Thirty-four years later, Pet Sematary remains one of Stephen King’s most viscerally nasty books, an ugly blend of otherworldly temptation and very real paternal fears. King has famously stated that much of the book’s horror had, as its inspiration, a house he and his family rented in Orrington, Maine in the 1970s, which was situated close to a busily traveled road that always seemed primed to lure cats, dogs, and (potentially) kids under the wheels of inattentive truck drivers. (Hence the crudely assembled pet cemetery built by local youths on the back of the property.)