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    Ghost Story
    Ghost Story
    Ghost Story
    Audiobook22 hours

    Ghost Story

    Written by Peter Straub

    Narrated by Anne Flosnik and Buck Schirner

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    #1 New York Times bestselling author Peter Straub’s classic tale of horror, secrets, and the dangerous ghosts of the past...

    What was the worst thing you’ve ever done?

    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.

    But one story is coming back to haunt them and their small town. A tale of something they did long ago. A wicked mistake. A horrifying accident. And they are about to learn that no one can bury the past forever...

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateMay 1, 2012
    ISBN9781455830213
    Ghost Story
    Author

    Peter Straub

    Peter Straub (1943–2022) was the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen novels, including A Dark Matter, The Talisman, and Black House, which he cowrote with Stephen King. He has won the Bram Stoker Award for his novels Lost Boy Lost Girl and In the Night Room, as well as for his collection 5 Stories. Straub was the editor of the two-volume Library of American anthology The American Fantastic Tale.

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    Reviews for Ghost Story

    4/5

    246 ratings46 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Scared the cheese n'rice outta me in high school and freaked me out 30 years later. My favorite horror novel. Relentlessly creepy and terrifying with some unforettable characters and the things that haunt them. Dr. Rabbitfoot and the Bate brothers still rear their ugly heads in my nightmares occassionally.

      3 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      The story kept me on edge throughout! Ghost story wow

      2 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Good but VERY long winded. Unnecessarily long. The narrator leaves much to be desired and the book is a bit confusing when you're listening to it. I think reading it would've made it a lot easier to keep up with time changes and characters.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I am not a huge fan of supernatural horror and sadly this classic 70s tale didn't change my mind.It's has a cool premise, The Chowder Society meets every month to talk and reminisce but after a mysterious death of one their members they start telling ghost stories... ones which start bleeding into real life..Starting with an odd, disturbing intro of a kidnap girl and distraught author we are instantly put on edge.. we know something is wrong with the girl but we don't know what. It bleeds out its atmosphere into the early part of the book where we meet the Chowder society and bear witness to their increasingly disturbing dreams and ominous future.Straub manages to create some creepy, unsettling nightmares and tales and manages to keep the suspense going for the first half of the book but as soon as it starts becoming clear what is going on I just lost interest. No spoilers but supernatural shenanigans easily bore more so it takes a bit to keep me interested.However this book has other flaws and so..1) Changing points of view doesn't help. We start with the lovely Hawthorne who then seemingly disappears and isn't replaced by anyone that interesting. 2) It's too long and the pacing is off. Time goes by and the protagonists just sit around waiting for their fate, it’s unengaging and dull. Also when they do stop being apathetic they have the vaguest plan known to mankind. 3) Also the opening and heavy foreshadowing remove most of the mystery on how it’s going to end, oh X and X die do they.. then 400 pages later character X goes “oh well I will just pointlessly go off by myself, in a snow storm ”. Yawn. 4) As well as the DOOMED ones, it's nice to know that only the stupid, selfish and obsessed humans die because I was going to worry about brazen, young X who is going to go to college next year.5) It’s sexist. Well I suppose it was the 70s and it’s playing with old horror conventions but still. A sexy women... THE HORROR, RUN FOR THE HILLS etc.So anyway I didn't like it much, I skipped over most of the two last chapters. I am not even sure if they win or forgot to kill the sexy women so she can come back and be sexy at people again. So only recommend to horror fans. It does have some rave reviews and it does delight in updating some of the old stories, I can see the appeal if you are a fan.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Works on all levels of a good scary book. Was very pleasantly surprised at how good it was. The town becomes a character as the horror builds and builds.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Four friends tell each other ghost stories while being plagued by nightmares after another one of their friends had died of fright at a party.Honestly, I remember very little about this book except that I liked it. I read a lot of Peter Straub for a while until I ran into a string of his novels that I just didn't like, and I stopped. I need to reread this one sometime and refresh my memory.Read in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Scared me at 15. Read it all night. Read it now:
    • 2/5
      I desperately WANTED to love it. And the story (once it finally got going) wasn’t half bad. But oh what a slog to get there. Not for me. I’ll stick to the Talisman.
    • 2/5
      Disclaimer: I haven't finished the book. In fact, I haven't read very much of it at all, but what's with all the excessive foreshadowing? It starts out with a guy and girl he's kidnapped. The girl is strangely passive; I can't get into the guy's head--there's not much going on. But the author uses a foreshadowing device that is just about enough already. I paraphrase: "Suddenly...he was transported back to New York...there was a woman with a dog and he could taste her freckles..." Then, "Again, he found himself back in New York, only this time, instead of the woman with the dog, it was his brother..." Cue scary music here, I don't know what the heck he's talking about but apparently something's going to happen concerning a lady with a dog and his brother. Jeez already. Plus, the girl, who is about seven or eight, speaks too maturely. I didn't find her speech or her character credible. As I said, I haven't read it all but consider this fair warning if you grow tired of excessive and obvious use of plot devices.
    • 5/5
      Wow, a definite must read for anyone who enjoys the horror/chiller genera. It starts slowly an a bit confusing, but everything ties together making it impossible to put down. While not scary this book is creepy and eerie making you ponder the fine line between dream and reality.The Chowder Society, a group of men in their sixties, who tell stories to each other, has lost a member to heart attack. It has been a year since his death and all feel guilty and are having nightmares. As the mystery surrounding his death unfolds secrets come to light and more people die. It is a race to find out who or what is behind the deaths and stop it, before the town is destroyed.
    • 4/5
      A fantastic horror story. It takes a long time to get there, but the journey was worth it. The portrayal of women is almost comically dated, with the exclusion of Stella from participating being downright jarring. When she finds undeniable proof of the supernatural, she asks for an explanation. Her husband tells her he'll tell her in six months and not to worry about the danger they're in. Product of its time, for sure.
    • 5/5
      While this book was a bit slow to begin with, once it got going, it went great. I stayed up until I couldn't hold my eyes open any longer. The thought of a vengeful ghost is great.
    • 2/5
      Picked this up because I read that Stephen King thinks it's one of the best horror stories ever, and it's, like, Halloween time, so what the heck. I tried, got bored but stuck with it, but 200 pages later I'm giving up and taking it back to the library.
    • 4/5
      A compelling first and second read that becomes weaker as one rereads multiple times. I find myself editing the book on successive readings -- reading more quickly as I reach certain sections and actually skipping others. Repeated readings also make it clear that in this world women are "the other" -- although we experience the world through the minds of various people we are never encouraged to experience as women.
    • 3/5
      Was better than I thought it would be, I think or would make a good movie if the protagonist had more of an origin story
    • 3/5
      I want to give this a higher rating, because I did like much of Straub did in the ending. I disagree with the philosophy that the aging beings had—that humans are woefully unaware of their existence and always have been. It's just in modern times that we've gotten away from our knowledge of ghosts. Not that technology dispels the shadows around the edges of things. More in that technology leads us to believe we know everything. But our ancestors were much more attuned to the natural world and what lay in it, supernatural or not. But I digress. The book was good. Not great—there were sections I had to slog through—but good. It's possible that I had a hard time getting into it because I was reading on the train, and any ghost story, of course, is best when read alone by a fire in an old house, where the doors creak and the house makes unexplained noises.
    • 4/5
      straub's work is winding and twisty to the point one gets exasperated, and his research is a bit sloppy. He has a car going off a ditch near Panama City, Florida, and rolling over on the way down, stopping on the berm by the Gulf waters. Could not happen. Not in this universe. There is NO DROP near the Gulf from Appalachacola to Pensacola. None. Nada. That destroyed his credibility for me, and made it not necessary to read any more of his work.
    • 5/5
      Well written character-based suspense. I was in for the ride from the jump. I connected with every member of the chowder society, and loved the way the story tied together (first chapter to the last). Bravo, Straub.
    • 5/5
      The more horror you've read, the more you'll enjoy this book, but it's a worthwhile venture into the horror story regardless. At times, it drags, but this is one of those books that might very well sneak up on you. In my own case, I found it refreshingly unfrightful after a semester-long reengagement with horror literature, but a week after I'd finished it....well, to say that it became frightful with further thought is an understatement. This book might be most horrifying for readers who regularly engage with the horror genre or who are artists themselves, but I think it's fair to say it should be at least entertaining for most any reader. The characters and situations here are disconcertingly believable, even when they really shouldn't be, and the book as a whole is a careful exploration of what horror has been and can be in the present and future. On top of that, it's just plain creepy, the farther in you get. Yes, I recommend it heartily, especially to readers who write (anything).
    • 5/5
      Most epic horror novels fail to maintain their momentum and just end up being ridiculous--like The Stand. But Ghost Story has enough atmosphere and good writing, together with some very effective individual scenes--particularly the one involving Night of the Living Dead--that it doesn't leave a bad taste in your mouth when you are done.
    • 4/5
      I had heard about this book for years, so I finally picked it up. Parts of the story were really well-thought out and nicely constructed. The sequence of time and back stories are both well-done. But other parts I’m still asking myself about. (I don’t want to give anything away, so I won’t go into those.)The pacing of the book is also a bit off. The beginning is so slow I can really see why so many people give up on this one. It’s not until about page 200 that things start to pick up. The middle is great, but the end seemed rushed. I got the impression that the book needed more editting.Even though nothing in the story really scared me, it was a page turner (mostly) and I found it enjoyable.
    • 2/5
      I never really got into this book; I read about one third of it and then stopped because I did not connect to the characters not to what happened to them. Although it is very well written - some scenes are very frightening and enthralling - the storyline was obscured by the slow pace of the book and many side stories.
    • 4/5
      Firstly, I cannot believe that anyone would show to the world their immense capacity for ignorance by attempting to review a book that they had not read (see carrieprice78's "disclaimer" below). Not only does carrieprice78 misquote the author (Don did not taste freckles), but she makes a complete nincompoop of herself by saying that she "doesn't know what he's talking about" (speaking of Don Wanderley) and that she "didn't find her speech or her character credible" (speaking of the kidnapped girl, Angie). Everyone who has read Mr. Straub's book, is laughing and deducting that carrieprice78 was too disturbed by the opening kidnapping to read on (if she had the characters of Don and Angie would have proven to be completely logical in their thoughts and actions). I hated to go on so, but REALLY! We are free to our opinions, but we should form them fairly!I now can get on with my own review of "Ghost Story".I have collected quite a few Peter Straub novels, but had not cracked one. What finally did it for me was MacDonald's, in a round about sort of way. I had just picked up Ray Kroc's biography. He was the paper cup salesman who founded MacDonald's fast food chain. I was standing in my library, perusing for an hour or so, trying to pick out something to read. It was between the aforementioned title, Henry James, Flaubert, and Bentley Little. I was in the mood for horror fast food. I picked up Straub's "Julia" (my girlfriend's name), and then put it back down and picked up "Ghost Story". It was published in 1980 (the year of my birth). I opened the book to a page and saw the word "MacDonald's". In the opening kidnapping, we are led to believe something truly horrible is taking place between a young girl, and what we may have guessed was a pedophile. "He ties me onto him when he sleeps!" The sense of gloom and mental instability within Don is as heavy as a damp moldy blanket.I really enjoyed my visits within the Chowder Society. I couldn't help but think of Ricky Hawthorne as Mr. Pickwick, surrounded by fellow Pickwickians. I envied their company and Sears' cigars. The setting really had a classical feel to it. Stella was sure to ruin that, as Mrs. Bardell had ruined Pickwick's fun.The entire novel felt like a long and jumbled train ride, with some cars only loosely attached (wow, were a lot of cars lost). Nevertheless, the train's engine never failed, and a destination was reached. When we reached it, I laughed out loud. Straub's sense of humor is fantastic, and a really nice quality to have as a horror writer (I'm reminded of Sears' compliment to Ricky).I'd like to digress on a few things that piqued my interest. Firstly, its pretty obvious that Ricky's true marriage was to Sears (indeed, Ricky feared physical intimateness with Sears—which he shouldn't have, because Sears was most obviously not that kind of bachelor); and yet, in the end, Ricky without objection lets Sears march off into the unknown, alone. One could argue, both of them knew that it was their fate, I suppose.Secondly, I get the feeling that Straub isn't that fond of women. Look at Stella, and at the antagonist. I get the creeps thinking of all the incarnations of A.M., with her feminine intelligence and beauty, malevolent eyes, and sneering faces. It may be more accurate to say that Straub distrusts beautiful women. It's a different story with Milly Sheehan (she sure is ignorant and a snoop though) and the poor mother of Jim Hardie. The most heart-wrenching character is Helen Kayon from Berkeley. She too betrays us (Don) in the end. Stupid Don.Lastly, I would like to touch upon the wisdom which pertains to writing that Straub illuminates us with. We see the first glimpses of this with Don's academic life. The digressions on Hawthorne, Crane, Chaucer (something is extremely erotic about big Helen and her Chaucer in the library—Chaucer and his nether eyes and such). Really, this comes to a head just before the book ends. Straub reveals the secret of Hawthorne and James, whilst missing Poe. He tells writers that we must apprentice ourselves to the the masters, who after so long "come up fresh as flowers". I really did love the ending. Throughout, evil had a bit of a ridiculous undercurrent, and the end did not deny this, but embraced it. Leaves you with a taste of faeries. A wasp. It was hilarious. That security guard! HAHAHA!
    • 4/5
      A very wonderful read by an amazing author. This was my first run-in with Peter Straub--minus his collaborations with Stephen King--and I must say that I was very impressed, although at times the story seemed to go at a ridiculously slow pace. Other than that, Ghost Story provided a lot of realistic fear and horror. I am so glad that I read it in the afternoon, otherwise I'd be absolutely terrified right now. This comes highly recommended from me.
    • 2/5
      Another fine example of Sthephen King without gore. That's what I like about Peter Straub: he creates a haunting atmosphere without portraying "Dawn of The Dead" and makes his characters suitably onedimensional but not walking parodies.The one thing I did not like about this book is that HE RIPPED OFF "THE TURN OF THE SCREW" FOR HIS BACKSTORY!!!You do not do something like this! Granted, it does keep the story at a surprisingly high level but...I liked the visuals of the ending: a man killing a wasp while trapped in his singking car and then being not arrested/questioned despite driving his car off a bridge in front of several wittnesses.
    • 3/5
      I found this book interesting but not very frightening. This was jusy an okay book for me. Maybe because I do not typically read horror type books. What I liked was the play of illusion versus reality in the story. I also liked the way the story developed ... old men swapping ghost stories ... but I thought it unraveled towards the end and got a bit out of control. Without giving away too much it just seemed a bit far fetched to me what happened when the town was snowed in. I couldn't loose myself in this book.
    • 4/5
      And everyone has a book that makes them shiver.
    • 5/5
      Never read straub, pretty good story. Not so much a ghost story but it was better/despite that
    • 5/5
      I think this is Straub's best book and have read it many times. It scares the crap out of me every time!
    • 4/5
      I read this some time ago and wonder of wonders, I remember it. Right there, I know how good it is as a big fat read. Engrossing and satisfying right to the end.