Stephen King’s House: Bangor’s Spooky House of Horror

After legendary horror writer Stephen King published his novel “The Shining”, the Maine native decided to ditch his adopted home of Colorado. Stephen King’s creative instincts were urging him to return to Maine. In 1980, Stephen King purchased a spooky Victorian mansion located on West Broadway in the shadow of downtown Bangor. The stately Victorian mansion that King would call home for over 40 years was originally constructed in 1858.

Stephen King surrounded his Victorian home with a creepy wrought iron fence that features bats and spider webs. King said that he regretted installing the foreboding fence because it turned his sleepy Maine neighborhood into a tourist attraction. Despite an endless stream of tourists eager to catch of a glimpse of the horror icon, Stephen King spent countless hours hard at work in his writing studio. King used his eerie house and neighborhood as inspiration for several classic horror novels. The streets of King’s neighborhood inspired the fictional town of Derry, Maine. Derry appears in several of King’s most famous works including “It”,”Insomnia”, and “Dreamcatcher”.

In 2020, Stephen King hired sculptor Josh Landry to sculpt a dead ash tree into a towering wooden bookcase mounted on human legs that features several birds, a cat, and a likeness of King’s beloved dog Molly. Landry created the ornate sculpture with a chainsaw. Stephen King’s wife Tabitha King—who is also an author—stated that she was inspired to transform the ash tree into a sculpture that would reflect “the wealth of life” that could be housed in a dead tree.

In recent years, Stephen and Tabitha King have spent the bulk of their time in sunny Florida. Stephen King’s Bangor home will soon serve as a retreat for working writers. The King family is working to convert the main house into an archive that will contain some of Stephen King’s manuscripts and other important papers. The Stephen King archive will not be open to the public.

Stephen King has written about plenty of nightmarish characters including an evil clown, a demonic dog, and a murderous hotel caretaker. Stephen King has made it very clear that one of his worst nightmares is the interior of his beloved home morphing into a tacky tourist destination. Onlookers are welcome to quietly admire King’s ominous house from a distance. The sleepy tree-lined streets that surround Stephen King’s house feature plenty of menacing shadows that will surely give you the shivers.

Address:
47 West Broadway
Bangor, Maine, 04401
United States