Indy Film Library

Some of the most morbid stories about Stephen King aren't in his books. When he was about 4, King went out to play with a friend near the railroad tracks. He came home alone, speechless and in shock. His family later learned that his friend had been hit and killed by a train. King has no memory of it. In the 1980s, he did so much cocaine that he wrote with cotton swabs stuck up his nose to stop the bleeding. He barely remembers writing some of his books, including the 1981 classic Cujo. Then, in 1999, while he was out for a walk in Maine, a distracted driver in a minivan hit him and threw him 14 feet into a ditch. Almost every bone on the right side of his body was broken. While King was in the hospital, his wife bought the van so nobody could sell pieces of it as souvenirs. King planned to smash it with a sledgehammer. The van ended up in a car crusher. The driver died a year later, on September 21, 2000. It was Stephen King's birthday.