It

by Stephen King

Can an entire city be haunted? Haunted as some houses are supposed to be haunted? Not just a single building in that city, or the corner of a single street, or a single basketball court in a single pocket-park, the netless basket jutting out at sunset like some obscure and bloody instrument of torture, not just one area—but everything. The whole works. Can that be? Listen: Haunted: “Often visited by ghosts or spirits.” Funk and Wagnalls. Haunting: “Persistently recurring to the mind; difficult to forget.” Ditto Funk and Friend. To haunt: “To appear or recur often, especially as a ghost.” But—and listen!—“A place often visited: resort, den, hangout . . .” Italics are of course mine. And one more. This one, like the last, is a definition of haunt as a noun, and it’s the one that really scares me: “A feeding place for animals.”