Featured Image Credit: TikTok/@nozumi160
Topics: Stephen King, Books
Callum Jones
A man has gone viral after discovering a rare item in a charity shop which is no longer available over its eerie link to a horrific crime.
There's no doubt charity shops are full of a lot of junk, but once in a while, shoppers come across an incredible and even rare find.
And I think what Craig Johnston discovered while charity shopping recently certainly falls into the latter category.
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The 31-year-old, from Northern Ireland, has been collecting books from horror aficionado Stephen King for three years now, he told Newsweek.
However, that has proved to be quite the mission as the veteran author has more than 60 novels and hundreds more short stories.
On top of that, Johnston accepted he probably wouldn't be able to collect the 'Bachman Books' collection, which consisted of four short stories, 'Rage', 'The Long Walk', 'Roadwork' and 'The Running Man'.
'Rage' has since been removed from the collection, with King personally rubber-stamping this decision.
The short novel tells the story of a school student who brings a gun into class and kills faculty members.
It was later connected to four real-life shootings, where one school shooter was even found to be in possession of the novel.
Today, 'Rage' is no longer available - though the three other books in the Bachman Books collection remain available for purchase.
However, on a charity shop run, Johnston was left shocked when he found the original collection, including 'Rage', available for $2.
"I've already been told a couple of times that it is worth something, but it will be hard for me to part with the book since I'm trying to collect every book Stephen King has published," he told Newsweek.
"I had never read 'Rage' before, but I came to the conclusion that it would be the one book I would never own in my collection due to Stephen King taking it out of print in 1999. And now I own it. You really never know what you can find in charity shops!"
King wrote 'Rage' while he was in high school in 1965 - a world that is very different from the present day.
"I suppose if it had been written today, and some high school English teacher had seen it, he would have rushed the manuscript to the guidance counselor and I would have found myself in therapy posthaste," the author wrote in an essay published in 2013.
"But 1965 was a different world, one where you didn’t have to take off your shoes before boarding a plane and there were no metal detectors at the entrances to high schools."