Stephen King, being an incredibly prolific author, naturally has written quite a lot of books with Downer Endings.
- 1408 ends with the room melting and distorting, about to consume Enslin. Enslin sets himself on fire, and the room lets him leave. Enslin is saved by another hotel guest who happened to be walking by with a bucket of ice water. Enslin doesn't publish his story, the recordings are useless, and he has third degree burns, scarring him for the rest of his life. He retreats to a house in Long Island where he lives out a lonely life, has health problems, and is completely traumatized by his 70-minute stay in room 1408.
- In Christine, the whole Cunningham family ends up dead, victims of Christine and the furious spirit of Roland LeBay. In an epilogue, Dennis reveals that his and Leigh's relationship didn't last long, and that he recently noted a newspaper article about the hit-and-run death of a drive-in theater worker in California whose name was the same as one of Arnie's high-school tormentors, and who took off after he helped Buddy Repperton smash up Christine. Dennis nervously ponders the question, What if she's back?
- The Dark Half ends with Thad Beaumont successfully overcoming his evil alter ego George Stark. This fairly upbeat ending was overridden by King in his later novel Needful Things, where it was revealed that Beaumont's wife Liz divorced him, after which he killed himself, as revealed in Bag of Bones.
- In the end of Duma Key, protagonist Edgar manages to seal away the evil Perse. However many people were lost in the struggle, including his daughter. The ending compounds this by killing off his best friend in with a heart attack, months after the final confrontation. Really, the only happy part of the ending is when Edgar writes up a hurricane, to destroy the godforsaken strip of land once and for all.
- The novel The Green Mile: The protagonist is forced to execute John Coffey, the black man who did not commit the crime he is being executed for, but not before he's Blessed with Suck by him, and thus is forced to watch in perfect health while his friends die of old age, and is not injured in a catastrophic bus crash that takes the life of everyone else on the bus, including his wife. The book ends with his final friend, a woman in the nursing home where he lives, dying before he can tell her about his wife, and him spending his final days alone and wishing for death, but still in perfect health. As hard as it is to believe, the film was an upper ending in comparison.
- The original ending for Misery: after "Misery's Return" is finished, Annie kills Paul, binds the book in his skin and feeds the rest to her pig.
- The majority of short stories in King's Night Shift have terrible, tragic endings:
- Jerusalem's Lot ends with our protagonist, Charles Boone, dashing himself to death on the rocks at the foot of Chapelwaite; he believes himself to be the last link in a chain of familial evil. This turns out not to be true, however, because the presenter and editor of this epistolary story is a man named James Robert Boone, a distant relative of Charles. In the last line of the story, James says he can hear huge rats in the walls as well.
- "Graveyard Shift" ends with the death of the protagonist, Hall, and the descent into the sub-sub-basement of the men who work in the mill; presumably some of them will not make it out alive.
- At the end of "Night Surf", there is no resolution; the narrator states his belief earlier in the story that every member of the group will die, since they're all infected with Captain Trips.
- "I Am the Doorway" ends with the narrator taking his own life, since new alien eyes have started growing on his chest.
- "The Mangler" ends with the demon-infested machine pulling itself out of its concrete moorings and escaping the laundry in a killing frenzy.
- At the end of "The Boogeyman", Lester Billings falls prey to the monster who killed his children.
- They're still waiting at the end of "Gray Matter", but it sure doesn't look good for Henry Parmalee.
- At the end of "Trucks", the rigs are backed up for miles on the interstate and our narrator knows that he, the counterman and the girl will end up pumping gas until they simply drop dead. He sees two jet contrails in the sky and says, "I wish I could believe there are people in them."
- "Strawberry Spring" ends with our protagonist believing that he is in fact Springheel Jack, the killer.
- "The Lawnmower Man" ends with Harold Parkette falling victim to the fat lawn-cutter, his machine and Pan's cult.
- At the end of "Children of the Corn", Burt and Vicky end up sacrificed to He Who Walks Behind the Rows, and that god demands the age of propitiation be lowered to 18.
- "The Last Rung on the Ladder" ends on a terrible note, with Kitty committing suicide by swan-diving off a building, and Larry's knowledge that if only he had gotten her final letter sooner (it was plastered with several change-of-address stickers), he might have been able to prevent it.
- "The Man Who Loved Flowers" ends with the murder of the woman in the alley; we learn that the young man is not in love, but is the deranged hammer murderer we heard mention of earlier in the story.
- Pet Sematary has an ending so grim that even King himself has said the book depresses him. In no particular order, toddler-zombie Gage is euthanized by his father, Judd and his wife are both dead, Louis' wife Rachel has been murdered by her revenant son, and Louis has lost every last one of his marbles, burying Rachel in the cursed cemetery knowing full well what a bad idea that is, but too crazy to care. Then she comes back for him. Just about the only high point is that at least daughter Ellie was safely out of town with her grandparents.
- The ending of Revival. Many have called it the most disturbing ending King has ever written, and considering his track record, that's saying a lot. In short, the hero and villain of the story find out that once you die, there's no heaven to go to. There is only the Null—upon death, your soul is captured by giant ant-like beings and you are used as slave labor for a giant Eldritch Abomination known as "Mother" and a host of other horrors. For all eternity. Oh, and Mother lashes out through the psychic connection they've been observing the Null through, killing the villain, and forcing the hero to kill the patient they were using as a gateway to close it. Its implied that Mother then drives everyone the villain had been "healing" insane and makes them commit suicide. The hero is left alive, but has to constantly numb himself with a cocktail of anti-depressants, knowing that no matter what, sooner or later he will also die and join the rest of mankind in the Null.
- 'Salem's Lot. If anything, the entire book is a downer as you realize that by the time the book has ended, most of the characters you've met will be either dead, or vampires.
- A few short stories in Skeleton Crew have Downer Endings (though not as many as in Night Shift):
- "Cain Rose Up": Ends with Curt Garrish going on a shooting rampage, à la Charles Whitman.
- "The Jaunt": Another contender for the most horrific ending King has written. Ricky Oates goes insane after going through the Jaunt awake, gouging his eyes out and shrieking nonsense over and over while his family watches in horror.
- "The Raft": The blob on the lake consumes all four kids.
- "The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands": Henry Brower commits suicide by shaking his own hand.
- "The Reaper's Image": Spangler sees the eponymous Image and excuses himself, saying he feels sick; Carlin knows he will never return. The DeIver Glass has claimed another victim.
- "Nona": Our narrator is preparing to commit suicide.
- "Survivor Type": Richard Pine eats himself to death.
- "Uncle Otto's Truck": Otto Schenck is killed by the truck (which is possibly inhabited by the malevolent spirit of George McCutcheon).
- "Morning Deliveries (milkman #1)": Spike leaves deadly items at some of the houses on his milk route for no apparent reason; presumably some of those families will lose a member.
- "Big Wheels: A Tale of the Laundry Game (milkman #2)": Rocky and Leo die in the car crash; Spike heads to Bob's house (It's implied that Spike will kill Bob's wife, burn his house down and frame Bob for the crime).
- "Gramma": George is possessed by his dead Gramma.
- "The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet": After Rackne is killed by Jimmy, Reg Thorpe puts a bullet through his own head; his story is never published anywhere, the only copy having been destroyed when the editor's car went into a lake during his blackout.
- In the Different Seasons story "Apt Pupil", Todd kills the guidance counselor who discovered his "grandfather" is a recently-dead Nazi war criminal who's been murdering transients, then realizes he has nothing left to lose and decides to go out in a blaze of glory by sniping as many passing motorists as possible. His shooting spree lasts five hours before he's killed by police.
