Did you know that Stephen King, the world renowned American horror writer with book sales of over 350 million, has written a story about Crouch End? You probably did, but it’s new to me. Originally published as part of a collection called New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (1980) it tells the tale of mystery, monsters and disappearances in Crouch End, where the veil between our world and a demonic otherworld is at its weakest. Here’s the plot according to Wikipedia:
On August 19, 1974, two police officers, alcoholic veteran Ted Vetter and newcomer Robert Farnham, are working the night shift in the London neighbourhood of Crouch End. They are discussing the case of Doris Freeman, a young American woman who came in to report the disappearance of her husband, lawyer Leonard Freeman. Nearly hysterical, Doris talks of monsters and supernatural incidents.
She relates how she and her husband were looking for a potential employer’s house in Crouch End, but as they did so, they became lost. As they continued searching, their surroundings started to change subtly and become infested by what appeared to be monsters and demons. Doris escapes with her life, but her husband is not so lucky, being consumed by some kind of hideous creature. (Implied to be the Lovecraftian creature Shub-Niggurath due to a reference to ‘the Black Goat with a Thousand Young’ made shortly before the creature’s appearance)
Farnham dismisses the story as rubbish, but Vetter, who has worked in Crouch End for years, is not so sure, remembering a time previously when similar events happened. He speaks of different dimensions and Crouch End being a place where the veil between our world and another more demonic world is at its weakest. The story ends with Farnham going out into the night, only to find that something is different about the area for him too. He is never seen again, and Vetter dies a few years later. The story ends by saying that people continued to disappear in Crouch End and sometimes are never seen again.Here’s a rather poor television adaptation:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlF08Oi-wqI