If you want a guided tour of Derry, there’s really only one place to go: SK Tours of Maine. Jamie and Jennifer give an amazing tour, taking riders through Bangor, Derry, and many of the places where the lines between the two worlds grow a bit fuzzy and indistinct. The lives of Jamie’s family and that of the Kings have overlapped for decades—Jamie’s dad Stu was the long-time owner-operator of Betts Bookstore and later founded SK Tours with King’s blessing—and these interconnections in particular make the the tour intimate, insightful, and just a whole heck of a lot of fun. 

I’m not going to go through a stop-by-stop rundown of the tour here—to get that, you’ll need to go see Jamie and Jennifer and enjoy one of these great tours for yourself. (Check out their website here!) But what I will do is tell you a bit about my own experiences enjoying the tour, as well as the new and exciting perspectives I gained on King, Bangor, and Derry. 

I turned up at SK Tours’ shop on Hammond Street on a slightly chilly Thursday October morning for the Derry, Maine tour. SK Tours was one of the first stops on my itinerary when I arrived in Bangor, figuring that the tour would give me a great lay of the land, with lots of time to circle back to key places and explore further later on in my stay, and I wasn’t disappointed. We had a full tour bus of great people and when Jamie prefaced the tour by asking riders to name their favorite King book, the responses established a tone of shared enthusiasm while also highlighting the breadth and diversity of King’s work, as well as the range of ways his writing resonates with different readers. This was a perfect way to start the day, kicking off the conversation we were about to have and the experience we were about to collectively share. And with that, we were off, hitting the road and cruising King’s Derry. 

The defining characteristic of SK Tours is the seamless synthesis of sites and stories. For example, as we got going, Jamie talked us through Ralph Roberts’ walking route in Insomnia (1994), drawing connections to King’s own well-traveled walking route in Bangor prior to his 1999 accident, and driving us down those self-same streets. And just like that, we were immersed in King’s world, both the real and the fictional. 

We traveled to several iconic King sites, including those that inspired King’s imagination (Mount Hope Cemetery, the Thomas Hill Standpipe, the Paul Bunyan Statue) and those that have been featured in film adaptations of King’s work (Mount Hope Cemetery, 1989’s Pet Sematary; the Bangor Water Works Building, 1990’s Graveyard Shift). But we also hit lots of places that aren’t listed on any official map, with Jamie sharing a range of personal insights and stories that only decades of familiarity and affection for King, his work, and Bangor itself could create. 

(Our stop at the Standpipe was a game-changer for me personally, but that’s a whole post on its own—stay tuned!) 

One aspect of the tour that was really striking and actually gave me a new perspective on King (even after a couple of decades of doing this kind of work) was Jamie’s discussion of the King family’s strong connection with and heartfelt support of the Bangor community. From their philanthropic projects and their help raising awareness and funds for a wide range of community projects to the stories of King’s kindness to and support of Jamie’s dad Stu and Betts Bookstore, SK Tours offers riders the chance to see King as not just an iconic author or master of horror, but as a human being. The King family’s positive impact on the Bangor community cannot be overstated and for me at least, these stories were some of the best of the whole tour.  

King’s rock and roll radio station, WKIT (100.3 FM) became the soundtrack to my Maine adventure following our stop by the radio station, where I was surprised to learn that WKIT is one of the last locally owned, DJ controlled radio stations in the country. I was also thrilled to find out that the station has a streaming app, making this one part of my Bangor experience that I have been able to bring right home with me. 

The final stop on the tour is the street in front of the King house. No longer a private residence, the house is in the process of being transformed into a writer’s retreat and future site of the King archives (formerly held at University of Maine at Orono’s Fogler Library). As several people told me during my time in Bangor, no grass grows on the strip of land between the sidewalk and the street in front of the King house because it is so highly trafficked, popular with tour buses, King fans, and Bangor travelers alike. It is a beautiful home, with its iconic spider-adorned fence and a chainsaw-carved piece of art, transformed from a dead tree into a display of King imagery and inspiration. It was wonderful to take a moment to reflect on all the life and love and writing that has taken place in that house, and to look forward to a new generation of creators inhabiting that same space, though these deep thoughts were admittedly interrupted from time to time by wandering sight-seers and the next regional tour bus pulling up the curb. 

My experience with SK Tours definitely gave me a more intimate understanding of King, Bangor, and Derry, establishing a different kind of connection with King and his work than any amount of reading or research alone could do. To be in this place, following in King’s footsteps, exploring the interconnections between reality and fiction, and listening to Jamie’s stories was an unforgettable experience and one that I will carry with me and use to inform my reading, engagement, and teaching for years to come.