Ghost Story by Peter Straub
"Ghost Story" is a chilling narrative that weaves together elements of horror and psychological suspense through the experiences of the Chowder Society, a group of five influential men in the fictional town of Milburn. The story unfolds in a frame narrative, beginning with a mysterious man fleeing with a kidnapped girl, which sets the tone for the unsettling events that follow. The central plot is divided into three parts, initially exploring the aftermath of the death of Edward Wanderley, a member of the society, and the subsequent nightmares that plague its remaining members.
As their storytelling takes a darker turn, the group faces a series of supernatural occurrences linked to a young woman named Alma Mobley, who had tragic impacts on Don Wanderley, Wanderley's nephew. The narrative intensifies with apparitions, deaths, and the gradual revelation of the malevolent forces at play, described as shape-shifters reminiscent of traditional vampires and werewolves. These entities manifest from human fears and desires, leading to a climactic confrontation between the Chowder Society members and these otherworldly threats. Ultimately, "Ghost Story" explores themes of memory, loss, and the haunting nature of the past, culminating in a resolution that ties back to the frame narrative's opening and the nature of identity and transformation.
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Ghost Story
First published: 1979
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Fantasy—superbeing
Time of work: 1977, with flashbacks to 1929
Locale: Milburn, a small town in New York
The Plot
The frame narrative is set immediately after the final events of the main story. The opening sequence of a man fleeing cross-country with a kidnapped young girl is quite mysterious because it is offered without explanation.
The main narrative is divided into three parts. The first, told with many flashbacks and memories, defines the situation. Five of the oldest and most influential men in Milburn had been meeting, for companionship and storytelling, as the Chowder Society. Sears James and Ricky (Frederick) Hawthorne are lawyers, John Jaffrey is a physician, Edward Wanderley was a writer, and Lewis Benedikt is a retired hotel owner. One year earlier, Wanderley had died while attending a party for an actress he was writing about, Ann-Veronica Moore. After that, the members of the Chowder Society all experienced nightmares, and the stories they told at their meetings turned macabre. Sears James tells a lengthy story, clearly based on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898), featuring brothers Gregory and Fenny Bate. The four surviving members of the group contact Edward Wanderley’s nephew Don, but they are too late to prevent Jaffrey from jumping off a bridge under peculiar circumstances.
The second section sets up the conflict. Don Wanderley earns admission to the Chowder Society with the story on which his novel The Nightwatcher is based. Two years before, Alma Mobley, a strange and beautiful young woman, seduced Don and then drove his brother, David, to suicide. Don mentions her associates, a woman named Florence de Peyser, Greg Benton, and Greg’s brother. The Bentons appear to be the Bate brothers from James’s story. The picture of Milburn deepens, and what appears to be an ordinary town increasingly is plagued by odd phenomena as a rough winter settles in. Animals are killed and apparitions are sighted. Lewis narrowly escapes an automobile accident, swerving to avoid a figure resembling his late wife; a spinster is killed after seeing her dead brother; Dr. Rabbitfoot, a character from Wanderley’s newest novel, is heard; and the Bate brothers frequently appear, including at the death of an insurance salesman. Peter Barnes, a high school senior, sees the insurance salesman die in the company of the lawyers new secretary, Anna Mostyn, and Barnes himself barely escapes from Mostyns house while another boy is killed.
The full situation is revealed and the battle is joined in the third section. Lewis describes the suicidal death of his wife, a fate intended for him, during a visit to Florence de Peyser and her young niece, Alice Montgomery, fifteen years earlier. He is then trapped with delusions and killed. Sears and Ricky tell Don “the ultimate Chowder Society story,” concerning the death in 1929 of actress Eva Galli, in which all five future Chowder Society members participated. Peter sees his mother killed, then joins the other three in their fight. Their adversaries are revealed as Manitou, or shape-shifters, what people used to call vampires and werewolves, reoccurring in similar identities and taking shape from human imaginations. Anyone who gives in to them or is killed by them becomes their tool. Sears is killed, and Ricky’s wife, Stella, is kidnapped but escapes. Ricky, Don, and Peter kill the Bate creatures, and Peter stabs the Galli creature, but she escapes as a bird, so Don promises to await her return.
The end of the frame narrative explains the beginning: The young girl is the shape-shifter returned. Don not only ends that human identity but kills the thing, presumably forever, in its final form of a wasp.