'Salem's Lot is a small New England town with white clapboard houses, tree-lined streets and solid church steeples. Of course there are tales of strange happenings - but no more than in any other such town.

Ben Mears has returned to the Lot to write a novel and exorcise the terrors that have haunted him since childhood - since the event he witnessed at the Marsten House.

He finds the house has been rented by a newcomer, a man who causes Ben some unease. And then things start to happen: a child disappears, a dog is brutally killed - nothing unusual, except the list keeps growing...