I can totally see why Ghost Story is seen on lists of the greatest classic horror books. This defied many of my expectations, and pre-conceived notions -- both of the book, and of Peter Straub. In 1982, the film was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Horror Film. [ citation needed] Home media [ edit ] If you are looking for an elegantly written, unusual and complex horror story this is for you, but how many people are looking for such a thing? The air grows chilly as October draws to its close, and four old men gather to tell ghost stories while carefully skirting around the one horrifying incident none of them will ever forget.

This is a book that combines the chill of the New York winter with the arthritic helplessness of old man nightmares. It plays shamelessly with reality. The devices Straub incorporated in this book are so subtle that they had to be corrupted or ignored entirely when a movie was made based on this book. Ghost Story by Peter Straub has been on my to-read-list for at least 20 years. It’s one of those books that I needed to read, especially if you’re a horror genre lover. THE AUTHOR: Peter Straub was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on 2 March, 1943, the first of three sons of a salesman and a nurse. The salesman wanted him to become an athlete, the nurse thought he would do well as either a doctor or a Lutheran minister, but all he wanted to do was to learn to read. The story centres around a group of four elderly gentleman, who meet twice a month as members of the Chowder society. The rules are you dress smartly in dinner attire, you don't drink too much and when it's your turn you have to tell a story of something dreadful. This involves the telling of tales of a terrifying and supernatural nature.JadePhoenix13 on The Secret of the Sul’Dam: Subtle Changes to the Way the One Power Works in The Wheel of Time TV Series 35 mins ago

Firstly - and this is something that plagued 'Koko' too - Straub has a very slow way of unravelling the story. Now please understand that I have a complete respect for that. I admire and appreciate those authors like King, Blatty and Crichton that, unlike less talented writers like Brown and Child (who're all action and no build-up), are comfortable with setting the cards out leisurely, providing us instead with some surprisingly interesting and well-developed characters. Straub is actually very clever in the way he fleshes out his characters, doing so to the point where they actually feel like real genuine people.I have read this book several times now, and I firmly believe it is the The Brothers Karamazov of the horror book world. This beautifully written story of evil in a small town has a lot in common with Stephen King's IT as far as the small town portion goes. Derry and Milburn are similar in a lot of ways. Despite the title, this book isn't really a ghost story. Just like in IT, IT isn't really a clown. The scariest book I’ve ever read…It crawls under your skin and into your dreams.”— Chicago Sun-Times

GHOST STORY was my favorite novel for many years-mostly because of the intricacy of it. The stories of these men, the stories about the relatives of these men, and the stories about the town itself, wind around and through each other-to me it's like a beautifully woven tapestry of art. I have to think that the author had it all planned out from the very beginning, otherwise how could it have been so wonderfully done? Oh, I’m sorry. Did I say the “most elegant” metaphor? Because I meant to say crass and vaguely disturbing. The first half is some of the best horror I´ve read, not much splatter or violence, just the extremely detailed description with some really scary scenes that fuel the readers´ paranoia in the darkness. There are some moments one might not forget so soon, if not even never, but suddenly there is a bit more action and story, which make the terror factor disappear. Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson What Are We Writing About When We Write About Ghosts? 1 hour agoI won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me . . . the most dreadful thing. Not since Edgar Allan Poe has an author taken such liberties with his readers’ nerves…A masterwork of horror.”— Cosmopolitan Vanderbilt on The Secret of the Sul’Dam: Subtle Changes to the Way the One Power Works in The Wheel of Time TV Series 49 mins ago

In December, under several inches of snow, Milburn always took on a festive, almost magically pretty look. A tall tree always went up in the square, and Eleanor Hardie matched its light by decorating the front of the Archer Hotel. Children lined up before Santa Claus in Young Brothers’ department store and put in their nonnegotiable demands for Christmas—only the older ones noticed that Santa looked and smelled a little bit like Omar Norris. (December always reconciled Omar not only with his wife, but also with himself—he cut his drinking in half, and talked to the few cronies he had about “moonlighting down at the store.”) As his father had done, Norbert Clyde always drove his old horse-drawn sleigh through town and gave the kids rides so they would know what real sleighbells sounded like—and would know the feeling of skimming through pine-smelling air behind tow good horses. And as his father had done, Elmer Scales pulled open a gate in one of his pasture fences and let the town people come out to sled down a hill at the edge of his property: you always saw half a dozen station wagons pulled up alongside the fence, and half a dozen young fathers pulling Flexible Flyers laden with excited children up Elmer’s hill. Some families pulled taffy in their kitchens; some families roasted chestnuts in their fireplaces. Humphrey Stalladge put up red and green lights over the bar, and started making Tom and Jerries.In the sleepy town of Milburn, New York, four old men gather to tell each other stories--some true, some made-up, all of them frightening. A simple pastime to divert themselves from their quiet lives. Must Read Horror Articles 30 October 2023 Welcome to Must Read Horror, where we search the internet… After publication of his book he took a temporary job teaching at Berkeley, there he meets and falls madly in love with a mysterious beautiful girl. They get on famously, make wedding plans and one day she just disappears; next thing he knows she meets his brother David in another town, they fall in love and soon David dies under mysterious circumstances. The girl disappears again. Bravo Mr. Straub. I'm so sorry that you've been taken from this world before I've gotten a chance to become a fan.