Welcome to Whisper House Press’s special series, “It Came From the Crypt.” In this sequence, we’ll combine film reviews with personal essays and will get horror writers’ take on spooky movies that influenced them.
A month ago we heard from S.T. Talbot, who took on Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island (1998). Today we’ve got an entry in our series from Mallory Glass, owner/operator of Sloth & Envy Press, and her work appears in Whisper House Press’s Dread Mondays social horror anthology (2025) and elsewhere. Mallory is here to tell us all about how Salem’s Lot (1979 television series) completely fucked her up but that she’s still somehow glad she watched it. This editor, for one, is glad she’s trodden this path in horror and literature.
Welcome to ’Salem’s Lot
or
What in the Hell was My Mom Thinking?
by Mallory Glass
In November 1979, CBS scarred a generation of Gen X children by airing their adaption of Stephen King’s second book, ‘Salem’s Lot. I think it says something interesting about the power of the book when you consider that it’s been adapted no fewer than three times (1979, 2004, 2024).
The miniseries was shown in two parts. This gave us plenty of time to anticipate just how fucked life in Salem’s Lot would get between week one and week two. At the end of week one’s episode, vampirism was set to spread through town like a wildfire.
It began with a spark—with Little Ralphie Glick lost in the dark woods. He hears a sound and turns. A dark figure looms up behind him and—
Cut to commercial.
We’re left to imagine the worst. Ralphie is never found. His parents are distraught. His older brother Danny, who lost Ralphie in the woods, is wrecked.
Cue the fog machine.
Danny Glick is asleep in his bed. Outside his ridiculously oversized window, fog rolls in. And through the fog, a figure appears. Holy shit! It’s Ralphie! And he’s flying! What in the fresh hell is happening?
Not only is this little creepazoid floating two stories up, he’s scratching at the glass wanting to be let inside. His eyes shine with an unholy light. Those fingernails scratching the window haunts me to this day. Don’t open the window, Danny.
Does Danny listen? No. No, he does not. Why is that? Because the vampire outside his window has mesmerized him. Shit goes sideways fast in the Lot.
Week one ends with Mike Ryerson, our friendly neighborhood gravedigger, hopping down into young Danny Glick’s grave and opening the coffin lid. Danny’s eyes open, glowing with that same silvery gleam as Ralphie’s, and he pops up like a jack-in-the-box—one in need of major dental intervention.
Mike Ryerson, we hardly knew ya.
Ralphie Glick absolutely wins the “second most terrifying vampire in this story” award. He would have taken first, but let’s face it, no one can top Barlow for inspiring sheer horror. Ralphie is a close second, though, because the idea of a child vampire is absolutely chilling, especially to another kid.
Especially to a kid who was about Ralphie’s age when Ralphie was turned.
King took his shot and knew exactly where to strike. Some of his most memorable horror revolves around children attacked by or confronting monsters.
Let me back up.
In the series, writer Ben Mears moves back to ‘Salem’s Lot, intent on writing a book about the old Marsten house up on the hill. He wants to rent or buy the house, but someone else has beaten him to the punch. Mr. Straker has moved to town and set up an antique shop with his absent partner, Mr. Barlow. No one’s met Barlow yet, but Mr. Straker assures us that we’ll all enjoy Mr. Barlow, and Barlow will certainly enjoy us. Cue the scary soundtrack. Possibly the scary soundtrack is only in my head, and it sounds a lot like dun-duhn-DUUUN!
Ben has always believed the Marsten house itself is evil, and that as such, it attracts evil people. His most terrifying memory is seeing an apparition in the house when, as a child, he went inside on a dare. The memory has never left him.
I know how you feel, Ben, because my mom let me watch goddamn Salem’s Lot when I was eight years old, and buddy, you aren’t the only one with an indelible, horrifying memory. The lasting impression has come in the form of nightmares. After watching, I had nightmares about vampires for a full year. The worst of the nightmares came on the night when part two concluded, when I dreamed my mom turned into a vampire—just like poor Danny Glick’s mom—and came after me. In my fevered brain, my mom leaned over my bed. She was baring her fangs, ready to drain me dry.
Eight-year-old me got so worked up about vampires I started checking behind doors when I entered rooms to make sure nothing lurked, waiting to turn me into a vampire like Ralphie Glick. It didn’t matter if the sun was blazing outside at noon. Another habit I picked up and carried for years in childhood: I wouldn’t look out of windows at night. I would pull the blinds down with my eyes closed. Those creatures were out there, ready to turn us all undead. Thanks, Mom! Thanks, Mr. King!
I’ve had a lot of years to wonder why my mom let me watch this show, and the only answer I have, aside from “Gen X’s parents were kind of lax about some stuff,” is this: She didn’t want to watch it alone because, hey, vampires are scary.
And vampires fascinate us. There are all kinds of psychological factors at play, but I’ll keep it simple. We’ve been vibing on these guys since the Dracula days. Our vampires come in a variety of flavors: the monstrous, like Dracula and Barlow; the seductive, like Lestat; the badass, like Blade and Selene of Underworld; the wannabe-good-boy love interest, like Angel or Vampire Bill; and even the glittery and glib, like those in Twilight and Vampire Diaries.
We love our vamps.
For me, the most terrifying vampires are the ones like the TV version of Barlow, his skin blue with the chill of death, his mouth full of razor sharp fangs. When I saw 30 Days of Night, the feral vamps put me in mind of Barlow, and that was enough to bump them to my number two slot of “scariest vampires in media.” The Salvatore brothers have nothing on miniseries-Barlow and the 30 Days of Night vamps. These are mindless killing machines, ready to chew you up and spit you out without a second thought. And if you’re really unlucky, they’ll add you to their collective so you, too, can become a rabid vampire, hunting like a wild dog in a cursed pack.
It’s powerfully frightening to think about that loss of control—that loss of choice. Of being helpless and at the mercy of a creature who is determined to satisfy its own desires at the cost of your life. Or worse, becoming one of them, driven solely by bloodlust. Nothing that made you human remains except for the husk of the body you still inhabit.
As an eight year-old, I couldn’t verbalize that idea. I couldn’t formulate the thought: Wow, life can be scary for a kid. Our innocence may be so easily and casually stolen. Some man could pop up in the woods, snatch us up, and carry us off to his secret lair—a snack. And now everything we were and everything we could have been is gone, replaced by bloodlust and death.
Not only that, our new cravings would drive us to seek and destroy the ones we loved when we were living beings.
Monsters make monsters, and they start with the children first, the most vulnerable among us.
Total nightmare fuel.
You’d think after suffering through nightmares of vampires, their questionable fashion choices, and yes, somewhat cheesy acting (I’m looking at you, David Soul), and the special effects of 1979 Salem’s Lot, I would have stayed away from horror as a genre. Nope. Not me. I’m a glutton for punishment. When I was twelve, I dove into Stephen King’s books. Reading ’Salem’s Lot set off a fresh round of vampire nightmares, and turned into a lifelong love of King’s stories.
The genre I primarily write is romance, but periodically my writing takes a fun little side trip into horror. It’s a place I can’t help but visit from time to time, even if I don’t stay for long. Horror allows me to explore the dark corners of the world—and my own mind—from the safety of my office.
It feels like a worthy goal to hope that one day I might inspire someone else’s nightmares.
Note: I am pretty sure the majority of the special effects budget went into creating Barlow, so don’t expect great quality from this made-for-TV series. It does have some solid jump scares, and Barlow is a pretty awesome monster for network TV.
When Mallory Glass is not engaged in vicarious angst over the antics of fictional characters, she digests too much media and suffers the antics of her hostile pet rabbit.
She recently released her fourth book, Stone Shadows, in June 2026. Her short story “Wade vs. Roe” was published in Dread Mondays.
She lives in the Twin Cities, MN. Find her at https://malloryglass.com/
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