In college, Stephen King wrote possibly the best Lovecraft story not written by Lovecraft, a twisted pastiche with a side of Poe. “Jerusalem’s Lot” would finally be published in his first story collection, Night Shift. Before that happened, he reused the town’s name in the novel Salem’s Lot (a sort of Dracula meets Peyton Place) and the follow-up short story, “One for the Road.” Fans have spent a good deal of time trying to reconcile the largely irreconcilable histories of the early story with the novel and its coda.
This year saw “Jerusalem’s Lot” expanded and adapted into the series, Chapelwaite. The first five of ten episodes have aired, with suspicious townsfolk, creeping madness, the worm that doth corrupt—and, one suspects, an eye towards a possible future season that will bring us to modern-day ‘Salem’s Lot.