Gage, Louis' son, also goes through a profound change, beginning the novel as an innocent young boy, and then, after he is resurrected after being hit by a car, changing into a strange, zombie-like creature who kills and partially eats his own death-denying mother, as he is now possessed with an ancient Indian spirit, a Wendigo. Pet Semetary blends the horror of the everyday with the horror of the supernatural. The central protagonists of the novel first experience terrible events in their lives that can afflict all of us like the death of a pet or a child. Then, the supernatural and the foreign intervene in their lives, first in the form of dreams, then through the force of the Indian burial ground. Everyone wants someone who has died to 'come back,' but the novel demonstrates that it is impossible for things to be as they once were, in a similar vein to older tales of resurrection that counsel the reader to be careful for what you wish for like "The...

Death and dead things are not shown as comforting, but horrific, and the novel inspires sheer terror when it shows Church the cat, then Gage and finally Rachel come back as dead creatures. The novel is also skilled at eliciting revulsion from the readers, in the way that it describes the stench of the cat after coming back from the dead, and then the fact that the now strange, adult-like Gage kills his own mother. This is why Pet Semetary is profoundly disturbing, almost too disturbing, especially for someone who has just lost a loved one. Rather than escapist fun, it is almost too real in the way that it plays upon the dread of what happens to the people we love, even the pets we love, after death, although it provides wise counsel not to try to make things as they once were.