Below is a list of all of the known uncollected short stories by Stephen King. ‘Uncollected’ here means not in any of King’s short story or novella collections. Any corrections or contributions, please e-mail to MaxDevore@hotmail.com
I’m not going to include those absolutely impossible things to get, like “People, Places and Things” which have never been legitimately published anywhere.
The Lost Works of Stephen King, by Steve Spignesi and Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished by Rocky Wood with David Rawsthorne & Norma Blackburn go into further detail about hard-to-find, obscure, and impossible-to-find stories and articles by SK.
- “Codename: Mousetrap,” The Drum, 1965 (Lisbon High School newspaper)
- “The 43rd Dream,” The Drum, January, 1966. (Lisbon High School newspaper). Reprinted in The Stephen King Illustrated Companion.
- “I Was a Teenage Grave Robber,” Comics Review, 1965. One installment reprinted in The Stephen King Illustrated Companion (1st edition only).
- “The Glass Floor”, Startling Mystery Stories, Fall of 1967. King’s first professional sale. Reprinted in the Fall 1990 issue of Weird Tales and in Cemetery Dance magazine, issue #68. Included with an intro by King in The Best of Cemetery Dance 2.
- “The Blue Air Compressor,” originally published in the University of Maine literary magazine Onan, 1971, but more popularly available in its Heavy Metal magazine appearance. The text was revised for this July 1981 reprinting. Also in Shivers in the Dark from Cemetery Dance Publications, 2016-17.
- “Weeds” (seen as “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” in Creepshow). Originally appeared in Cavalier in May of 1976. Later reprinted in Nugget magazine in April of 1979 and in Shivers VII in 2013.
- “Man with a Belly”, Cavalier, December 1978 and Gent, Nov/Dec 1979. Reprinted in Killer Crimes (2020).
- “Night of the Tiger”, Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1978. Reprinted later in More Tales of Unknown Horror (1979), The Year’s Best Horror Stories (1979), Chamber of Horrors (1984), and Midnight Under the Big Top (2020).
- “The Crate,” originally appeared in Gallery magazine in 1979 and later collected in The Arbor House Treasury of Horror and the Supernatural in 1981. King also wrote the introduction to that anthology. Reprinted in Shivers VI.
- “Before the Play”, Whispers, 1982. This is a lengthy introductory section which was cut from The Shining. An abridged version appeared in the April 6-May 2, 1997 issue of TV Guide.
- “Skybar,” a do-it-yourself story from 1982 with many authors contributing sections to the story. King’s part amounted to five paragraphs.
- “For the Birds” in Bred Any Good Rooks Lately?, 1986. King contributed a 1-page story which had to end with a pun.
- “The Reploids” — appeared with “Dedication” and “The Sneakers” in Night Visions V, 1988, along with some excellent stories by George R.R. Martin and Dan Simmons. The anthology was released in paperback under the title The Skin Trade. Subsequently reprinted in the British horror magazine Skeleton Crew, Volume 2 Issue 1 July 1990
- “The Revelations of ‘Becka Paulson” — first appeared in Rolling Stone magazine in the July 19/August 2, 1984 double issue. This one is an exception to the rule, as it HAS appeared in an SK collection, the Scream Press limited edition of Skeleton Crew and then was later extensively modified for a scene in The Tommyknockers. Also appears in the collection I Shudder at Your Touch. Adapted as an Outer Limits episode starring and directed by Steven Weber.
- “The Killer”, Famous Monsters of Filmland #202, Spring ’94
- “Jhonathan and the Witches”, from an anthology called First Words.
- “The Hotel at the End of the Road,” one of the stories from “People, Places, Things,” appearedinThe Market Guide for Young Writers, 5th ed. edited by Kathy Henderson.
- “General,” a screenplay for the third segment of the movie Cat’s Eye, is available in Screamplays, edited by Richard Chizmar.
- “The Old Dude’s Ticker,” a short story, appears in the NECON XX program book. Limited to a mere 333 copies, this is a hard one to find. The short story is co-authored by Edgar Alan Poe and is a retelling of The Telltale Heart. Written in the early 1970’s and rejected by Cavalier. Reprinted in The Big Book of NECON in 2008.
- “The Plant” — published in three installments by King’s own Philtrum Press and given out as Christmas gifts to friends. Very limited in numbers. Planned to be an epistolery novel, aborted when King decided it was getting to be too much like Little Shop of Horrors. Revived in 2000 as a serial eBook available at www.stephenking.com in monthly installments starting in July.
- “The Tale of Gray Dick,” a reworked excerpt from Wolves of the Calla. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, issue 10 and McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales. March 2003.
- “Lisey and the Madman,” McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, November 2004 and New Beginnings, spring 2005.
- “Memory,” Tin House, July 2006, a story that formed the opening section of Duma Key. Reprinted in Blaze (2006) and Detours (2014).
- “Throttle,” with Joe Hill, He Is Legend: Celebrating Richard Matheson, Gauntlet Press, Feb 2009. †
- “A Face in The Crowd” (with Stewart O’Nan), eBook/audio, August 21, 2012. Reprinted in Field of Fantasies: Baseball Stories of the Strange and Supernatural, edited by Rick Wilber, October 2014.
- “The Rock and Roll Dead Zone,” Hard Listening, June 2013.
- “In the Tall Grass” (with Joe Hill), Esquire. Part 1: June/July 2012; Part 2: August 2012. †
- “Cookie Jar,” Virginia Quarterly Review, Volume 92, No. 2, Spring 2016 (added to mass market paperback of The Bazaar of Bad Dreams)
- “The Music Room,” In Sunlight or In Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper, edited by Lawrence Block, December 2016. Also at Playboy magazine’s website and in their November 2016 issue.
- “Gwendy’s Button Box”, (with Rich Chizmar), Cemetery Dance Publications, May 2017.
- “Thin Scenery,” Ploughshares Vol 43 No. 2, September 2017.
- “Squad D,” Shivers VIII, Cemetery Dance Publications, 2019.
- “The Extra Hour,” Cemetery Dance #79, spring 2024
These stories will be included in You Like It Darker in 2024
- “Laurie,” Stephen King dot com, May 2018.
- The Turbulence Expert,” Flight or Fright, Cemetery Dance Publications, September 2018.
- “The Fifth Step,” Harper’s Magazine, March 2020.
- “On Slide Inn Road,” Esquire, October-November 2020.
- “Red Screen,” Humble Bundle, September 9-16, 2021
- “Willie the Weirdo,” McSweeney’s 66, June 2022 (First published in French as Willie Le Zinzin in Bifrost n° 104, October 2021)
- “Finn,” Scribd, May 25, 2022
† collected in Joe Hill’s 2019 short story collection Full Throttle.
