Ben Mears, a writer who spent part of his childhood in Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, has returned in 1975 after 25 years to try to write his next novel. He quickly becomes friends with high-school teacher Matt Burke and strikes up a passionate romantic relationship with Susan Norton, a young college graduate with ambitions of leaving Jerusalem's Lot and heading to New York. Ben has returned to the town to write a book about the long-abandoned Marsten House, where he had a bad experience as a child where he saw a hanging ghost. Mears 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. Barlow is supposedly on an extended buying trip; only his business partner, Richard Straker, is seen in public. The truth, however, is that Barlow is an ancient vampire, and Straker is his human familiar.