A New England Folklore: The Haunting Figures of Shirley Jackson’s Daemon Lover
and Stephen King’s Man in Black

By Amy Coles

Amy Coles received her PhD in English Literature from the University of Buckingham in 2024. Her interests include Gothic, horror, and science fiction of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as well as global mythologies and folklore. She has published chapters in Critical Insights: Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (Salem Press) and Entering the Multiverse (Routledge) and has an upcoming chapter focusing on the neo-governess in the Apple TV+ Series Servant for Maternal Fears (Demeter Press). Her first monograph titled The Eight Archetypes of the Double in Literature and Culture (Lexington) is set to release in 2026.

The gothic roots of New England date back to Nathaniel Hawthorne, and over time have been developed by authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, and Stephen King to create a deeply haunting location which remains a common setting for today’s most popular horror literature. Beyond this, Faye Ringel has dated the folklore of New England further back to the 1600s and Cotton Mather, who she suggests “may be called America’s first writer of folkloric horror” (“New England Gothic” 140). Much of this history is lesser known to non-New England natives, but heavily influences the writers of its gothic tradition. Furthermore, Lovecraft’s contributions to the New England Gothic included the creation of an entirely new folklore with Mythos, in which he built complex worlds featuring Cthulhu. This folklore is not solely a creation of a single author, but contains the works of many famous writers of horror and weird fiction, including Stephen King; in fact, Ringel suggests that it is Lovecraft who “began a procession that shows no sign of ending today” (New England’s Gothic 197), creating an everlasting fictional New England which seems to have more resonance upon the readers of today than the true location. Thus, she notes, “King and a new generation of horror writers have been inspired by Lovecraft’s use of New England history and folklore” (New England’s Gothic 198). By developing such a rich gothic and folkloric history for the region, authors of the New England gothic have recreated a European sense of antiquity in an American setting . The “New World” was ripe for a creation of neo-folklore; we can see such folklores created through the writings of Jackson and King, and their recurring characters of the Daemon Lover and the Man in Black respectively. Yet, as this article will examine, these folkloric characters are updated from their Puritanical origins to provide demonic figures for the Cold War era and beyond, ones who insidiously lurk in the shadows of the text, covertly disguised and requiring devoted reading for discovery. 

Jackson’s folkloric character, the Daemon Lover, stems from the ballad of the nineteenth century collected by Francis James Child in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads – a passage of which is included at the end of The Lottery and Other Stories (1949). The story depicts a sailor who left his fiancée to go to sea, only to return years later to find her married with children. After convincing the woman to leave her family and join him at sea, she learns that he is a demon leading her to Hell. By relocating the character to America – often New York, sometimes New England – Jackson exemplifies the influence of English tradition upon the gothic tales of America; we can begin to understand, then, the popularity of New England Gothic which drew a readership of those already familiar with European gothic traditions. Thus, Erica Kvistad refers to the "Demon Lover theme" as a “well-established folkloric structure” (61), which draws influence from folklores across the world.

We can also consider local folklores of New England as influential upon the imaginations of Jackson and King. The tale of the Black Man seems particularly pertinent for these two authors. Ringel tells us that “the earliest English settlers of New England feared a Black Man in the forests. Whether visualized as an Indian, an African, or a specter or Satan, this figure haunts the history and literature of the region” (Gothic Literature and History 5); this folk story tells of a man dressed entirely in black, who unsurprisingly represents death. The Black Man epitomizes the recurring New England “belief in a devil who delighted in tempting good Puritans” (Ringel, “New England Gothic” 140), a theme which we can see reworked through both the characters of the Daemon Lover and the Man in Black. Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” (1835) is inspired by this tale, introducing the character into the gothic literary heritage of New England (Ringel, Gothic Literature and History 5). Though Ringel refers to Jackson as “the greatest stylist of New England Gothic,” she claims that Jackson “did not draw explicitly upon local folklore” (New England’s Gothic 210). Yet, in the epigraph to Section III within the collection, Jackson quotes from a passage of Joseph Glanvill’s Saducismus Triumphatus (1681) which specifically discusses the account of Margaret Jackson’s visit from a “black Man.” Glanvill’s book, which was published only a decade before the Salem witch trials, also influenced Cotton Mather. We can thus establish a common link between Jackson’s influence for her Daemon Lover and King’s own Man in Black, for which they both draw upon this New England Gothic tradition referenced in Glanvill.

For King, the influence of the Black Man upon his writings is very clear. His most direct homage is a short story published in The New Yorker, titled “The Man in the Black Suit” (1994), which sees an older man recount a haunting time in his childhood when he is visited by a tall, inhuman creature dressed in a black suit who can only be the embodiment of death. The similarities between the character of New England folklore and King’s own are blatant: he is a figure of death and destruction, almost always dressed in black. Ringel refers to King as “the exemplar of Gothic New England since the 1970s, continu[ing] the tradition of collecting and rewriting supernatural legends” (“New England Gothic” 139), later suggesting that “it took King’s stories and the films derived from them to make New England the locus of terror in the popular imaginary” (Gothic Literature and History 9). Both King and Jackson continue to develop these characters derived from the Black Man  throughout a number of their works, slowly contributing to their own folklore as they develop these characters into key players within the fictional universes they create.

Gustavo Vargas Cohen’s 2012 article suggests that there is an “experienced Jackson reader” (144) for whom Jackson’s recurring tropes, motifs, and character traits can be read as contributing to what Cohen refers to as the Shirley Jackson Lore, or SJL; however, while Cohen mentions the Daemon Lover as an aspect of this lore, he neglects to provide a detailed discussion of this recurring character. This article will thus build upon Cohen’s idea of an SJL to provide a more thorough analysis of the Daemon Lover’s place and purpose within it - indeed, he is at the very center of Jackson’s fiction, standing as the primary threat to her vulnerable and anxious protagonists. Likewise, King can be seen to be creating a similar lore, building fictional worlds in which characters reappear in multiple novels, with the Man in Black a constant figure of chaos. Both of these characters, then, develop on the Puritanical origins found in the Black Man, updating the figure into a demon of the Cold War era and beyond. No longer are they representative of a theological evil, but instead an insidious, political one, while still retaining the supernatural elements of their folkloric origins.

This recurrence of characters within the works of Jackson and King develops a folklore both inside and out of the novels; the characters themselves know of these figures and tell their own stories and legends to contribute to this lore building, which in turn is further developed by the readers of these novels, who use this lore to seek out these characters as they create theories of where these figures may have appeared. In doing so, Jackson, King, and their devoted readership work together to build a neo-folklore, harking back to the New England traditions created by writers such as Lovecraft to develop myths and legends for a new era. 

Shirley Jackson’s Daemon Lover
Jackson’s most complete exploration of the Daemon Lover is in her collection of short stories, The Lottery, alternatively titled The Adventures of James Harris. Throughout the stories, James Harris is sometimes absent, often referred to in passing, in places causing havoc, in others a seemingly innocent character. He is a lawyer, a bookseller, a writer, a scholar, a husband – sometimes even a witch, but always the Daemon Lover. Jackson intentionally makes him easy to spot: he is usually in a blue suit, and if not then he must be very tall; he will typically be called James, or perhaps Jimmy, but almost always Harris. What’s noticeable throughout the collection is that, in the moments that he appears – and those may be only very slight – he stands out. Jackson draws our attention to him again and again, and these moments become more jarring when they are just made in passing: in “The Intoxicated,” the protagonist notes that the hostess of a party is “deep in earnest conversation with a tall, graceful man in a blue suit” (8), but the story finishes before anything more is made of it; in “Of Course” he is the unseen, and highly demanding, husband whose influence weighs heavily upon the text in spite of his absence. His very absence is what makes him such a pervasive threat; he wanders through the stories, often lurking within the background, sometimes even behind the scenes, but for fans of Jackson – and even perhaps Jackson herself – he is always there.
In the guise of an old man travelling by train in “The Witch” – though still wearing that blue suit – he terrifies a young boy by recalling gory details of killing his sister, having “pinched her and […] pinched her until she was dead” (66). “Dorothy and My Grandmother and the Sailors” seems an allusion to the ballad which so heavily inspired Jackson’s folkloric character, with the two young girls of the story becoming increasingly frightened by sailors under the influence of one of the girl’s worrisome mother and grandmother. The inclusion of the sailors and the growing disquiet which builds throughout read as vibrant red flags warning readers simply of the possibility that Harris might appear – though he never does.

Harris is not always seeking to incite distress or destruction. In “Seven Types of Ambiguity,” he is simply a special editions bookseller who sells a book to a greedy and vacuous customer rather than the eighteen-year-old boy who hoped to one day save enough to buy the copy himself. In “Elizabeth,” as Jim Harris he is almost a positive force. Jim is a writer previously signed by the agency, whose newfound success encourages Elizabeth to leave her failing firm and join him instead. The story itself seems an addition to what Ruth Franklin referred to as Jackson’s “trilogy” (255): “Pillar of Salt,” “The Daemon Lover,” and “The Tooth.” That “Elizabeth” is another tale set in New York depicting a James Harris who, as we will come to see in “The Tooth,” is obsessed with “sunlight, a warm garden, green lawns…” (191) suggests this story sits somewhere between “The Daemon Lover” and “The Tooth,” building upon Harris’s adventures in New York City. 

Kvistad explains the ambivalent morality of the Daemon Lover figure, suggesting that “Harris himself is a nebulous, almost absent figure,” and “while he does seem to have some kind of supernatural power, it is never quite clear how much agency he is exercising over the heroines’ fates” (53). Harris, then, almost appears as a kind of succubus, manifesting at moments of chaos to feed his desire for destruction, before disappearing and wandering off into the next story. The focus will now turn to three stories – “The Daemon Lover,” “The Tooth,” and “Like Mother Used to Make” – which will seek to demonstrate Harris as a folkloric trickster, intent not on doing good or evil but merely entertaining himself. 

In “The Daemon Lover,” the unnamed female protagonist awakes on what she believes will be her wedding day, waiting for her fiancé, Jamie Harris, to arrive at her apartment. Growing increasingly more distressed, exacerbated by an overreliance on coffee and cigarettes, the fiancée leaves her apartment to search for Jamie, though does not know where he lives. Finally, after gaining the assistance of a young boy who directs her to a seemingly uninhabited apartment building; on the top floor she knocks on one of two doors (the other leading into an unlocked and empty apartment) and hears “low voices and sometimes laughter” (Jackson 28), convinced one of the two members is her fiancé, Jamie. She returns day after day, each time knocking at the door which never opens; her Daemon Lover has moved on, leaving the fiancée’s life upturned and in disarray. 

It is important to note the complete lack of Jamie’s physical presence within this story; we are not witnessing the act of destruction, but the damage left in his wake. Indeed, he has vanished from the story before it even begins. Cruel as his actions seem, they are not demonic; in comparison to the James Harris of the ballad with whom he shares his name, he does not drag the female protagonist to Hell, nor does he guise a demonic appearance to trick her. He simply is not there, and this is key to how Jackson’s early depictions of the character assist in forming him into a classic creature of folklore. She restrains from fully introducing him; he is a name made in passing, a vague glimpse of a man who is constantly just out of reach. As is true of rich folklore steeped in oral tradition, as stories continue to be told their elements warp and change, just as Harris shapeshifts throughout the collection. Yet, while readers of Jackson can return to this story, fully equipped for the James Harris hunt, reading “The Daemon Lover” for the first time, with no foreknowledge, introduces a character who, like the wind, blows through scarcely to be seen; his very power is in this absence, and it is those he leaves behind who continue his legend.

While the Daemon Lover appears to frequently prey upon the vulnerable female protagonists of Jackson’s stories, it is the vulnerable male protagonist in “Like Mother Used to Make” who suffers at the hand of James Harris. Here, Jackson introduces David Turner, a quiet and highly organized individual who prides himself on his well-decorated apartment. His neighbor, on the other hand, is messy, unorganized, and frequently out of the house. As such, David is tasked with keeping a key for her apartment in order to let in workmen, and often invites her for dinner. On this particular evening, David is once again hosting Marcia when Mr. Harris, her boss, arrives; however, rather than introducing David as the host, Marcia pretends the apartment is her own, taking credit for the cherry pie made by David and berating him when he begins to wash the dishes. As Mr. Harris and Marcia make themselves at home on David’s sofa, David leaves and finds himself alone in Marcia’s dirty apartment, unable to demand his unwanted guests leave.

Harris plays a small but important role. Prior to his presence, the evening continues as readers can assume is typical, with Marcia arriving late for her dinner with David but nevertheless suitably appreciative. It is only upon the arrival of Mr. Harris that the evening takes its abnormal turn, yet he takes no direct action upon these events. To a reader unfamiliar with this recurring folkloric character, he could appear as an innocent bystander to Marcia’s usurpation of David’s space, naïvely believing Marcia to be the true owner of the apartment and treating her as any polite guest would. However, reading the story with the familiarity of the Daemon Lover’s abilities, his mere presence creates chaos. As such, this story furthers Harris, or the Daemon Lover, into Jackson’s neo-folkloric trickster role; he is not provoking evil, but rather the chaos and  destruction he finds entertaining. This trickster role brings forth once more Jackson’s creation of a folkloric demon for the Cold War era. While Darryl Hattenhauer argues that the Daemon Lover encapsulates Jackson’s “recurrent theme […] of the true evil of […] the male love object in particular” (39), it is evident here that he is not so strict in his victims; Harris is an agent of chaos, and his drive is in playing with people’s lives for the sheer fun of  it. The lack of any particular gendered victim, then, further strengthens the Daemon Lover as a representation of Cold War anxieties; an undercover agent from a faraway land whose intentions remain mysterious but unsettling.

James Harris plays a similar role in “The Tooth,” this time going by the name Jim. Clara, a married woman with toothache, travels to New York by bus in a drug-addled state to visit a dentist. She travels alone, aware vaguely of a strange, tall man in a blue suit named Jim who suddenly appears by her side in an all-night restaurant. In the moments that Clara wakes, she often hears Jim describing a seemingly otherworldly place, where “the stars are as big as the moon and the moon is as big as a lake” (Jackson 271). When Clara arrives in New York, she leaves Jim for her dentist appointment, eventually having her tooth pulled by a strange dentist in a clinical and unwelcoming space. Following the procedure, Clara is unable to fully recognize herself in the mirror, and after changing her appearance to one that she prefers, she exits the building to find Jim returned once more; the two walk off together, hand in hand, as Clara imagines herself running “barefoot through hot sand” (286). 

Scholarly attention on the story has already focused on Clara’s failing marriage and the symbolism of the tooth and its extraction, but shifting focus to Harris’s role we can see that Jim’s arrival initiates Clara’s awakening to herself. In leaving to join Jim’s imaginary world – which, indeed, reads as a sort of dream land, as though Jim is only present in Clara’s semi-conscious state – Clara abandons her life of domesticity for one of liberation – and seemingly madness. What Jackson is depicting then is not a woman running from an abusive or neglectful husband, but rather a housewife longing for freedoms outside her domestic role – as is consistent with many of the female protagonists in Cohen’s SJL. This story, then, provides a more complex reading of the Daemon Lover, in which his goal as a trickster is to entertain himself, but may lead characters to a more positive future rather than despair. Understanding James Harris’s folkloric origins, we see patterns building beyond his appearance: his adventures primarily lead him towards vulnerable women – or men whose life will be disrupted by his presence, but not always negatively . 

Although Jackson’s original intention for the title of the collection included The Adventures of James Harris, new editions are simply titled The Lottery and Other Stories, capitalizing on the popularity of Jackson’s most famed short story (for which the original collection was likewise named). However, the loss of the alternate title only succeeds in creating James Harris, as the Daemon Lover, into more of an elusive figure, one who vanishes as quickly as he appears. Moreover, his link to the collection is one which only becomes knowable to those who are both avid readers and fans of Jackson, and who will be more intent to seek him out. Without the alternative title, the connection to James Harris is at risk of being lost, yet it is through such fans that his vanishing link remains, strengthened by a new oral tradition of fan theory to ensure that Jackson’s neo-folklore lives on.

Kvistad notes that “not every story with Demon Lover themes mentions James Harris (this is particularly a tendency for stories published outside The Lottery)” (50), yet avid readers of Jackson recognize the clues to finding the hidden man. We can find allusions to James Harris in Jackson’s novels through the “Demon Lover themes” seen in Charles Blackwood in We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962), Luke in The Haunting of Hill House (1959), and a plethora of masculine figures in Hangsaman (1951). There is further suggestion to include the female Tony amongst the demon lover figures depicted in Hangsaman, who, in spite of her female appearance, is also placed into a more “masculine” role in the relationship, leading Natalie astray and ultimately attempting to replicate the original scene in the woods with an unknown male demonic figure. By including Tony, a young woman, as one of many demon lover figures, we can further read the Daemon Lover as a shapeshifting trickster, insidiously concealing their gender to further disrupt the lives of women. Moreover, this feminizing of a demon lover figure recalls the reversal of a male victim in “Like Mother Used to Make.” Jackson’s Demon Lover is not restricted to any one gender, and neither are the victims; instead, the Demon Lover covertly disguises themselves and their intentions, and no one is safe.  This shifting of gender within Jackson’s stories is particularly significant when considering the frequency of which Jackson is read through a feminist lens; while there is clearly merit in such readings, the fluidity of gender through which Jackson presents her most notorious villain suggests that neither the vulnerability of the victims nor the antagonism of the Daemon Lover are gendered traits. Instead, she exposes the ease with which naïve characters can be preyed upon by those who use trickery to gain their trust.

Further allusions to the Daemon Lover can be found in Jackson’s posthumous collection Just An Ordinary Day (1996), there are references to a man in a blue suit in the story “Nightmare,” and the name Harris appears again in “The Very Strange House Next Door,” first published in 1959 as “Strangers in Town.” While this search for James Harris can border on the obsessive, it is evident that Jackson was reusing, repurposing, or reintroducing a character who she could not leave behind. Whether there are a number of Daemon Lovers, or it is always the same shapeshifting James Harris, Jackson found within her neo-folkloric character a man who symbolized her worst fears surrounding womanhood within a patriarchal society, and yet also offers an escape from it. He is a character rooted in the English, Scottish, and New England folklores, made contemporary for the Cold War era but continuously evading capture. And yet, against all of his folkloric traditions, Jackson’s stories are the one place he will never leave.

Stephen King’s Man in Black
Just as the Daemon Lover has specific names and characteristics which contribute to his folklore, signaling his appearance even if only alluded to by the author, so too does King’s contribution to this New England neo-folklore, the Man in Black. He goes by many other names, most of which feature in The Dark Tower series (1982–2012): Walter O’Dim (or other iterations of Walter), Marten Broadcloak, Randall Flagg (and a range of names with the initials R. F.), Walkin’ Dude. However, he is frequently revealed by his costume, which is typically, and unsurprisingly, black. Like Jackson’s Daemon Lover, then, “Flagg is a master of disguise with his collection of masks and elusive identity” (Strengell 141), once more highlighting the insidious mutability of a demon created for the Cold War era and beyond, and King similarly provides his readers with a number of clues which fans can hunt through his novels to find. One of the key similarities between the Daemon Lover and the Man in Black is their propensity to wander through stories and worlds; in The Dark Tower series, there are infinite doors to other worlds through which the Man in Black travels, each of which connects the entirety of King’s oeuvre to create what Tony Magistrale refers to as “a multi-layered universe in which multiple worlds co-exist” (151) and characters all interlink. William Proctor’s 2018 chapter on King’s trans-worldbuilding examines “the transfictional bridges between several of King’s novels that subsume purportedly isolated texts into a unified narrative terrain” (104), what I argue is King’s own interpretation of Lovecraft’s folkloric New England (though it stretches much further beyond this small group of states). If it is the Dark Tower which holds King’s multiverse together, then the Man in Black is this multiverse’s trickster figure, wandering in and out of worlds much in the manner of James Harris’s adventures. 

The Man in Black’s first feature within a novel is in The Stand (1978), before entering the world of The Dark Tower series, and other related texts such as The Eyes of the Dragon (1984). As is true of avid Jackson readers, the legend of the Man in Black is upheld by fans of King who have taken the time to study his lore and use it to create new theories of which characters he may be using to conceal his true identity. However, King’s fans have additional guides that do not exist for Jackson readers (for now);   encyclopedias of his works and Robin Furth’s concordance for The Dark Tower series provide readers the tools they need to educate themselves on King’s ever-growing folklore, and the Man in Black’s place within it.

Although the abilities of Jackson’s Daemon Lover are never clarified, and readers are left to debate the possibility of supernatural, or maybe only preternatural, powers, King makes clear that the Man in Black is a sorcerer, and these powers are a large part of his similar trickster role. While he is primarily the nemesis of gunslinger Roland Deschain, he makes further enemies within the novels he inhabits, including Mother Abagail in The Stand. Yet, it is important to note that even in The Dark Tower series, the Man in Black is not the primary villain but rather his “evil agent” (Furth 312), as the cruel creature destroying the world of The Dark Tower is the Crimson King. In this way, King further positions the Man in Black into a trickster role, once more contemporizing the folkloric character to highlight Cold War anxieties; while he causes chaos and destruction, he is not an all-powerful villain. Moreover, as Conny Lippert makes clear, “the Trickster is amoral and does not know good or evil, he unintentionally effects both” (48). As a trickster, he is morally ambiguous; like the Daemon Lover, his greatest urge is to entertain himself.

King’s longest novel, The Stand, depicts a world destroyed by an apocalyptic superflu, with the few remaining survivors pitted against each other in a ferocious battle of good against evil. At the very heart of this chaos is King’s Man in Black, here known primarily as Randall Flagg, who uses this pandemic to create his own band of evil agents, seemingly becoming the ultimate demonic force. He is first introduced in the twenty-third chapter of the novel, as a “tall man of no age in faded, pegged jeans and a denim jacket” (King 219), with a “dark and grinning face at an oblique angle” (221); this description alone will quickly conjure similarities with the Daemon Lover for avid readers of Jackson. While The Dark Tower series ultimately reveals a greater villain in the Crimson King, for readers encountering the Man in Black for the first time he almost appears as Satan himself. Not only does he appear a sort of catalyst for the apocalypse, arriving at the moment of the outbreak of disease, he wages war against God, represented in this novel through the holy vessel of Mother Abagail. Yet, James Egan’s description of the Man in Black in The Stand is pertinent: “he is a shape-shifter, the demonic trickster of apocalyptic lore, who can become a faceless man, a crow, or a disembodied force which roams the landscape” (219–220). Particularly important is Egan’s use of the terms shapeshifter and demonic trickster, for here he is both; like the Daemon Lover, the Man in Black constantly changes identities in order to remain elusive, only here he is not merely an agent of chaos, but also of death. 

However, as Heidi Strengell notes, though the Man in Black’s actions are observably evil within The Stand, his acts also pave the way for pure good to occur (149). Those tempted by the Man in Black’s evil to join him in Nevada are directly opposed by Mother Abagail’s team of good, a group that would not occur without the events of the novel. While he enjoys this battle, he does not use his powers to brainwash the entire world into becoming his evil followers, nor does he destroy the world. Rather, he indulges in his vices alongside his band of sinners, entertaining himself with the chaos very much in the way of Jackson’s own trickster figure. In this way, then, we can compare both Jackson and King’s characters as harbingers of chaos, trickster figures who enjoy destruction as entertainment but are not ultimate forces of evil.

King’s self-proclaimed magnum opus, The Dark Tower series, tells the story of gunslinger Roland Deschain, whose quest is to find the Dark Tower, a mysterious object which appears to hold every universe. Throughout this quest, the Man in Black – here primarily known as Walter – plagues Roland as his primary nemesis, although he is not ever-present. However, for those who had previously read The Stand and connected the pair by the second novel, The Drawing of the Three (1987), The Dark Tower series holds the same connotations for being touchstone texts involving the Man in Black as The Lottery does for James Harris. Likewise, neither title needs to include the name of the folkloric character; the avid readers who are keen to investigate the origins of this lore know where to look. As such, even when the Man in Black does not feature within the series, readers are waiting, and actively searching, for the moment that he will. Like James Harris, the Man in Black’s power is strongest when he is not physically present, and only briefly glimpsed in a passing mention or flick of a black cape; because they are so frequently absent, and because of their propensity to wander, readers are always on the edge of their seat waiting for them to appear once more. 

With his many aliases and false identities, the Man in Black is perhaps more of a trickster figure than even the Daemon Lover, as King further writes into Cold War anxieties; he quite clearly revels in his ability to disguise himself and confuse his victims, meddling in their lives with a maniacal glee. We meet him first in The Gunslinger (1982) under the guise of Walter O’Dim, who as of yet is not revealed to be the Man in Black from The Stand. Yet, the first novel also makes much of Roland’s childhood nemesis, Marten Broadcloak, who too is revealed to be the Man in Black later in the series. In The Waste Lands (1991), the Man in Black makes a brief appearance as Richard Fannin--those following King’s lore will recognize the initials R. F. as a key signifier of the Man in Black’s identity. Wizard and Glass (1997) sees the Man in Black adopt the alias of the Green Kin, borrowing an identity from The Wizard of Oz as he takes the form of another fictional (albeit false) sorcerer. In the seventh novel of the series, The Dark Tower (2004), it is revealed that the Man in Black’s true identity is Walter Padick; however, his folkloric name holds a legacy his original cannot, and as such he is known more commonly as the Man in Black. Even his alternate alias Randall Flagg is more well known than Walter Padick; this name remains a piece of lore preserved for King’s avid readers, who can use this to query the real identity of other Walters across King’s universes. 

This plethora of identities simultaneously enforces the Man in Black as an unnerving and elusive creature of folklore as well as a demon for its time, representing the paranoia of insidious invasion. Yet, the continued inclusion of the supernatural and the shadow of evil which remains ever-present further encourages readers in their quest to seek him out; much in the way that Jackson succeeds in creating a figure who plagues both writer and reader with a desire to place him within every story, King offers a multitude of aliases and disguises which set readers on a hunt for the Man in Black. Yet, while readers of Jackson can only speculate on a shared universe, the worlds of King’s novels are all connected by the Dark Tower, and thus Robin Furth notes that, by “changing both his name and his face, Walter can travel through time and between worlds, spreading destruction and disaster like plague or poison” (31). This creation of a literary multiverse further updates the originating Black Man into a new demon of his time, creating a folkloric character who is not just present in one world, but all of the universes created by King. By confirming such a multiverse, King strongly asserts that the Man in Black is littered throughout his novels as a demon of many worlds, ensuring that readers are given the green light to set forth on their own quest for the Man in Black. While the same appears to be true for Jackson, readers do not have this outright confirmation that her stories are connected by a shared universe, and as such must hunt for Harris with more caution.

The Dark Tower series begins and ends with the line “the man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed” (King, Gunslinger 3; The Dark Tower 672), proving the story to be infinitely cyclical and mimicking the oral tradition of a folk tale told over and over throughout generations; for the reader, too, they continue on this journey with the gunslinger, following the Man in Black through the desert and beyond into any and every of King’s novels, hoping to find him tucked away in some hidden corner of this fictional world. 
	
A New England Folklore
Although neither the Daemon Lover nor the Man in Black are exclusively located in New England, the authors’ own locale of New England, and its consistent use as the setting of many of their works, indelibly connects these two characters with the New England folklore of their authors’ making. Their connection as nomads allows them to traverse across America, but no matter where their journeys lead them, they are inextricably connected with New England, the dark and twisted place which these creatures call home.   The two appear as a form of the trickster, and according to Lippert, “the trickster figure is often intrinsically linked to spatial as well as ideological liminality, and evokes the image of a messenger who moves between pre-established poles” (49); we can see this to be true of both Jackson and King’s trickster figures, who move easily through each story the authors create, often leaving destruction in their wake for their own twisted entertainment.

The primary similarity between the Daemon Lover and the Man in Black is in their shared ability to evade detection – they often shapeshift or appear only in name, but rarely physically manifest. This constant discussion but lack of appearance makes them clear folklore characters, built both by the authors who write them and the readers who seek to know more. For the average reader, these figures may not seem to be folkloric and recurring; it requires a deeper knowledge of the Shirley Jackson lore – or Stephen King Lore – to fully comprehend how the characters wander in and out of stories, their presence palpable even in those they do not inhabit. The avid readers’ subsequent search for hints of the character thus furthers their folkloric role, as fan theory paves the way for superstition akin to the oral tradition. Although this article has named some of the better-known instances of these folkloric characters appearances, the sheer volume of writings published by both authors suggests that there are occurrences still to be found.
While not exclusively New England characters, the authors’ works contribute to an ever-growing New England Gothic tradition, one which Ringel notes stretches far beyond the popular contemporary authorship to include a plethora of New England writers, each building upon the lore of the last (“New England Gothic” 142). Joseph A Citro claims that “New England Gothicists can be credited with formulating an American sense of the supernatural. They brought New England wonders to the whole world” (11). In many ways, then, we can see New England Gothic literature as its own unique form of neo-folklore, bringing these stories to audiences on a much larger scale through the mode of writing rather than oral tradition; the oral tradition follows, of course, as readers themselves share their thoughts and theories on these fictional horrors, developing an ever-growing lore recognized around the world. Yet, while the avid readership of both Jackson and King encourages fan theory, so too does it inspire those fans who are also authors to write their own interpretations of these folkloric characters. Carmen Maria Machado, who often cites Jackson as an influence and is also a recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award, includes a tall man dressed in a blue suit in her short story “Blur,” which in itself reads as an homage to Jackson’s “Tooth.” Likewise, a new collection inspired by King’s The Stand is due to be published in August 2025; titled The End of the World as We Know It, the collection will contain stories written by over thirty authors, all of whom have been inspired by King’s apocalyptic tale and the folkloric trickster figure within it. The collection itself is reminiscent of the multi-authored works contributing to Lovecraft’s Mythos, and speaks to the ever-increasing proliferation of these figures, while always returning to the neo-folkloric masters who created them. 

By providing two characters which seep into the very worlds which they are writing, Jackson and King contribute to this neo-folklore, passed down from Lovecraft and through generations, which provides New England with a haunting literary past, but which Jackson and King update for the Cold War era and beyond . Through their combined development of Puritan ideologies of evil, expanding particularly on the writings of Cotton Mather, as well as Jackson’s own disruption of American midcentury domesticity, these two authors update this neo-folklore that is specifically rooted in the historical anxieties of New England. These lores which they painstakingly craft through their writing lives on through their dedicated readership, with fan sites, books, and articles all contributing to this ever-growing folklore which places the Daemon Lover and the Man in Black as figures of legend. While they may shift form through each novel, and even under new authorship, they demonstrate an enduring figure of this New England neo-folklore which continues to grow in popularity today. Those who know will always be searching for the man in blue or the man in black, because somewhere these elusive figures are wandering, leaving a wake of destruction as they head towards their next adventure in chaos.

Works Cited
Behrens, Susan J. “The Essential Self of Natalie Waite in Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson.” Names: A Journal of Onomastics, vol. 69, no. 1, 2021, pp. 2–9.

Citro, Joseph A. Passing Strange: True Tales of New England Hauntings and Horrors. Houghton Mifflin, 1997.

Cohen, Gustavo Vargas. “Shirley Jackson’s Fictional Cosmos and the Quest for Crypto-Thematic Concurrences in The Daemon Lover.” Ciêncas & Letras, vol. 52, 2012, pp. 143–158.

Egan, James. “Apocalypticism in the Fiction of Stephen King.” Extrapolation, vol. 25, no. 3, 1984, pp. 214–227.

Franklin, Ruth. Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life. Liveright Publishing Corp., 2016.

Furth, Robin. Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Complete Concordance. Hodder & Stoughton, 2012.

Hattenhauer, Darryl. Shirley Jackson’s American Gothic. State University of New York Press, 2003.

Jackson, Shirley. Hangsaman. 1951. Penguin, 2013.

---. Just An Ordinary Day. 1996. Penguin, 2017.

---. The Haunting of Hill House. 1959. Penguin, 2009.

---. The Lottery and Other Stories. 1949. Penguin, 2009.

---. We Have Always Lived in the Castle. 1962. Penguin, 2009.

King, Stephen. Song of Susannah. 2004. Hodder & Stoughton, 2017.

---. The Dark Tower. 2004. Hodder & Stoughton, 2017.

---. The Drawing of the Three. 1987. Hodder & Stoughton, 2017.

---. The Eyes of the Dragon. 1984. Hodder & Stoughton, 2008.

---. The Gunslinger. 1982. Hodder & Stoughton, 2017.

---. The Stand. 1978. Hodder & Stoughton, 2011.

---. The Waste Lands. 1991. Hodder & Stoughton, 2017.

---. The Wind Through the Keyhole. 2012. Hodder & Stoughton, 2017.

---. Wizard and Glass. 1997. Hodder & Stoughton, 2017.

---. Wolves of the Calla. 2003. Hodder & Stoughton, 2017.

Kvistad, Erica. “Demon Lovers, Bluebeard’s Wives: Folkloric Intertexts and Horror in Shirley Jackson and Carmen Maria Machado.” Shirley Jackson’s Dark Tales: Reconsidering the Short Fiction, ed. by Joan Passey and Robert Lloyd, Bloomsbury, 2024, pp. 46–63.

Lippert, Conny. “The Walkin’ Dude: Randall Flagg in Stephen King’s Post-Apocalyptic Epic The Stand.” A Language Spoken in Tongues: Essays in the Transcultural Gothic, ed. Gord Barentsen, Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2012, pp. 45–58.

Magistrale, Tony. Stephen King: America’s Storyteller. Praeger, 2010.

Proctor, William. “Trans-Worldbuilding in the Stephen King Multiverse.” Global Convergence Cultures: Transmedia Earth, ed. by Matthew Freeman and William Proctor, Routledge, 2018, pp. 101–120.

Ringel, Faye. “New England Gothic.” A Companion to American Gothic, ed. by Charles L. Crow, Wiley, 2014, pp. 139–150.

---. New England’s Gothic Literature: History and Folklore of the Supernatural from the Seventeenth Through the Twentieth Centuries. Edwin Mellen Press, 1995.

---. The Gothic Literature and History of New England: Secrets of the Restless Dead. Anthem Press, 2022.

Strengell, Heidi. Dissecting Stephen King: From the Gothic to Literary Naturalism. U of Wisconsin P, 2005.