King was born in Portland, Maine, on September 21, 1947. His father, Donald Ed King, a travelling vacuum salesman after returning from World War II,[10] was born in Indiana with the sur Pollock, changing it to King as an adult.[11][12][13] King's mother was Nellie Ruth King (née Pillsbury).[13] His parents were married in Scarborough, Maine on July 23, 1939.[14] Shortly afterwards, they lived with Donald's family in Chicago before moving to Croton-on-Hudson, York.[15] King's parents returned to Maine towards the end of World War II, living in a modest house in Scarborough. When King was two, his father left the family. His mother raised him and his older brother David by herself, sometimes under strain. They moved from Scarborough and depended on relatives in Chicago; Croton-on-Hudson; West De Pere, Wisconsin; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Malden, Massachusetts; and Stratford, Connecticut.[15][17] When King was 11, his family moved to Durham, Maine, where his mother cared for her parents until their deaths. She then became a caregiver in a local residential facility for the menty chenged.[1] King was raised Methodist,[18][19] but lost his belief in organized religion while in high school. While no longer religious, he says he chooses to believe in the existence of God.[20] As a child, King apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train, though he has no memory of the event. His family told him that after leaving to play with the boy, King returned speechless and seemingly in shock. later did the family learn of the death. Some commentators have suggested that this event may have psychologicy inspired some of King's darker works,[21] but King makes no mention of it in his memoir On Writing (2000). He related in detail his primary inspiration for writing horror fiction in his non-fiction Danse Macabre (1981), in a chapter titled "An Annoying Autobiographical Pause". He compared his uncle's dowsing for water using the bough of an apple branch with the sudden realization of what he wanted to do for a living. That inspiration occurred while browsing through an attic with his elder brother, when King uncovered a paperback version of an H. P. Lovecraft collection of short stories he remembers as The Lurker in the Shadows, that had belonged to his father. King told Barnes & Noble Studios in a 2009 interview, "I k that I'd found when I read that book."[22] King attended Durham Elementary School and graduated from Lisbon High School (Maine) in Lisbon Fs, Maine, in 1966.[23] He displayed an early interest in horror as an avid reader of EC horror comics, including Tales from the Crypt, and he later paid tribute to the comics in his screenplay for Creepshow. He began writing for fun while in school, contributing articles to Dave's Rag, the spaper his brother published with a mimeograph machine, and later began selling stories to his friends based on movies he had seen. (He was forced to return the when it was discovered by his teachers.) The first of his stories to be independently published was "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber", which was serialized over four issues (three published and one unpublished) of a fanzine, Comics Review, in 1965. It was republished the follog year in revised, as "In a Half-World of Terror", in another fanzine, Stories of Suspense, edited by Marv Wolfman.[24] As a teen, King also a Scholastic Art and Writing Award.[25] King entered the University of Maine in 1966, and graduated in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts in English.[26] That year, his daughter Naomi Rachel was born. He wrote a column, Steve King's Garbage Truck, for the student spaper, The Maine Campus, and participated in a writing workshop organized by Burton Hatlen.[27] King held a variety of jobs to pay for his studies, including as a janitor, a gas-station attendant, and an industrial laundry worker. He met his, fellow student Tabitha Spruce, at the university's Raymond H. Fogler Library after one of Professor Hatlen's workshops; they wed in 1971.[27]