What Would Stephen King’s Ghost Be Like?

Stephen King might think this is a stupid question. (image via wikimedia)

Stephen King isn’t dead.  As far as I know, he’s alive and well, and I hope he stays that way for a long time.  This isn’t meant to be a morbid post.

But I’m curious, will anything weird happen when Stephen King dies? Will he have a ghost?  Would his ghost haunt fictional sections of Maine for all eternity?  Would his ghost be a demonic clown luring little kids into gutters?  Or would King’s spirit tempt writers into using too many –ly adverbs in their prose?

Or maybe nothing will happen.  Maybe people will just write quick social media posts about him and get on with their lives.  And if King did come back as a ghost, maybe nobody would notice; there’s a lot of stuff going on right now that’s much weirder than Stephen King’s ghost popping up.

Even though Stephen King sometimes writes about evil spirits, a lot of people who read his books probably don’t believe in that stuff.  I’m mildly interested because I think a ghost lived in my house when I was kid.  It was an old guy staring into my bedroom from the hallway (great, a weirdo ghost, but at least he wasn’t staring into my older sister’s room.  Actually, I don’t know which would be worse.).

I kept my mouth shut because I thought it was probably my imagination.  Then decades later my mom mentioned how she thought we’d had a ghost in that house, and we compared stories.  She couldn’t tell what it was, but it would hover in the hallway near my room.  My room.  It had to be my room.

I don’t know why I started wondering what Stephen King’s ghost would be like.  It doesn’t make for a long blog post, but I’d rather write about it while he’s still alive.  Anyway, I don’t want to come across as morbid, so here’s some other stuff I’ve written about Stephen King… while he’s still alive… and will be for many many more years to come.

Thank You, Stephen King!

(image via wikipedia)

A few weeks ago, a friend of my wife came over unannounced and uninvited with her family.  Any visitors we get are because of my wife.  I don’t have friends, so nobody comes over to see me.  My wife has lots of friends, and sometimes we end up entertaining families of people whom I barely know.  Most of the time I don’t mind, but I don’t like it when the visitors are unannounced and uninvited.

In this case, the family had a teenage son who, according to his parents, is addicted to video games and hates to read.  He’s capable of reading, my wife’s friend said, but he won’t do it unless it’s a school assignment.

“At least he completes his school assignments,” I said to my wife’s friend.

“Yeah,” the son said to his mom, but she gave him a dirty look.

I could sympathize with the kid because he reminded me of a bunch of friends I had in high school (a time in my life when I actually had friends).

My high school friends weren’t functionally illiterate.  They were dysfunctionally literate.  They knew how to read but chose not to.  If they were going to read, it would be a smut book like Massage Parlor by Jennifer Sills or a parody book like Bored of the Rings.  If my high school friends had had internet and cell phones and they wouldn’t have read even those books.  With the internet, teenage boys don’t need smut books anymore.

Read more here!

Even though Stephen King is a prolific writer and has written some iconic novels, he admits some of his writing isn’t as good as it could have been.  When I reread one of his best-known horror novels The Shining, I saw what he meant.

Bad Sentences in Classic Literature: The Shining by Stephen King

(image via wikipedia)

The Shining by Stephen King might not be a classic yet, but it probably will be.  It was written in the 1970s, and people still read it today and it’s still relevent, so I’m guessing that people will still read it 50 years from now.

Even though The Shining is a great book, it has some bad writing in it.  At least, by Stephen King’s standards, there are some bad sentences.    In his book On Writing,  Stephen King maligns the adverb with one of the all-time most famous quotes about writing: “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs,…”

When the Modern Master of Horror equates a part of speech with eternal damnation, you have to take that seriously.

Read more here!

Stephen King weighs in on a lot of political issues nowadays.  Even if he ticks off a bunch of people and they stop reading his books, he still will have a massive audience, so there’s not much for him to lose.  A few years ago, he wrote a quick ebook essay about guns, and I thought about reading it.  Usually I don’t bother with celebrities and their opinions, but I give Stephen King credit for his unique perspective on this issue.

On Stephen King and his Essay about Guns

Even though Stephen King’s essay “Guns” is about gun control, my essay about Stephen King’s essay is not (about gun control). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Stephen King wrote a 25 page essay about gun control, put it on the Amazon Kindle, and now it’s a top ten Amazon Kindle bestseller.  I’m not going to read a 25 page essay about gun control (that may be more a reflection on me than Stephen King).  I can barely read the 2^nd Amendment without seeing the yellow dots of sleep.

25 pages isn’t long for an essay about gun control.  I bet any gun control legislation that is passed (or proposed) will be way over 25 pages long (and probably filled with a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with guns).  If it’s any consolation, I won’t read that either.

I usually get annoyed at celebrities who spout off about politics, but I don’t get annoyed at authors who write about political issues.  That’s what writers should do.  If there’s one group of celebrity that should talk (or write) about politics, it’s authors.  I may not always agree with the ideas of other writers, but their views are probably better thought out than those of most celebrities (like actors, singers, musicians, or athletes).

In fact, I hope other famous authors start writing about gun control too.  Maybe Tom Clancy can write a response, except he’d probably make it a 1,000 pages long with way too much filler.

Read more here!

*****

What do you think?  What would Stephen King’s ghost be like?  Would his ghost be any different from the average ghost?  Or do you think ghosts don’t exist and all that supernatural stuff is a crock?