Ghost Story by Peter Straub

Ghost Story by Peter Straub

copyright = 1979
pages = 567
source = library
date completed = 10/07/08

Ghost Story is a spooky tale of some residents in the town of Milburn. Sears James, Ricky Hawthorne, John Jaffrey and Lewis Benedikt are a group of old men who sit around telling ghost stories every couple of weeks, calling themselves The Chowder Society. A previous member of the society died the year before and they've spent the last year suffering nightmares and hallucinations which they haven't told each other about. Finally when it comes out, they decide to write to the dead man's nephew, Don Wanderley, who is an author of a book which apparently explains some of the spooky things happening to them. Don comes to town which sparks a whole series of events--mysterious animal deaths, people committing suicide, strange deaths--that the society men now find themselves entangled in.

I really enjoyed this book. It's a slow start, but I got hooked and couldn't stop reading. One night after reading I was so weirded out I had to read a magazine afterwards to try and get the images out of my head. The story is a bit hard to follow sometimes being that Straub switches between calling characters by their first and last names and there are just so many different characters to follow. There are also alot of hallucinations that get kind of confusing, but overall, it's a good story and very creepy.