With “IT: Welcome to Derry” now airing on HBO, see how the 1986 book has continued to haunt King’s work.

Pennywise lives! Every time IT* *appears in Stephen King’s literary universe

With "IT: Welcome to Derry" now airing on HBO, see how the 1986 book has continued to haunt King's work.

By Randall Colburn

Randall Colburn

Randall Colburn is a writer and editor at **. His work has previously appeared on *The A.V. Club, The Guardian, The Ringer*, and many other publications.

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November 23, 2025 11:00 a.m. ET

Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise in 'IT'. Credit:

Well, first off, *IT* is the name of a 1986 novel by Stephen King about an ancient evil that terrorizes the small Maine town of Derry every 27 years. It's also a moniker of sorts for an ancient evil entity, which readers know best as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, the shapeshifter's go-to manifestation.

Pennywise (and what hides under his pancake makeup) returns for HBO Max's *IT: Welcome to Derry*, a prequel series from the producers of 2017's *IT* and 2019's *IT Chapter 2 *that will again feature Bill Skarsgård as the dancing clown.

But *IT* isn't Pennywise's only playground. As Constant Readers of King know all too well, his vast oeuvre is known for its cross-pollination of characters, towns, monsters, and mysteries.

Below, we've cataloged every appearance made by *IT*'s big bad in King's books, from Pennywise himself to the deadlights glowing behind its eyes. Read with caution, though — some light spoilers are inevitable.

“Gray Matter” (1973)

'Night Shift' by Stephen King.

Amusingly, many believe the monster first manifested in a short story printed 13 years before *IT.* "Gray Matter," an icky and affecting tale of a man's simultaneous descent into alcoholism and grotesque mutation, was published in 1973 and later featured in 1978's *Night Shift*.

The *IT* connection comes via an offhand story recounted by the narrator, who tells of a man who went into a sewer pipe in Bangor, Maine, and emerged with hair "white as snow and his eyes staring like he just looked through a window into hell." Later, the man talked about seeing a "spider as big as a good-sized dog setting in a web full of kitties an' such all wrapped up in silk thread."

The evidence is compelling. Bangor, after all, was King's inspiration for Derry, where the creature haunts the sewers. One character's hair turns white after encountering the monster in *IT*, and it manifests as a giant spider during the book's climax.

'IT' by Stephen King.

It by Stephen King

Pennywise first rears his Bozo-esque orange tufts in 1986's *IT*, a horror epic about a group of outcasts, the Losers' Club, who unite to confront the shapeshifting, child-devouring entity that's been haunting Derry for hundreds of years. While it tends to manifest as a cackling clown, the creature can embody its victims' worst fears, scaring them into a state of hysteria before gobbling them up.

While its origins aren't fully articulated in King's book, the Losers construct a smoke hole that grants two of them a vision of its arrival on Earth a long, long, *long* time ago.

"The clouds in the west lit with a bloom of red fire. It traced its way toward them, widening from an artery to a stream to a river of ominous color; and then, as a burning, falling object broke through the cloud cover, the wind came. It was hot and searing, smoky and suffocating. The thing in the sky was gigantic, a flaming match-head that was nearly too bright to look at. Arcs of electricity bolted from it, blue bullwhips that flashed out from it and left thunder in their wake.

*A spaceship!* Richie screamed, falling to his knees and covering his eyes. *Oh my God it’s a spaceship! *But he believed — and would tell the others later, as best he could — that it was not a spaceship, although it might have come *through* space to get here.

Whatever came down on that long-ago day had come from a place much farther away than another star or another galaxy, and if *spaceship* was the first word to come into his mind, perhaps that was only because his mind had no other way of grasping what his eyes were seeing.

There was an explosion then — a roar of sound followed by a rolling concussion that knocked them both down. This time it was Mike who groped for Richie’s hand. There was another explosion. Richie opened his eyes and saw a glare of fire and a pillar of smoke rising into the sky.

*It!* he stared at Mike, in an ecstasy of terror now — never in his life, before or after, would he feel any emotion so deeply, be so overwhelmed by feeling. *It! It! It!*"

The Tommyknockers (1987)

'The Tommyknockers' by Stephen King. Simon and Schuster

Published just a year after *IT*, King's sci-fi oddity *The Tommyknockers* includes a brief cameo from Pennywise.

It comes when a character is driving through Derry and unraveling amid a kind of extraterrestrial withdrawal (it's complicated).

The passage reads, "Tommy had begun to hallucinate; as he drove up Wentworth Street, he thought he saw a clown grinning up at him from an open sewer manhole — a clown with shiny silver dollars for eyes and a clenched white glove filled with balloons."

Buddy, that wasn't a hallucination.**

Insomnia (1994)

'Insomnia' by Stephen King.

*Insomnia *abounds with references to other King works, including his multi-volume *Dark Tower *series. The story, following a retired widower whose insomnia gives him the ability to see auras, is set in Derry, and the shadow of *IT* hangs over it.

Mike Hanlon, for example, appears in a couple of scenes, and the book's big bad refers to itself as a "Kingfish," same as Pennywise does in *IT*.

While the latter connection is a hazy one, this passage from the epilogue is not: "The ring rolled down the gutter and disappeared into a sewer grate, and there it remained for a long, long time. But not forever. In Derry, things that disappear into the sewer system have a way — an often unpleasant one — of turning up.”

Dreamcatcher (2001)

'Dreamcatcher' by Stephen King.

*Dreamcatcher* is one of the stranger King novels, with a group of psychically-gifted friends having their annual hunting trip interrupted by an alien invasion and military intervention. (He famously wrote it under the influence of Oxycontin, which he was prescribed following a 1999 car crash that nearly took his life.)

Pennywise doesn't factor into the events of the book, but he casts a shadow when one of the characters drives through Derry. Upon inspecting a plaque in the town (donated by the Losers' Club), the character finds that its been spray-painted with the words, "Pennywise lives."**

'11/22/63' by Stephen King.

*11/22/63*, a 2011 novel about a man who travels back in time in an attempt to stop the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy, is one of King's most entertaining and affecting post-2000 works. And, like *Dreamcatcher*, it includes a long detour in Derry.

The protagonist, Jake Epping, arrives there in 1958, soon after the events of *IT*. He even meets a few members of the Losers' Club, observing their distrust of the local adults and fear that more terror is on the way. Townies whisper about the murders of local children, and even mention a "local who dressed up like a clown to keep from being recognized."

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One man's chilling observation is particularly relevant to the truth about Pennywise. "When you put on a clown suit and a rubber nose, nobody has any idea what you look like inside."

Jake describes Derry as having "a veil," adding that the town thrums with a "sour mistrust, the sense of barely withheld violence." Later, he senses something malevolent hiding in the pipes at the ruins of the Kitchener Ironworks, a location we'll potentially see in future of seasons of *IT: Welcome to Derry*.**

NOS4A2 (2013)

'NOS4A2' by Joe Hill.

William Morrow Paperbacks

No, *NOS4A2* was not written by Stephen King. It was written by Joe Hill, King's son (and a very good author in his own right). But *NOS4A2* shares a lot of DNA with *IT*, what with its story of a supernatural child-snatcher, and even includes a quick nod to Pennywise himself.

The story contains an alternate universe, which includes a continent called the "United Inscapes of America." There, amid eerie spots like "Christmasland" and "The Graveyard of What Might Be," the characters spot a location called Pennywise Circus. And wouldn't you know it, it's tucked right where you'd find Derry on a regular map.**

Elevation (2018)

'Elevation' by Stephen King.

This is a silly one, but King slipped a Pennywise joke into 2018's *Elevation*, a sweet and rather moving story about a man who begins rapidly losing weight, despite his body not changing in composition.

The book is set in Castle Rock, Maine, another of King's favorite fictional locales, but it pays tribute to its New England neighbor by introducing a local band called Pennywise and the Clowns. (Fun fact: The popular punk outfit Pennywise dubbed themselves as such just a few years after the book's release.)**

Later (2021)

'Later' by Stephen King.

Hard Case Crime

King's *Later*, a 2021 crime novel about a kid with the ability to see dead people, has a surprising and effective connection to *IT*. To discuss it, though, we will have to (sort of) spoil the book's ending. Consider yourself warned.

Okay, so the book's protagonist, Jamie, tends to have a cordial relationship with most of the ghosts he sees. But that changes when he encounters a particularly malevolent spirit named Therriault, who Jamie suspects is being possessed by a demon.

In *IT*, the Losers' Club attempts to overcome Pennywise with the Ritual of Chüd, an arcane practice that operates as a battle of wills. Jamie is advised to use the same ritual to defeat Therriault.

In doing so, Jamie sees a light inside Therriault that he describes thusly: "It was bright and dark at the same time. It was something from outside the world. It was horrible." He calls it a "deadlight."

Deadlights appear in a handful of King works, but are especially integral to *IT, *where they manifest as the animating force inside its titular creature. To stare into them is to court insanity — and sometimes death.**

Gwendy’s Final Task (2022)

'Gwendy's Final Task' by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar.

*Gwendy's Final Task, *published in 2022, is the third novel in a trilogy King co-wrote with author Richard Chizmar. The series, which spans multiple decades, follows the titular Gwendy's encounters with a mysterious stranger and his magical button box, which offers good fortune at a cost.

Though the series has its roots in Castle Rock, *Gwendy's Final Task* includes a detour in Derry, during which Gwendy recalls meeting a woman who claimed that as a teenager she was "chased down a dark street by a giggling man dressed as a circus clown." The man, the woman said, "had razors for teeth and huge round silver eyes."**

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW Horror”