The Stephen King Novel That He Lost… Found… And Never Published!

Stephen King has shared a variety of horror stories with generations of readers for decades, but there’s one novel that has gone through a lot and hasn’t been published. Stephen King has rightfully earned the nickname of King of Horror as he has allowed readers to explore different types of fears and meet a variety of monsters (both human and supernatural) for years, beginning in 1974 with Carrie. Since then, readers have an idea of the type of stories and characters that they will find in King’s novels, but he always saves a couple of surprises to keep them entertained from beginning to end.

Many of Stephen King’s characters and stories have become part of pop culture, as are villains like IT’s Pennywise, The Shinning’s Jack Torrance, and Randall Flagg, and his stories have formed an interesting universe, but there are a couple of novels and short stories that never made it to the hands of readers. Unsurprisingly, King has a long list of unpublished works, but one in particular stands out because he lost it, found it, and still never published it: The Cannibals.

Related: Stephen King’s Biggest Career Regret (It’s Not 1 Of His Books)

What Happened To Stephen King’s The Cannibals?

King’s unpublished novel The Cannibals is actually connected to one of his most popular stories: Under the Dome, published in 2009. King tried to write Under the Dome in 1972 under that same title and again a decade later but now titled The Cannibals. On his official website, King explains that the first Under the Dome attempt was lost, and the second try was written during the filming of Creepshow, as he was inspired by the “depressing suburban apartment complex” he was staying at. King wrote about 500 pages of The Cannibals but “hit a wall” and assumed the manuscript was lost… until he found it in the summer of 2009, with some pages missing.

The Cannibals follows a group of people trapped in an apartment building who end up eating each other, and after finding the manuscript, instead of finishing it so it could be published, King reworked it and turned it into Under the Dome. Although The Cannibals was never officially published, King shared the first 60 pages of it as “an appetizer to Under the Dome” but also due to rumors about plagiarism involving The Simpsons Movie, which has a similar plot to Under the Dome, so sharing those pages was King’s way of showing he thought of the story of a town trapped inside a glass dome before Springfield had to deal with the same.

Why Stephen King The Cannibals Might Never Be Published

While it would be interesting that The Cannibals was published to see how much it influenced Under the Dome and how different they are, it’s unlikely it will ever see the light of day, precisely because it has already been released, in some ways. Under the Dome is the final version of The Cannibals and King shared parts of the original version on his website (and they are still available to download), so the story has already served its purpose, and doesn’t really need to be published anymore – and, surely, Stephen King has a lot more ideas to share with readers, which need more attention than The Cannibals.

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