of several twisting tunnels and many Europeans revered it as having water that would provide the drinker with better health.

Whether the Spanish conquistador was on the hunt for the fountain of youth, he was not the first to be linked to its existence.

Accounts of a river of youth were nothing new to men of the time. The Alexander Romance, a collection of stories about the mythical exploits of Alexander the Great, from the third century, has the conqueror looking for a river of immortality in India. And The Voyage and Travels of Sir John Mandeville, Knight, written in the fourteenth century, includes a description of the fountain of youth. When Caribbean natives spoke of an island called Bimini, where there was said to be a river of curative waters, some of the Spanish explorers believed them. Pietro Martire de Anghiera, an Italian historian, discounted the story but wrote Pope Leo X in 1513 with his concerns that �all the people � think it to be true.�1

Today, the site of the legend of Juan Ponce de Leon is a tourist attraction in St. Augustine, Florida. The Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park has no historical proof that Ponce De Leon was ever there, yet many visitors drink from the park�s waters. Just in case it really does offer youthfulness, or perhaps even immortality!

Across the world from the lush forests of Florida was a castle in the snowcapped mountains of Hungary. Within its walls lived a Countess, desperate to regain her youthful beauty. While the legend of Ponce De Leon cannot be verified, the cruel actions of Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory were witnessed by over three hundred, who were all willing to testify against her.

Living in a time of primitive understanding of science, the early seventeenth century, Bathory came to believe that she had the key to prolonging her youth. She simply needed the blood of young women. There is legend that she would bathe in it, as well as use the blood on her face like a salve or lotion. While this is not verified, her act of drinking blood seems to be proven. All in pursuit of maintaining her alabaster skin! This habit is why she has often been referred to as the �Real Countess Dracula.� Her reign of torture began with torture and murder of female servants at her castle, eventually including women from nearby villages, as well as young teens sent by their parents to learn aristocratic manners from the Countess. �Bathory�s torture included jamming pins and needles under the fingernails of her servant girls, and tying them down, smearing them with honey, and leaving them to be attacked by bees and ants. Although the Count participated in his wife�s cruelties, he may have also restrained her impulses; when he died in the early 1600s, she became much worse. With the help of her former nurse, Ilona Joo, and local witch Dorotta Szentes, Bathory began abducting peasant girls to torture and kill. She often bit chunks of flesh from her victims, and one unfortunate girl was even forced to cook and eat her own flesh.�2

These accounts may seem too cruel and outlandish to believe, but dozens of mutilated bodies were found on Countess Bathory�s property. Despite her high connections, she was eventually discovered by local authorities. At trial she was convicted and although she murdered upwards of hundreds of women she was given the equivalent of house arrest. Elizabeth Bathory died three years later, at age fifty-four. There is no evidence to suggest her �trick� for eternal youth worked. Though, we have to guess the Countess would�ve most certainly joined Rose the Hat if it meant torture and less wrinkles!

King was inspired to writeMr. Mercedesafter a 2011 incident in which a woman drove into a crowd at a McDonald�s job fair in Cleveland, Ohio. Four people were injured.

Mr. Mercedes is not the first time King has presented a world worsened by technology. In the end, it is the human spirit that prevails, as Holly finds the strength to save thousands of lives from Brady�s bomb plot with the swift, simple swing of a weapon. In true King fashion, though, Brady is not stopped forever, and in the third book of the Mr. Mercedes trilogy, End of Watch (2016), comes back with a vengeance. Inspired to cause chaos, Brady utilizes a game app to send subliminal, suicidal messages to teenagers. Although this may seem far-fetched, subliminal persuasion is a real phenomenon, defined in the Journal of Social Psychology as �any word, image, or sound that is not perceived within the normal range of consciousness, but that makes an impression on the mind.�1 Many studies have been conducted on subliminal messages, particularly in relation to advertising. While there is no proof that extreme behavior such as suicide has occurred due to visual subliminal stimulation, there are examples of it worming into study participants� minds:

The 1839 storyWilliam Wilsonby Edgar Allan Poe explores the idea of having a doppelganger.

There are two types of evidence found that prove Terry Maitland�s whereabouts on the day of the murder. What type of evidence is more reliable: eyewitness testimony or DNA evidence? Without a doubt, DNA evidence has proven to be more reliable than eyewitness testimony. Why can�t human memory necessarily be trusted? We all have short-term memory; similar to a Post-it Note, and long-term memory; akin to the hard drive of a computer. Eric Kandel, a neuroscientist at Columbia University in New York City, has shown that short-term memories involve relatively quick and simple chemical changes to the synapse that make it work more efficiently. He found that to build a memory that lasts hours, days, or years, neurons must manufacture new proteins to make the neurotransmitter traffic run more efficiently. Long-term memories must literally be built into the brain�s synapses. Kandel and other neuroscientists have generally assumed that once a memory is constructed, it can�t be undone.3 This viewpoint is changing, though.

We tend to remember things through our own cultural filters and these memories can be skewed by a number of factors including bias, our mood, our physical health, and context. Karim Nader, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, believes that just the act of remembering can change the memories. In experiments, he has shown that our brains reconsolidate memories during the recall process and we can forget key aspects or even embellish them through conversations with others. Because of this, eyewitness testimony isn�t as trustworthy as was once thought.

The advent of DNA analysis in the late 1980s revolutionized forensic science. It provides an unprecedented level of accuracy about the identity of actual perpetrators versus innocent people falsely accused of a crime. DNA testing led to the review of many settled cases in the United States and according to the Innocence Project, more than 360 people who had been convicted and sentenced to death since 1989 have been exonerated through DNA evidence. Of these, 71 percent had been convicted through eyewitness misidentification.4

DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the human hereditary material that looks like a long molecule and it contains the information that organisms need to develop and reproduce. It was first discovered in 1869 by the biochemist Friedrich Miescher, who was studying the composition of lymphoid cells. It wasn�t until the 1940s that genetic inheritance began to be researched and understood in regard to DNA. Human DNA is unique because it is made up of nearly three billion base pairs that are approximately 99 percent the same in every person. Through advanced research, scientists believe the diagnosis and treatment of genetic diseases will continue to improve as well as the possibility of gene therapy. With personalized or precision medicine based on DNA, experts believe they will be able to pinpoint treatments for individuals much faster and more accurately.

As of 2019, Belgian nine-year-old Laurent Simons is the youngest college graduate in the world.

The novel centers on Luke Ellis, a highly precocious preteen who is on the cusp of college at only twelve years old. One night, Luke�s life is forever changed when strangers, who we learn are employed by the mysterious institute, murder his parents and kidnap him. Once awake in a strange, school-like building, Luke meets a group of children who have met the same terrible fate. In fact, it is not Luke�s unique intelligence that is the cause of his capture, but rather his tendency to break objects when angry. With his mind, of course.

While Luke doesn�t have the impressive powers of Carrie White or even Firestarter�s (1980) Charlie McGee, he is of great interest to the researchers of the Institute. There is already a file of information on Luke�s life and abilities, including the fact that he is TK, shorthand for telekinetic. Forced to undergo painful shots, humiliating medical tests, and most brutal of all, no contact with the outside world, the kids of the Institute quickly become friends. They share in one simple goal, to escape the fences beyond the industrial building and regain their freedom.

Luke�s friends include Avery, petite and scared from his new circumstances. Avery�s telepathic power, or, as he�s known in the novel, TP pos, is more potent than Luke�s. Friend Kalisha, too, holds a telepathic power, rooted in a deep empathy, that will aid in their escape. But, before Luke and friends can work against the people at the Institute, the reader is introduced to the �Back Half,� a building beyond, where kids disappear to, and never return from. While the �Front Half�� is not pleasant, the �Back Half� is where the true Stephen King horror blossoms. There, kids as young as six, both TP and TK, are used as weapons against American enemies. Their minds are harnessed into a supernatural energy, which is then directed to murder. Eventually, this breaks down the children�s psyche. They lose their personality, their mind. They are husks of their former selves. It is the worst kind of zombie, bred by the government and then left to suffer after their task is done.

Politics aside, the plot of The Institute mirrors widely known experiments conducted by the CIA decades ago. While the real American government certainly would not admit to any sort of similar doings, they have released information on a controversial top-secret project entitled MK-Ultra. According to History.com, �MK-Ultra was a top-secret CIA project in which the agency conducted hundreds of clandestine experiments�sometimes on unwitting US citizens�to assess the potential use of LSD and other drugs for mind control, information gathering, and psychological torture. Project MK-Ultra lasted from 1953 until about 1973.�3

Chapter Five: The Stand

1. (2020) �The Stand: Inspiration.� StephenKing.com.

2. Woolf, Jim. (January 1, 1998) �Army: Nerve Agent Near Dead Utah Sheep in �68; Feds Admit Nerve Agent Near Sheep.� The Salt Lake Tribune.

3. Hooker, Edmund. (January 10, 2019) �Biological Warfare.� EMedicine Health.com.

4. Geggel, Laura. (April 07, 2017) �7 Facts About the Deadly Nerve Agent Sarin.� Live Science.

5. (June 11, 2019) �Smallpox Fast Facts.� CNN.

6. (February 5, 2020) �The Spanish Flu.� History.com.

7. Gunderman, Ricard. (September 14, 2018) �The �Greatest Pandemic in History� Was 100 Years Ago � But Many of Us Still Get the Basic Facts Wrong.� Healthline.com.

8. Brazier, Yvette. (May 22, 2018) �Everything You Need to Know About Pandemics.� Medical News Today.

E

East Carter High School, 28�29

Eastlake, Elizabeth, 170

Ebola, 145

eczema, 65

Edgecomb, Paul, 118, 123

Education Digest, 28

Einstein, Albert, 182

El Cuco, 210

electric chair, 122�123

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 202

Ellis, Luke, 212

empath, 215

End of Watch (King), 197, 199, 201

Energy Star products, 177

enuresis, 26

Environmental Research Letters, 177

Epping, Jake, 182, 189

ESP, 214�215

Esposito, Elaine, 111

Estes Park, Colorado, 11

European Journal of Pediatrics, 70

evidence

DNA, 206

eyewitness, 206

exhumation, 23�24

The Exorcist, 201

The Expanse, 200

extraterrestrial materials, 88�89

Eye of the Dragon (King), 41

The Eyes of the Dragon (King), 85