In the 1970s, he studied film history at Columbia University, wrote short fiction and non-fiction, and worked as a movie script reader for Paramount Pictures.
He added "Eibon" to his name – a reference to Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborean wizard – so that when he used his initials in his byline, a la H. P. Lovecraft or M. R. James, they would spell out his nickname "Ted".
The story is notable for the insidious way in which the narrator's responses to the works he is reading (including those of Charles Robert Maturin, Ann Radcliffe, "Monk" Lewis, Sheridan Le Fanu, Bram Stoker, Aleister Crowley, and Shirley Jackson) are conflated with his impressions of the supernatural threat.
[5][6] In 1984 Klein published the novel The Ceremonies, which uses the same basic plot as the novella to more expansive ends; the threat this time is not to one man or one community, but to the entire world.
He has penned two critical essays on weird fiction: Dr Van Helsing's Handy Guide to Ghost Stories (1981), a series of articles for Twilight Zone magazine; and Raising Goosebumps for Fun and Profit (1988), originally written for Writer's Digest.
As a critic, Klein was influential in encouraging the early career of Ramsey Campbell via an extensive review of his work up to the time of Demons by Daylight which was published in Nyctalops magazine.
In 2019, the Hippocampus Press published a collection of Klein's various essays, articles, and op-ed pieces entitled Providence After Dark and Other Writings (edited by S. T. Joshi).