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    Haunted
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    Haunted
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    Haunted
    Audiobook13 hours

    Haunted

    Written by Chuck Palahniuk

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk is a novel made up of stories: Twenty-three of them, to be precise. Twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter-sometimes all at once. They are told by people who have answered an ad headlined "Writers' Retreat: Abandon Your Life for Three Months," and who are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of "real life" that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But "here" turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theater where they are utterly isolated from the outside world-and where heat and power and, most important, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more extreme the stories they tell-and the more devious their machinations become to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/nonfiction blockbuster that will surely be made from their plight.

    Haunted is on one level a satire of reality television-The Real World meets Alive. It draws from a great literary tradition-The Canterbury Tales, The Decameron, the English storytellers in the Villa Diodati who produced, among other works, Frankenstein-to tell an utterly contemporary tale of people desperate that their story be told at any cost. Appallingly entertaining, Haunted is Chuck Palahniuk at his finest-which means his most extreme and his most provocative.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMay 10, 2005
    ISBN9780739302873
    Unavailable
    Haunted
    Author

    Chuck Palahniuk

    Chuck Palahniuk’s fourteen novels include the bestselling Snuff; Rant; Haunted; Lullaby; Fight Club, which was made into a film by director David Fincher; Diary; Survivor; Invisible Monsters; and Choke, which was made into a film by director Clark Gregg. He is also the author of the nonfiction profile of Portland, Fugitives and Refugees, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction. His story collection Make Something Up was a widely banned bestseller. His graphic novel Fight Club II hit #1 on the New York Times list. He’s also the author of Fight Club III and the coloring books Bait and Legacy, as well as the writing guide Consider This. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

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    Reviews for Haunted

    3.5/5

    1,993 ratings90 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I went into this novel hoping it would be scary. I had already heard about "Guts", supposed to have induced people to faint during readings. I can't quite see that. It was interesting. The sex aspect was surprising. But the story didn't provoke any great feelings from me. I thought maybe I was just jaded, so I had a coworker read it. She laughed out loud several times while reading. So not so stomach churning for us. Although we both agreed if we were watching it happen, we would probably be grossed out.

      My favorite stories in the collection were Slumming and Dissertation. The stories all had interesting twists and a connection to the character telling the story. The format of the book was a little weird. There was the story of all the people at the writer's retreat. There was the poems. And there was the stories that we're told. It was like 3 separate books. I thought the people at the retreat were stupid beyond belief. Hard to feel anything for them because they all made horrendous decisions.

      Overall I liked the book. It would have been even better if it felt more cohesive. Interesting stories that will stick with me for awhile.
    • 1/5
      Pointless.
    • 3/5
      One of the most disturbing things I have ever read. Ever. CP can write some seriously gruesome stuff!
    • 4/5
      REVIEWED: Haunted: A Novel
      WRITTEN BY: Chuck Palahniuk
      PUBLISHED: 2006

      HAUNTED is a collection of short stories that, interrelated, compose the greater make-up of a full-size novel, as each story is the flashback of one of the characters. Chuck Palahniuk is best known as the author of “FIGHT CLUB” which became the Fincher masterpiece movie in 1999. HAUNTED is often lauded on the “best of” lists of modern horror literature. Coupled with the fact that I’m a Palahniuk fan, and I was excited to jump into this. Unfortunately, this book just didn’t work that well for me.

      The plot revolves around a group of writers who become locked inside an abandoned movie theatre by their mysterious benefactor. However, instead of trying to escape, they each decide that the more horrific they make their own circumstances, then the greater story they will have to tell (and, by proxy, notoriety) once they are rescued. Thus, they destroy their own food, sabotage the heating and plumbing, and invent villains amongst themselves, almost like a “Lord of the Flies” for adults.

      Each character’s flashback is a short story of itself, and Palahniuk doesn’t hold back when going through the gambit of the most perverse and horrific scenarios one would dare to imagine. Indeed, in the book’s afterword Palahniuk details how on a book tour, there was a rash of people who fainted after he read excerpts of the stories.

      Although the book is a satirical view of culture and human motivation, I feel the author sacrificed absorbing writing for shock and absurdity. It’s very intelligent, but also felt “preachy,” and though the characters represented all different backgrounds, they mostly were each cut from the same cloth: selfish, troubled, and redundant.

      What else can I say? Palahniuk is a master, and the critics adore this book. I just found it too self-serving and not the escape into imagination that I usually seek when reading fiction literature.

      Three-and-a-Half out of Five stars
    • 3/5
      My second of his in a short space of time, but I'm glad I read this, after the bla-ness of Fugitives & Refugees. This was sick, thought provoking, wonderfully dark, and really well written. I loved its format more than anything - how it was short stories but as part of a bigger picture. I just know some of them are going to come back to me for years - I'll forget that I read them in this book, & forever be convinced I knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who had their intestines sucked out of their anus whilst wanking at the bottom of a swimming pool...
    • 4/5
      The short stories in this book are hilarious. I love Pahlahniuk's perspective. It's always fresh and makes you consider the mundane things in new ways. I don't know why he needed to structure it as a novel. I think that's the weakest part of the book. But the shorts are awesome and the cover glows in the dark.
    • 4/5
      I really liked the format of this book--the frame story (a group of would-be writers turning a retreat into a Survivor-style reality competition) is an engaging read and works well with the short stories the novel centers on. But my LibraryThing Secret Santa was right when she warned that this was not for the faint of heart! There were definitely some moments I had to skip ahead a paragraph or page ("Guts" in particular), and I'd only give this book to someone I was sure could handle it. As a side note, the purple face cover that I received glows in the dark--it's pretty freaky, even if you are expecting it!
    • 2/5
      Although some of the stories are interesting(but really too extreme ending up to be a large bad gross joke at some points)the whole story is rather boring...and i was expecting a lot after having read the lullaby!Most of the characters are totally uninteresting and as i kept reading i didnt care what was their past or what will be their future!I stopped trying around page 250 and i dont know if i ll try again...i hope you won't disappoint me again mr Palahniuk but i ll be more careful in the future
    • 4/5
      I was curious how Palahniuk would pull off a story with so many characters and he succeeded and giving each a distinct and horrifying fingerprint. A deep dive into the dark side. Great writing - some details I wish I had never heard ( this was audiobook)
    • 1/5
      Gave it around 100 pages and let it go. It seemed juvenile to me: gross for the sake of being gross. It has a rather mean spirited world view that I'm just not interested in reading about. The characters are all base and selfish and seemed flat and unbelievable to me.
    • 1/5
      Every so often, I try to read Palahniuk, but a lot of the absurd and graphic sexual situations in his writing just put me off. I couldn't get very far on this book because of the very first story. I suppose I should be grateful that the first incident was early enough in the book that I could put it down right away without having invested more time, but still, I found it disappointing.
    • 5/5
      Uniquely built and extremely disturbing. Imagery so shocking De Sade would be aroused and envious. Chuck can offend even the most callous chaos junkie. Chuck is one of the greatest novelist alive.
    • 2/5
      Found at the local town dump to which it will be returned. I made it more than half way through because there were some amusing points. Overall though, way too scattered, too many characters, too gross.... etc. etc. Life is short, moving on to something better.
    • 3/5
      This was weird, but entertaining.
    • 3/5
      Pole oige raamat puhkusele kaasa votmiseks. Tostatas minus küsimusi, kas tähelepanu püsimine, lugema jäämine voib kvalifitseerida patuna. Ebaoige ja vääritu tegevusena :-). Pahandust tegev tüdruk, kes loodab siiski tabamata jääda. Samas on endal nii paha, nii paha. Kaasvastutuse tunne, kas mina kui lugeja toidan ja toetan autori haiglast fantaasiat. Aktepteerin seda. Järelsona jahmatas. Loetelud lugemistest, kus inimesed minestanud. Kas uskuda. Ja kui uskuda, mida ütleb see sona joust? Ja kui olen lasknud ennast läbida, ja voidelnud selle sona vastu, kas olen kaotanud, voites raamatu üle. Teistesonadega, ehk on lugemine mind kahjustanud? Mis oleks siis karistuseks väärteo eest...Ma toesti ei tea, kas pidada seda raamatut (ilu)kirjanduseks voi psühholoogiliseks eksperimendiks...
    • 1/5
      To say that I read this book is not true; however, I did read all that I am going to read in it. And it damaged me. I was glad to get rid of this one and its bad vibes. Gross is not entertaining. It's just gross. I would NEVER recommend this to anyone.
    • 4/5
      Bizarre. Intriging. Survial of the fittest?
    • 5/5
      Two things are sure. One: Palahnuik is crazy and, two: he's a frakkin' genius. This book is a collection of short stories written-told by a company of writers, locked in a house somewhere, whilst the insanity triumphing amongst them. Disturbing, outrageous page-turner, a true Palahniuk book.
    • 2/5
      Ugh, this was a major slog-fest to get through, and I barely did (if it wasn't my OCD for never finishing a book I start). I just couldn't relate to a single character, or the "storyline premise".

      Really, this was a vehicle for Palahniuk to do a bit of short-fiction and make a short-fiction collection, and interweave it with "poems" (ie. just lines written in his [now overused and bad] style, and formatted like poems/poetry), and with some inter-novel like sections to make it all seem somewhat cohesive.

      So the running background plot to link the short-stories is just horrible and stupid and SAW does it about 10000 times better. On top of this, the characters are completely worthless, emotionless, plot vehicles, that do stupid things for stupid reasons, and everything feels so contrived, just to do what he wants the plot to do. His linking and framing them is just bad, and when you get some short stories that are supposed to be by/or/about certain characters, none of them ring true, their all written the same, all with that Palahniuk prose. Which - either as I'm getting older --or-- from reading too much of his work, I'm realizing is just bad. (I am also so sick of his throwing in random 'facts' to try and seem like a know-it-all on topics, especially since the facts are completely 100% BS and he's even admitted that he makes them up, and that that's not the point, and that in fictional novels {like this} its ok to make up random facts to insert into novels and act as if they are facts - in the framework of a novel. In my opinion, that's just trash, and trash writing.)

      None of the short stories are that compelling or interesting or even fun to read. Their mostly just slop and schlock and 'envelope pushing' to just see how much gore or disgusting or revolting things he can put on the page to get you to go "OMG WOWZERZ!!~~!!!". It's 80s and 90s style radio shock-jock crap, like a Howard Stern transcript in novel fiction form.

      I think I am truly and well over Palahniuk. Fight Club was good for it's time, Survivor was good, Choke was good. Rant was a fun and interesting novel even in the later Chuck era (and actually might be my favorite of his). But his style is so over-played out, so poor, and overall its just so grinding. So many of his novels have now just become horrible stories and poor writing that I can barely read them (and its not the material, its the story/plot and the writing). Almost all of his newer novels are just downright dreadful plot/story/writing (Tell-All, Pygmy, Damned/Doomed, Beautiful You,etc.).

      Time to retire Chuck Palahniuk I feel for good.
    • 3/5
      I wouldn't call this a novel. It's a novella, at best, that creates a setting for the characters within the novella to tell their short stories. Frankly, this would have been a better book if was just a collection of short stories without the bullshit novella that ties them all together. It doesn't need that connection. The short stories have nothing to do with the novella that is intertwined. Most of the time, I found myself skipping, or skimming most of the novella, and just reading the sort stories. Because, the short stories were mostly quite insane and interesting to read. The novella was boring as fuck. Sure, they had to resort to cannibalism to stay alive, but who gives a fuck? All of those characters are useless assholes, who deserve to get eaten anyway.

      So, yea. This book is completely fucked in the head. I'm pretty sure the author was on acid when he wrote this shit. I'm glad I read it, for the completely fucked up bits, but I'm still pissed off that I had to wade through the bullshit of that novella just to get to the good short story bits.

      3/5, just for the redeeming fucked up bits. But seriously, fuck novellas. Fuck 'em in their dirty assholes. Unless they're really good. Then, fuck them in their dirty assholes with a bit of spit for lube.
    • 2/5
      In order to understand this book, it helps to know a little about its genesis. Haunted began its existence as a collection of short stories, but collections don't sell so well and Palahniuk wanted to receive maximum return for his investment. By incorporating in a novella he had been working on as a framing narrative, he was able to release the book as a novel and ensure better sales.

      The best way to read the book is as a short story collection, which the publisher has made easy for the reader to do. Turn to the back page. There you'll see a list of all the short stories. You can read them in order, or just hop around as you would with any other short story collection.

      These aren't all winners, which is generally true of short story collections, but there are some real gems.

      The best is probably the Cassandra sequence, which includes "The Nightmare Box," a nice Twilight Zone-style tale of confronting the unnameable. It's one of the few stories that dips into the supernatural, as Palahniuk prefers finding the frightening or weird in the everyday.

      The most infamous story is "Guts," in which a teen has an unfortunate incident at the bottom of a pool. It has a tense, sickening claustrophobia that shows the full potential of Palahniuk's take on horror. Though not all of the stories are quite so visceral, most manage a twisted idea or two, sometimes used to humorous effect.

      "Speaking Bitterness" involves a women's support group where things take an odd turn, and recalls Shirley Jackson's tales of the terror that lurks beneath the domestic. "Civil Twilight," about a city threatened by a seemingly invisible monster, creates a convincing atmosphere of dread, but unfortunately the end is a little weak, as if the author got bored with writing a horror story. "Dissertation," though a little on the talky side, is an interesting twist on the werewolf legend. "Crippled" finds the narrator trapped in a shed as a woman he's been spying on plots how best to get rid of him.

      There's admittedly a few duds. "Swan Song," about a journalist on the outs trying to score a big story, isn't scary or tense at all, and its anti-journalism stance is so one-sided it could have been ghostwritten by Dean Koontz. "Evil Spirits" has an interesting variation on the killer plague concept, but Palahniuk's style is so at odds with the way that the narrator (a very sheltered 22-year old woman) would speak that I felt jarred out of the story. "Ambition," about an artist who figures out how to get his paintings into museums, starts strong but sort of fritters away into a half-hearted satire on the art world.

      Once you've read all of the stories, you can go back and read the novella and the "poetry." (I write it in scare quotes, because Palahniuk is of the "it's poetry because the formatting is all different" school of poetry. The book may start with an epigraph from Edgar Allen Poe, but Palahniuk has no interest in naughty rotten rhyming.) The "poetry" is mostly inoffensive if forgettable.

      As to the novella, well, the premise is that the characters are all the narrators of the collected stories. They end up locked in a building, telling each other their various stories. It sounds like an intriguing set-up, but unfortunately this is the weakest part of the book.

      It's clear Palahniuk banged it out in a hurry. It's lazily written, terribly sloppy and lacking Palahniuk's usual sense of headlong pace. Gone, too, are the sometimes fascinating characters that populate his fiction, replaced by complete cartoons with nothing in the way of personalities or plausible motivations. Palahniuk compensates by upping the shock value but in a way that quickly becomes tedious. (Unlike in the stories, where the outre elements tend to be more effective.)

      I know I'd rather pick up a good short story collection than a mediocre novel, which is why I strongly recommend starting with the stories.
    • 2/5
      Being a huge Palahniuk fan, I'll just have to say I'm very disappointed in this book. It has the typical amusing-ness I've come to love but there just isn't much holding the book together. Next.
    • 3/5
      One of the stories from this book is famous for making people very sick, so sick that when Chuck reads it to a group at one of his appearances, people have left, thrown up and been outraged. It's a great book but not his best, although that story and a few others from this book made the read VERY well worth it.
    • 2/5
      I noticed a lot of people are assuming bad reviews are based on the fact the book is gross. I do feel this book is unnecessarily graphic, using shock as a gimmick at times, but the problem lies in the fact that these are supposed to be stories told by different people, but they are all written in the same Chuck Palahniuk voice. I do like this voice, chorus and all, but when you have several different, unrelated people telling independent stories, they should probably sound like different people. Also, the broad range from interesting to boring in the stories brings it down a notch. Three stars because I did really enjoy some stories, like Guts, despite the gore.
    • 3/5
      Haunted is a work in the Decameron-Canterbury Tales mode, where a group of people come together and tell stories. Well, sort of. Palahniuk has 17 misfits trap themselves in a deserted theatre on a writer's workshop, together with the organiser [soon killed off] and his nurse/companion. Instead of taking the opportunity to create meaningful prose , the candidates decide unanimously that the experience they are undergoing is the story, and resolve to make it more dramatic by reversing the conditions of their envirnoment. Air conditioning, food, running water - all are tampered with to create a shocking and harrowing account. As the book continues, so the characters resort to increasingly extreme and disturbing measures to distinguish themselves from their fellow sufferers. At the same time, Palahniuk is telling their stories: each is given a name discriptive of their personality [eg. Comrade Snarky, Lady Baglady, Sister Vigilante] and has their own 'poem' and 'tale' It is these tales that form the central core of the book and which have caused the most controversy, because Haunted seems to be a book you love or hate. Distubing, dark, gross-out, funny, erotic, disgusting - all these terms and more are used to label the little histories Chuck tells. Personally, although I am not a huge fan of his writing, I found this book intriguing and very morish. And I LOVED 'Guts'.
    • 1/5
      Eewww Gross. Is this susposed to be under catagorized under dark humor because I didn't find any humor in it at all. But then again I did finish reading it. I feel guilty, it's like staring at a car accident.
    • 2/5
      **spoilers**

      I lost interest when none of the stories came anywhere near being as disgusting or fascinating as the first one: "Guts" by Saint Gut-Free whereby the narrator has an unfortunate masturbation accident that is now burned on my psyche forever.
    • 3/5
      One of the most deeply disturbing books I have read in a long time. I might write more of a review... but I might not.
    • 4/5
      This book of short stories is as black as it's cover suggests. This is no great surprise coming from Palahniuk. The macabre and blackly humorous topics that each of the short stories dealt with had me swinging between disgust and delight. The way all of the short stories tied together into one overarching tale, I thought, was great. It is a hard book to recommend, however, knowing that only about 5 out of 10 people could read beyond the chapter: Guts.
    • 4/5
      What can I say about Haunted? I could recite an analysis of its structure, a number of short stories tied together by a main narrative about seventeen people on the run from something, with stories to tell, locked up together in an abandoned building for the amusement of a kid with progeria and far too much money to spend. I could talk about the disgusting premises for some of the short stories: intestines sucked down in the pool filter while masturbating, biblethumpers melting in boiling water, the gruesome murder of private detectives, nightmare boxes and other delightful themes. I could talk about the horrors of people mutilating themselves to make sure that when they're found, they'll have stories to tell far worse than the one they're living. Of toes, fingers, noses hacked off for fame and fortune. I could talk about the metaphors on the surface and those a few levels down. About humanity's need to suffer in order to feel like life is worth living. They're all worthy topics of discussion and review, but in the end what this boils down to is a very disturbing dissection of the human spirit in all its ugly voraciousness: we are what maims, we are what kills. We are our own suffering.