Welcome to Bangor.

The streetside sign in central Maine invites visitors into the city, onto the pages of Stephen King’s books and into the imaginations of readers across the world.

It’s where King’s hometown of Bangor serves as a blueprint for the chilling fictional town of Derry. Each lurks within the shadows of the other and, in the eyes of some, peers out at times like a clown in a sewer drain.

That sewer — the most famous in the city, and perhaps the literary world — sits at the corner of Union and Jackson streets. It’s where King, while passing by on a morning walk, got the inspiration for his classic novel “It” – making it one of the many local landmarks he has used while transforming Bangor to Derry.

Doing so has allowed readers that go there through King’s words to familiari

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