It—Welcome to Derry: Why is the Town of Derry cursed? The haunting origins of Stephen King's world, explored

Stephen King's haunting world of It is expanding with HBO's upcoming series, It—Welcome to Derry, which is scheduled to be released in late 2025.

Based on King's 1986 novel of the same name, the series will act as a prequel to the critically acclaimed movies It (2017) and It Chapter Two (2019).

Swedish actor Bill Skarsgård will also reprise the role of Pennywise, the Clown from the movies, who is the titular and malevolent creature who plagues the town of Derry every 27 years.

While King's fictional town of Derry, Maine, is now widely known as the breeding ground of fear for It, it is also said to be cursed, with a cyclic nature of mysterious disappearances.

It—Welcome to Derry will explore the haunting origins of Derry and Pennywise and how the town became synonymous with death.

Read on to know why Derry is cursed in King's world.

It- Welcome to Derry: Exploring why Derry is cursed in Stephen King's horror world

The prequel series It—Welcome to Derry will explore the haunting origins of Stephen King's world, but the story is covered in many of his novels, which might shed light on Derry's curse and why Pennywise has chosen this town as his abode.

Many of King's novellas, like The Mist and The Talisman, touch upon the concept of 'thinnies,' which is a weak spot in reality that is strong enough to weaken the fabric of the world and open portals to different dimensions.

These thinnies are large blobs of mercury that emit a high-pitched hypnotic sound that plays on a person's thoughts and their worst fears. In addition, the thinning of the spot also allows otherworldly beings to slip into our world from different dimensions.

As depicted in King's The Dark Tower novel series, Derry is one of the 'weak' spots (or a thinny), which explains its curse and the origin of Pennywise in It—Welcome to Derry.

In King's world, its arrival on Earth is attributed to a massive cataclysmic event, following which it settled in a place that eventually became Derry, Maine. In short, Derry has been cursed long before it even came into existence because it falls on a 'thin' spot and became the place where It crashed after the event.

It-Welcome to Derry: Stephen King's haunting town is inspired by a real place

What's more chilling is that Stephen King was inspired to create the haunting town of Derry from a real place. Derry is inspired by Bangor, Maine, where King and his wife, Tabitha, also own a Victorian home.

Since the upcoming series It—Welcome to Derry will explore the haunting origins of It and King's world, it is interesting to note that the author was inspired by a real place to base his story. The town of Bangor is also mentioned in many of his stories, which remains a stark example of the horror town of Derry that eventually became Pennywise's home.

King used the sewer system in Bangor, which was poorly made and extremely hard to navigate. He imagined the eerie atmosphere inside these dark, filthy, and haunting sewers, which became the breeding ground of fear for Pennywise, a place where he would prey on children.

In addition to the sewer systems, King was also inspired by the many stories of violence in Bangor for his novel. The very famous and harrowing case of the 1984 murder of Charlie Howard was even included in It.

Howard was a twenty-three-year-old gay man who was beaten to death by three teens and then thrown in a canal, who became the inspiration for the murder of Adrian Mellon in It. Instead of drowning, Mellon encounters Pennywise in the canal, which eventually becomes the basis of the story in the movie franchise.

With such deep and haunting history in King's stories, It—Welcome to Derry surely has a lot to cover, and it would be interesting to see how the show expands on the town's lore.

It—Welcome to Derry will arrive on HBO in late 2025.

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