Blog Writer // Allegra Gonzalez
When I think of fall, two types of people come to mind. There are pumpkin spice latte people— think pumpkin patches, autumn candles, and Uggs paired with fall-esque colored outfits. Then I think of those who watch the 1920 Nosferatu silent film (classified as one of the creepiest movies of all time), those who enjoy the day getting dark by six pm, wander around cemeteries, and plan an original, frightening, Halloween costume.
Just to clear things up, I am much more type A than type B. I take pleasure in my Pumpkin Spice Everything goodies from Trader Joe’s. Nonetheless, when it comes to literature, my preference lies on the counterpart of Laurie Gilmore’s The Pumpkin Spice Cafe. When the leaves start to turn, Chuck Palanhiuk’s Haunted is what my Halloween spirit desires.
There are no words to describe Haunted. When I try to recommend this book to someone, every time without failure, I find myself at a loss for words. Everything that could happen in a book happens—it quite literally disrupts all the socially constructed norms for a short story collection. To describe its theme, characters, plot, and setting I use the following adjectives: gruesome, abhorrent, disquieting, and revolting. Yet, it’s one of my favorite books. Chuck Palanhiuk, most known for his book Fight Club is the author of Haunted, published in 2005. The true appeal this book carries is its ability to create horror without using a ouija board or possessed devils. However, creating horror this way is at the cost of using gruesome instances and devices that will make a reader squirm and look away; pedophiles, cannibalism, and murder covers just a small portion of the atrocities the reader will encounter.
The book is made up of twenty-three short stories featuring seventeen main characters who see an advertisement for a Three Month Writing Retreat where participants would be able to disappear from their lives, leave everything behind, and return with a masterpiece. The organizer Mr. Whittier is, of course, not who everyone assumes him to be. Seventeen people say yes, and seventeen victims pack their bags and get on a bus that will certainly change their lives.
The players are locked in an old theater which includes various rooms, making the atmosphere and setting vary a lot within one single building. Mr. Whitter provides all the basic necessities so they can live and write, creating a masterpiece. All while he observes them, as if they’re his own little experiment. The characters themselves mention how they are the modern version of Villa Diodati, summer of 1816. It was there that the iconic works The Vampyre and Shelley’s Frankenstein were written. Yet, a few chapters into Palanhiuk’s story it is evident no character has the intention of writing something, they just want to be rich and famous.
The players pass the time telling each other stories. Each character has their own poem, backstory, and present story. Concurrently, the characters sabotage their living living space, reenacting their own version of their hunger games. They jeopardize their water, electricity, and rip open the food so it rots, along with many other questionable choices. All of this is with the goal that when they are “found” their story will become plastered all over the media. They convince each other that this story will be much more commercial than writing anything, this will be their fast track to fame, power, and money. They’re playing with fire, selling their soul to the devil.
Characters fight for survival in the most unhinged ways. They eat, destroy, and bond with each other all at the same time, fabricating the story they will tell the news reporters when—or if— they are “saved.”. The book is full of twists and turns, no one is who anyone thinks they are, and even then they are a bizarre bunch. There is Lady Baglady, a wealthy woman who pretends to be homeless during her leisure time, seeking an escape from the monotony of her glamorous lifestyle. There is the Earl of Slander, a starving journalist who murders a celebrity just to have an entertaining piece to write. The story naturally has a big plot twist and interconnection with all the characters. The twist does clear up and offer a deeper understanding to the book, yet Palanhkiuk leaves most of the interpretation to the reader. The book is not meant to be fully understood. It’s too weird, too unconventional to be put into a box. But that’s the haunting beauty of it.
My favorite short story is “The Nightmare Box.” To start, the story is about Ms. Clark, Mr. Whitter’s assistant, and her daughter Cassandra.The story describes Ms. Clark and her daughter’s experience at a gallery opening.Ms. Clark, Cassandra, and most of the gallery attendees were intrigued by a camera-looking artifact, lacquered and polished to a smooth shade of black. Legend says that the box always has a ticking sound and it stops randomly; the ticking could stop in the next hour or in three years, and once it stops anyone can look inside, press the clicker, and see something. What the victim sees, no one knows, but during the gallery opening it stopped ticking. And Cassandra looked. “A couple days later she cut off her eyelashes. She flopped a suitcase open across the foot of the bed and she started putting things in, shoes and socks and her underwear, then taking things out. Packing and repacking. After she disappeared, the suitcase was still there. Half full or half empty.” Cassandra reaches insanity, she was never the same after she looked, but she wasn’t the only victim of the box. These snippets of the story don’t even begin to cover it, its depth and hidden meanings. This is my favorite story because it captivates the reader and interconnects some of the characters before the Writers Retreat, offering readers an insight of what happened before and making the present be understood somewhat better.
When the book first came out, it became very popular for a pretty disturbing reason; people were fainting while reading its first short story, “Guts.” Palanhiuk recalls that when he first read the story at a book signing, two young men fainted. Since then, the victim list keeps growing. “67 people have fainted while I’ve read ‘Guts.’ Over the internet, I now hear stories of other people making their peers pass out by reading it aloud. So that number keeps growing. For a nine-page story, some nights it takes thirty minutes to read” (Palahniuk). So yes, Haunted is a true horror book, something that has been lacking in recent years.
There is a fine line between enjoyable horror and straightforward savagery that lacks a plot or a backbone to support the icky details. It is hard to defend Palahniuk in this sense, as many hated the book. Many thought there wasn’t really a story, everything was too random and incoherent, making it feel like a satire piece. On Goodreads, Haunted has a 3.5 rating. A one-star review comments: “It seems like he [Palanhiuk] just sat down at the computer and thought, ‘What are the most disgusting possible things I could write about?’ and wrote that. At the last minute, he added characters” (Maggie M). A contrasting a five-star review: “Haunted is a collection of stories and characters that will absolutely make your skin crawl, and it’s mind-boggling how much territory it covers, almost all of it located in left field. It’s doubtful that you’ve ever read anything quite comparable (that goes for most of Palahniuk’s other work too). The way Chuck can expand an idea or create a plot from the most unexpected places, then making it compelling and riveting and… well, let’s just say you’ve never read anything like it. It’s sick, twisted, funny, sad, shocking; hell it’s practically a trigger for every intense feeling humans are capable of having” (Roberta S). When reading this book, the reader needs to have an open mind. It is crucial to look up trigger warnings before starting it, since Palanhiuk does not hold back and covers some pretty disturbing topics.
I think Haunted is controversial because it is different. In recent times, the same type of horror is being reused—actually, most of the mainstream literary world is repetitive and can become unappealing for avid readers. Haunted makes the reader feel something. I am not saying it will invoke delight, but Palanhiuk is able to masterfully create one thing: Horror. Palanhiuk’s characters are all expertly crafted, each rich in depth. They are all well-rounded with meticulously written backstories that explain why they wanted to join the retreat and escape their lives, and why they act the way they do during the experiment. Chuck Palanhiuks’s Haunted is not for the faint-hearted. Yet undeniably, it is a fantastic horror book, an unconventional piece of literature that satisfies all the cravings for horror enthusiasts; the perfect halloween read.
Sources:
“Haunted.” Goodreads, www.goodreads.com/book/show/22288.Haunted?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=rIfC01tW9R&rank=2. Accessed 16 Oct. 2024.
“H a U N T E D: The Author.” H A U N T E D | The Author, www.randomhouse.com/doubleday/palahniuk/haunted/html/haunted_aboutAuthor.html#:~:text=In%20all%2C%2067%20people%20have,takes%20thirty%20minutes%20to%20read. Accessed 16 Oct. 2024.