Pet Sematary
Doctor Louis Creed moves his wife and two small children from Chicago to rural Maine for a job at the university, and the quiet road past their new house turns out to be a killing ground for the pets of everyone in town. Beyond the pet cemetery in the woods lies an older Mi'kmaq burial ground that returns what is buried there, and the neighbor across the road lets Louis in on a secret that will not stay harmless once grief arrives. Stephen King considered the novel too dark to publish at first, and the book has remained a touchstone in the horror canon for exactly that reason.
Themes & atmosphere
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What you might want to know about Pet Sematary
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
When the Creed family moves to rural Maine, a kindly neighbor shows them a children's pet cemetery in the woods, and what lies beyond it. The road by their house is busy. Their cat is the first to find out.
Yes. Pet Sematary is widely considered one of Stephen King's most disturbing novels. King himself has said he found the manuscript so dark that he hesitated to publish it. The themes of grief and irreversible loss carry much of the horror.
Yes, twice. A 1989 film directed by Mary Lambert and a 2019 remake by Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer both adapt the novel. A 2023 prequel, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, also exists. The 1989 version is closer to the book.
Pet Sematary was written by Stephen King, published in 1983 by n/a.
Pet Sematary is 422 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Pet Sematary takes most readers 6 to 9 hours to finish.
Pet Sematary is a standalone novel by Stephen King, not part of a series.
Pet Sematary is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.