‘The day was a long bolt of grey cloth; endless…’
One of the many great things about having a monomaniacal obsession with an element of pop culture is that it can introduce you to so much other stuff. I got into all the other Britpop bands through Oasis. Nirvana introduced me to the world of American alternative rock. Stephen King, perhaps my most prominent obsession, has introduced me to so much stuff that’s impossible to list all of it. I’m only aware of iconic horror writer Peter Straub because he collaborated with King, and it was this connection that brought me Ghost Story, Straub’s most famous work, and a huge influence on King…
This is a long book with a dense plot, so I’ll keep things brief. Essentially, a group of respectable, middle-aged men meet on a weekly basis to tell ghost stories. When these ghost stories start to come to life, the men must unlock a secret from their past in order to protect their future.
I think the highest praise that I can offer for Ghost Story is that I had an incredibly intense nightmare about one of the stories contained within the novel within a week of starting to read it. This is a genuinely frightening and disturbing novel that takes many of our existing myths (werewolves, vampires, shape shifters) and attempts to rationalise them into one expression of ungodly evil. While it sags somewhat in the middle, the novel’s knockout conclusion had me glued to the page, and by the end, I was just invested in this book as I have been with much of King’s work.
Ghost Story was a direct influence on everything from Salem’s Lot to IT to Needful Things (not to mention The Breathing Method, which almost feels like a direct homage). While I don’t think it’s as good as King’s very best work, it is properly disturbing and memorable in its scares, and anyone looking to find a direct lineage between King’s influences and his best work need look no further. Fans of horror fiction will eat it up.