This Terrifying ‘IT’ Character Outshines Pennywise

Few monsters in Stephen King’s works are as terrifying as Pennywise, the infamous clown from ‘IT.’ As a cosmic being millions of years old, Pennywise haunts the sewers of Derry, Maine, emerging every 27 years to murder children and sow chaos before going back into hibernation. He feeds on fear, using his clown guise to disguise a myriad of terrifying forms. The Losers Club, a group of bullied children, ultimately defeats him after battling through two of his feeding cycles.

Ironically, Pennywise might not be the scariest character in the novel. Patrick Hockstetter, a member of the gang that torments the Losers Club, is more than just a schoolyard bully. While his actions are toned down in TV and movie adaptations, King’s book paints him as even more terrifying than Pennywise. Hockstetter is depicted as a solipsist who believes he is the only real being in the universe, incapable of feeling for others. The book suggests that he would have become a serial killer if he had lived. 

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Hockstetter, part of Henry Bowers’ gang, initially appears ordinary. King dedicates a single, dark chapter to his backstory and demise, describing him as keeping a box of dead flies and later progressing to murdering stray animals by locking them in an abandoned refrigerator. His most disturbing act is the murder of his newborn brother, which was mistaken for crib death. This event went undetected due to the lack of child psychological services in 1951.

Unlike Pennywise, who manifests as whatever scares his victims most, Hockstetter’s fear of leeches from a childhood incident is his undoing. Pennywise uses this fear when he attacks Hockstetter, appearing as a swarm of leeches that drains his blood. Hockstetter briefly awakens in the sewers with Pennywise feeding on him, and the Losers Club later finds his remains there.

Both movie adaptations streamline the novel’s events, minimizing Hockstetter’s role. The 1990 miniseries omits him entirely, while Andy Muschietti’s films include him but cut out most of his backstory and gruesome details. In the movies, he is shown as part of Bowers’ gang, with some alterations like him being a firebug instead of an animal torturer. His death is changed to fit the movie’s settings, involving zombies rather than leeches.

Hockstetter’s crimes are so horrific that including them in the films would distract from Pennywise, the central monster. In the novel, he symbolizes Derry’s deep-seated evil and highlights a recurring theme in King’s work: the attraction of supernatural horrors to mundane, everyday evils. Hockstetter’s realism, reflecting how serial killers can go unnoticed, makes him truly terrifying. His death offers a rare moment where readers might find themselves rooting for the clown.

–Farheen Ali