The Science of Stephen King

Police cadaver dogs can detect the scent of human remains under one hundred feet of water and some can detect traces as small as a shard of bone or drop of blood.6

When it comes to determining blood types, there are four major groups determined by the presence or absence of two antigens, A and B, on the surface of red blood cells. There’s also a protein called the Rh factor, which can be either present (+) or absent (–), creating the eight most common blood types: A+, A-, B+, B-, O+, O-, AB+, and AB-. Knowing a suspect’s and victim’s blood types can quickly determine who was present at a crime scene.

Holly Gibney plays a major role in the investigation in the book The Outsider. Her character description on the Stephen King Wiki page states “Holly suffers from OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), synesthesia, sensory processing disorder, and she’s somewhere on the autism spectrum. Despite this, she’s very observant, refreshingly unfiltered, and unaware of her innocence.”8 Obsessive compulsive disorder is a condition in which people have uncontrollable, recurring thoughts or behaviors. It affects over two million people in the United States alone and can present itself with various symptoms. Some people who have OCD may have obsessive thoughts regarding germs, aggression, or having things be symmetrical. Others may have compulsions such as counting, repeatedly checking things, or excessively cleaning. Typically, OCD is treated with psychotherapy, medication, or a combination of the two.

What are the other conditions that Holly has? Synesthesia is a condition in which one sense is simultaneously perceived as if by one or more additional senses. Another form of synesthesia joins objects such as letters, shapes, numbers, or people’s names with a sensory perception such as smell, color, or flavor. The word synesthesia comes from two Greek words, syn (together) and aisthesis (perception). Therefore, synesthesia literally means “joined perception.”9 Synesthesia can involve any of the senses but most commonly occurs for people to “see” colors for letters or numbers. Because there are multiple sense combinations, there are over sixty subtypes of synesthesia that could exist.

Synesthetes report having unusually good memory for things such as phone numbers and security codes because digits, letters, and syllables take on such a unique panoply of colors.10

Holly also has sensory processing disorder. People who have this condition are either very sensitive to things in their environment such as loud sounds, bright lights, or touch, or they could be unresponsive to these. Those with sensory processing disorder are often on the autism spectrum, as Holly is, but the condition itself has a wide range of possibilities. We haven’t seen the last of Holly Gibney, as she appears in Stephen King’s latest book, If It Bleeds (2020), which is a collection of four novellas.

The monster that is the villain in The Outsider is compared to several legends including El Cuco, Pumpkinhead, and others. What is the basis for these stories? The legend of El Cuco originated in Portugal. The oldest reference to the creature in writing dates back to 1274. The story is told in Portugal still today as well as in Spain and Latin America. Children are warned that if they misbehave, El Cuco will come to take them away and eat them. This legend is seen as the opposite of a guardian angel and is always present, watching and waiting to devour naughty children. The features of the creature are elusive because it is a shapeshifter. This makes for the perfect miscreant in The Outsider because it is able to commit its crimes by looking like anyone it wants to.

The Outsider ends with the creature being defeated and Terry Maitland’s name being cleared. Even with the most unimaginable horror, Stephen King is able to give us a light at the end of the tunnel. Could such a creature exist in the world? According to King, “monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.” Thankfully for Ralph and Holly in this book, the monster didn’t win.

CHAPTER THIRTY

The Institute