The protagonists in this one are also fantastically detailed and it so refreshing to get a group of elderly gents as the main charactes, as oppose to a bunch of young whipper snappers. Each one is expertly detailed, and very distinct and endearing. Superb character development. I will not go into plot details at this stage, since these can be had by reading the book synopsis. Instead, in general terms, I'll try and explain just why this book should be on the reading list of any self respecting horror fan. Not a Straub fan, but this is a good book. One of the better "ghost stories" out there (in spite of the fact that it's not exactly a story about a ghost per-se). I enjoyed the second reading just as much as the first. Straub was a very underrated writer, and I'm guilty of not reading much of his work. Hopefully that can be remedied soon. In a Sufi fable, the elephant fell in love with a firefly, and imagined that it shone for no other creature but he; and when it flew long distances away, he was confident that at the center of its light was the image of an elephant.”

Mary Downing Hahn’s novel, A Time for Andrew: A Ghost Story, is about a boy who goes to spend the summer with his aunt. He visits an old house that has shadows and noises but it turns out to be time travel. The boy meets a ghost of another boy who looks like him and he ends up helping him. 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. I am SO glad that I finally re-read this book! I was afraid that it wouldn't hold up to my memory of it. I worried about that for decades. Silly me-I needn't have worried-it was even better than I remembered! The simple fact is that for most of us, all the terrorists and all the murderers and all the faultily-constructed planes in all the world are not nearly as likely to hurt us than uncontrolled cell growth within our own bodies. Sure, I get a little jittery when my plane hits turbulence; and yes, I sneak around my own house with a baseball bat every time I hear a bump in the night. But truthfully, the only thing that really scares me is cancer. I adored, and distinctly remember trying to emulate in a short story I wrote in college. What a great conjuring of claustrophobia and unease!Students set up desks where you could sign petitions for legalizing marijuana or declare yourself in favor of homosexuality and the protection of whales; students thronged by.” Drew is fond of Hannah because she acts like a boy. They spend most of their time together, and he even climbs trees with her. One day, John shows up in his father’s car and becomes friends with Hannah. Drew feels jealous because he knows that they will eventually marry each other according to Aunt Blythe’s story about the family history. New York Times bestselling author Peter Straub's classic tale of horror, secrets, and the dangerous ghosts of the past... What I love here is that obviously the reader is watching all the warning signs. We see when Don Wanderley’s choices—they seem so reasonable to him in the moment!—shove him into the plot of a horror story. And that horror plot only works because Straub gets the details of his campus sex comedy so completely right. Un sentito omaggio ai classici racconti gotici dell'orrore ed una originale rivisitazione delle storie di fantasmi, vampiri e lupi mannari: non a caso due dei protagonisti fanno di cognome Hawtorne e James ed il racconto di Sears James all'inizio è in pratica un rifacimento de Il giro di vite (The Turn of the Screw) di Henry James.

I just re-read this and thought I'd say a bit more about it. The general idea behind this book is one that has been dealt with by many writers (King among others, I mention him as he's worked with Straub). The novel works it's way to the general idea that there is another "race" or "species" of beings that have lived along side humans forever. They regard us variously as food or amusement. These beings are the source of all the legends, vampires, werewolves...everything that goes "bump in the night", everything that wants to eat "us". Suffice it to say, the thing or things that is haunting our four main characters has returned to the small town of Milburn, New York. And it didn’t come for the maple syrup festival. When I finished school, I sold my The Shining, my The Stand, all of my horror books except one. There was one novel with which I could not part--Peter Straub's "Ghost Story." Drew reluctantly enters the house, following his parents and aunt at a distance. He navigates empty rooms by listening to their voices. Drew approaches them unnoticed as his father tells Blythe that Drew is “fearful… nervous… too much imagination.” 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 agoCanby, Vincent (December 16, 1981). " 'GHOST STORY' TELLS OF 50-YEAR-OLD MYSTERY". The New York Times . Retrieved December 15, 2017. Ghost Story is a 1981 American supernatural horror film directed by John Irvin and starring Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., John Houseman, Craig Wasson, and Alice Krige. Based on the 1979 novel of the same name by Peter Straub, it follows a group of elderly businessmen in New England who gather to recount their involvement in a woman's death decades prior when one of them suspects her ghost has been haunting him. No,” she said, and rolled over to hide her face. “You can go anywhere and fit in. I’ve never been anything but a working-class drudge.” The group called the Chowder Society had only a few rules: they wore evening clothes (because thirty years ago, Sears had rather liked the idea), they never drank too much (and now they were too old for that anyhow), they never asked if any of the stories were true (since even the outright whoppers were in some sense true), and though the stories went around the group in rotation, they never pressured anyone who had temporarily dried up.”

I do know that nobody can protect anybody else from vileness. Or from pain. All you can do is not let it break you in half and keep on going until you get to the other side.” Dopo un prologo agghiacciante il ritmo del racconto cala vertiginosamente e sembra che l'autore proceda a vista, aggiungendo troppa carne al fuoco senza sapere come connettere il tutto, ma man mano che la piccola cittadina di Milburn inizia a ricoprirsi di neve, tensione e terrore aumentano sempre più, Straub collega perfettamente tutti i tasselli in maniera brillante, ed il finale è davvero memorabile.Ghost Story is about a small group of men who made a mistake in their youth and rather than face up to it, they went about hiding it instead. This leads to consequences none of them could have possibly foreseen. But WE can see those consequences, and unfortunately, they are often deadly. What was the worst thing you've ever done? I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me.....the most dreadful thing." That's how Peter Straub's GHOST STORY begins..... Not since Edgar Allan Poe has an author taken such liberties with his readers’ nerves…A masterwork of horror.”— Cosmopolitan