"Jerusalem's Lot" is a short story by American author Stephen King, first published in his 1978 collection *Night Shift*. It serves as a prequel to King's celebrated vampire novel *'Salem's Lot*, exploring the dark history of the abandoned town that gives both works their name. The story is presented as a series of letters and diary entries written in the 1850s by Charles Boone, who has inherited the ancestral Boone mansion, Chapelwaite, near the forsaken village of Jerusalem's Lot.
Upon moving into Chapelwaite with his manservant, Boone discovers a hidden family legacy of madness and occult worship. The mansion contains a mysterious, boarded-up chapel and a library filled with forbidden texts, including the dreaded *De Vermis Mysteriis*. As Boone investigates, he uncovers that his ancestors were part of a sinister cult that worshipped an ancient, worm-like entity dwelling beneath the abandoned church in Jerusalem's Lot, a being that demands blood sacrifice.
The story is a notable entry in King's Cthulhu Mythos fiction, deliberately echoing the cosmic horror style of H.P. Lovecraft. It incorporates classic Lovecraftian elements such as forbidden tomes, ancestral curses, and indescribable ancient evils lurking just beneath the surface of a seemingly ordinary New England landscape. The epistolary format adds a layer of period authenticity and mounting dread as Boone's sanity is tested by the horrors he uncovers.
"Jerusalem's Lot" has been praised for its effective pastiche of 19th-century Gothic and Lovecraftian horror, demonstrating King's versatility beyond his contemporary Maine settings. It remains a fan-favorite piece of short fiction, expanding the mythology of the *'Salem's Lot* universe while standing firmly on its own as a chilling tale of inherited evil and cosmic terror.
