A feature film adaptation, written and directed by Gary Dauberman and starring Makenzie Leigh, Lewis Pulman, and Spencer Treat Clark, was released on Max in October 3, 2024.

He quickly becomes friends with high school teacher Matt Burke and starts a romantic relationship with Susan Norton, a young college graduate with ambitions of leaving town.

Ben returned to "the Lot" to write a book about the long-abandoned Marsten House, where he had a bad childhood experience when he saw a hanging ghost.

He learns that the house—the former home of Depression-era hitman Hubert "Hubie" Marsten—has been purchased by Kurt Barlow, ostensibly an Austrian immigrant who has arrived in the Lot to open an antique furniture store.

The duo's arrival coincides with the disappearance of a young boy, Ralphie Glick, and the death of his 12-year-old brother, Danny, who becomes the town's first vampire turned by Barlow.

To fight the spread of the new vampires, Ben and Susan are joined by Matt Burke and his doctor, Jimmy Cody, along with Mark and the local priest, Father Callahan.

Matt suffers a fatal heart attack, while Jimmy is killed when he falls from a rigged staircase and is impaled by knives set up by the vampires.

Ben returns the following day to retrieve and bury the bodies of Mark's parents and Jimmy Cody in a clearing behind the Petrie residence.

The novel's prologue, set shortly after the end of the story proper, describes Ben and Mark's flight across the country to a seaside town in Mexico, where they attempt to recover from their ordeal.

Knowing that there are too many hiding places for the vampires, Ben starts a brush fire in the nearby woods with the intent of destroying the town.

While teaching a course on fantasy and science fiction for students at Hampden Academy, King was inspired by Dracula, one of the books covered in the class.

(In the introduction to the 2004 audiobook recording that Stephen King read himself, he says it was he who said, "Probably he'd land in New York and be killed by a taxi cab, like Margaret Mitchell in Atlanta" and that it was his wife who suggested a rural setting for the book.

I thought it would make a good one, if I could create a fictional town with enough prosaic reality about it to offset the comic-book menace of a bunch of vampires."

That was also the period when we first learned of the Ellsberg break-in, the White House tapes, the connection between Gordon Liddy and the CIA, the news of enemies lists, and other fearful intelligence.

During the spring, summer and fall of 1973, it seemed that the Federal Government had been involved in so much subterfuge and so many covert operations that, like the bodies of the faceless wetbacks that Juan Corona was convicted of slaughtering in California, the horror would never end ... Every novel is to some extent an inadvertent psychological portrait of the novelist, and I think that the unspeakable obscenity in 'Salem's Lot has to do with my own disillusionment and consequent fear for the future.

[11] In an interview with the printed trade journal Fine Books & Collections, King said of the illustrated folio version of his 'Salem's Lot, "I think it's beautiful!

[13]Peter Straub recalls that "One day I wandered into a very good book store and saw Salem’s Lot on the main table.

"[14] Neil Gaiman recalls that "My first encounter with Stephen King, long before I met him in the flesh, was on East Croydon station in about 1975.

I stayed up late finishing Salem's Lot, loving the Dickensian portrait of a small American town destroyed by the arrival of a vampire.

In 2004, TNT premiered a new television adaptation of 'Salem's Lot, also a three-hour, two-part miniseries, starring Rob Lowe as Ben Mears.

[19] In 2018, the eighth episode of the Castle Rock TV series (centered around the fictional town created by King) entitled "Past Perfect" was aired, which briefly showed a present-day bus stop in Jerusalem's Lot.

A theatrical film adaptation of 'Salem's Lot, from New Line Cinema, was announced in April 2019, with Gary Dauberman set to write and direct, and James Wan attached to produce.

Lewis Pullman stars as Ben Mears,[23] while Spencer Treat Clark and Makenzie Leigh will co-star as Mike Ryerson and Susan Norton respectively.