Ghost Story was published by Coward, McCann & Geoghegan in 1979 and became an immediate bestseller, establishing Straub as a major figure in American horror fiction. Five elderly men in the fictional town of Milburn, New York — the Chowder Society — meet regularly to tell ghost stories. They share a secret from fifty years past: a young woman’s death in which all five were complicit. Now something has returned to Milburn — taking different forms, killing those connected to the original crime — and the surviving members must confront both the entity and their own guilt.
Straub’s achievement is to write a novel that functions simultaneously as a supernatural thriller, a meditation on the nature of storytelling, and a literary homage to the great ghost story tradition (Hawthorne, James, M.R. James, Le Fanu). The narrative structure is deliberately complex: multiple timelines, embedded stories-within-stories, and a gradually narrowing focus from the panoramic to the intimate. The entity — which appears as different women to different characters — embodies the principle that stories have consequences, that the past is never safely buried.
The prose is several cuts above standard genre fiction: Straub writes with the precision and ambition of a literary novelist, and the characterization of the five elderly men (their friendship, their guilt, their individual personalities) gives the horror genuine emotional weight. The novel proved that horror could be literary without losing its power to frighten — a demonstration that influenced a generation of writers including Stephen King (who collaborated with Straub on The Talisman).
Collecting Ghost Story
First edition (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, New York, 1979): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $150–$400
- Very good: $60–$150
- Signed: $300–$600
Projected values (2026–2036): Strong appreciation. Straub’s masterpiece.
The Literary Horror Novel
Ghost Story (1979) is Straub’s breakthrough — a complex, multi-layered horror novel about the Chowder Society, a group of elderly men in the fictional town of Milburn, New York, who gather to tell ghost stories while concealing a terrible secret from their past. The novel draws on Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the classic ghost story tradition, applying literary techniques to horror in ways that were genuinely innovative in 1979. The structure is intricate: stories within stories, shifting timelines, and multiple unreliable narrators. The 1981 film adaptation starring Fred Astaire and John Houseman was less successful, but the novel remains one of the defining works of literary horror.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Peter Straub? Straub (1943–2022) was an American novelist who brought literary ambition to horror fiction. A poet and literature PhD who spent years in Dublin and London before returning to the US, he wrote prose of a complexity rare in genre fiction. His collaborations with Stephen King (The Talisman, Black House) and his influence on writers like Dan Simmons and Mark Z. Danielewski cemented his importance.