The Haunted Book

by Jeremy Dyson

* What unspeakable horror glimpsed in the basement of a private library in West Yorkshire drove a man to madness and an early grave?

· What led to an underground echo chamber in a Manchester recording studio being sealed up for good?

· What creature walks the endless sands of Lancashire's Fleetwood Bay, and what connects it to an unmanned craft washed ashore in Port Elizabeth, nearly six thousand miles away?

In 2009 Jeremy Dyson was contacted by a journalist wanting help bringing together accounts of true life ghost stories from across the British Isles.

The Haunted Book chronicles the journey Dyson, formerly a hardened sceptic, went on to uncover the truth behind these tales.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Short Stories, Fantasy, Paranormal, Supernatural, Books About Books

352 pages, Paperback

First published October 29, 2012

About the author

Jeremy Dyson is an English screenwriter and, along with Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, a participant in The League of Gentlemen. He has also created and co-wrote the popular west-end show Ghost Stories.

Reviews

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Jeremy Dyson's short story collection The Cranes That Build the Cranes at the end of last year and found it average, but I continued to be interested in his latest work The Haunted Book, partly because of its interesting premise. The idea is that the author of this book - supposedly the real Jeremy Dyson - has been sent a collection of strange true stories by a journalist named Aiden Fox. Dyson then travels around England to the various places these stories originated in order to investigate them further, and along the way he is introduced to further ghostly tales contained within older versions of the same type of book. Rather amusingly, this concept had evidently proved so convincing that my local library had shelved The Haunted Book alongside books on studies of the paranormal, rather than in the fiction section.

As this is effectively a collection of short ghost stories, however, I've done what I usually do and briefly summarised and reviewed each one individually below.

The Haunted Book
Kitson from Nealon: A womanising marketing executive buys a dilapidated house with an eccentric ex-occupant, and finds himself disturbed by the atmosphere of his new home. A fairly routine story to start off the collection, which I found interesting but not really scary. I didn't really see what Greg's sex life had to do with anything, and if the point was supposed to be that he was going to end up being haunted by a PHONE, of all things, because he routinely gave the women he slept with fake numbers... Well, I thought that was ridiculous, really! Not that impressive, but it didn't put me off - I didn't like the first story in Cranes and went on to enjoy some of the others much more.
The Diary of Ramon Huld: A series of diary entries from a lone yachtsman attempting to complete a round-the-world trip. Far better than the first story, with a much more effective atmosphere. I wished this could have been fleshed out into a longer story.
A Wire With Gain: The former members of a rock band reunite in middle age, revisiting a recording studio where they previously encountered some spooky goings-on. Longer than the stories that preceded it, this was entertaining and creepy. I was a bit disappointed, though, that what happened to Gabby was never made clear - I kind of got the impression that she'd committed suicide, but this wasn't confirmed, which seemed odd as if that had been the case, it would have made the tale more frightening.
Ward Four Sixteen: A student accompanies his friend's girlfriend to volunteer at a hospital for the mentally handicapped, and gets lost while searching for a special care ward. I found this by far the most disturbing story in the book - it genuinely freaked me out - but it was also the most confusing and unsatisfying, both because the 'haunting' didn't make sense and because I found it hard to understand who the characters were to each other, what time period the story was taking place in, etc.

This Book is Haunted
An Encounter by Water: A solitary doctor takes a walk by a canal, and meets an inquisitive old man. This was one of my favourites from the collection, and more than any of the others it felt like a classic ghost story. I loved the touch of what was obviously a modern mobile phone being mentioned in a story ostensibly dating from the 1970s!
The Pleasure Park: A newspaper report details the endeavours of a family who are obsessed with finding a 'phantom' theme park they glimpsed years before. This one, though short, was another highlight - the article format was used to great effect in order to suggest how this obsession has contributed to the family's problems.
Tetherdown Lock: A group of students are taken to a mysterious government facility to undertake maintenance work, but a couple of them start to be preoccupied with finding out what the place's true function is. Another good story with a very intriguing twist and a great ending - in fact, writing this review has made it clear to me how much I preferred the stories in this section over the others.

A Book of Hauntings
Case One: A librarian develops a fascination with a particularly salacious collection of prints; while staying late to study them, he becomes aware that he is sharing the library with a strange presence. I liked the detail in this story but I found it all a bit far-fetched and silly.
Case Two: An ex-policeman, now awaiting execution after committing murder, tells the tale of the case that brought him into contact with his victim. As with the previous story, I liked the detail involved - the tension surrounding the sleep clinic was nicely built up - but thought the conclusion was over the top.

Glimpses in the Twilight
The book becomes (deliberately) more incoherent towards the end, and the final part is one of the shortest - intended, I think, to add some context to the elements that link the earlier segments, rather than being a particularly meaningful story in its own right. I appreciated it in this respect, but it didn't have much of an impact otherwise.

The Haunted Book as a whole
I thought this was a really good idea and I enjoyed reading it, particularly the sense that I didn't know where it was going to go next. Overall, though, I do think it works better as a collection of short stories than a complete narrative. For the conceit to truly work, it would have to genuinely feel as if a) the introduction and interjections from 'Dyson' were actually part of a work of non-fiction, and b) the 'extracts' had a markedly different voice and tone from the rest of the stories. Although there was enough of a change from one section to another to differentiate them, they definitely had enough similarities to make it obvious they were the work of the same author. I was also disappointed to find there was no real conclusion to the author's journey or the reason for the connections between the books; with this in mind, the abstract direction the book veered off in towards the end felt like a bit of a cop-out. Better than The Cranes That Build the Cranes, and worth a read if you're a ghost-story lover like me, but not brilliant and I would definitely have preferred it if the framing narrative had been tied up properly.

[Kirsty · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have read many supernatural stories of both the fact and fiction variety since I was a child, but The Haunted Book easily ranks as the worst.

Instead of chilling, gothic style stories woven into a tense plot, you get a ridiculous collection of insipid, pointless amateur rubbish. The stories are in no way scary, and I do believe I have read children's books that were more frightening (and made much more sense)!

The flow was very stilted and jarring, without any definate aim or direction. When it comes to the point where it's a book within a book within a book, you're entering into ridiculous and pretentious territory. As the book goes on I felt like the author was trying to show how complex and creative he could be, but instead of marvelling at his "cleverness" I really felt like setting fire to the book and clapping my hands with glee as it turned to ashes!

The last few pages just nosed dived into obscurity and I have to admit that I struggled to follow what was happening by this time. None of the plot threads added up to a satisfying and cohesive ending, and it just seemed illogical to me. I have never had book try to "talk" directly to me before, or try to convince me that I am stuck in the book and my life is not real, but just a construct. I think the author has been watching the Matrix films one to many times...

[Ellie · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Jeremy Dyson is contacted by journalist Aiden Fox to uncover Britain’s hidden ghost stories, he embarks a hardened sceptic. As he sets off around the country he learns how the mundane can turn terrifying in an instant.

The success of many of these stories is the complete normality running up to the ghost encounter. One minute you’re reading about the minutiae of everyday lives and the next an edge of fear has crept into the text. The fear that a noise or a touch can bring is somehow much more real than monsters that lurk in the dark. Hardened horror fans may find the pace a little slow but I found several of the stories really gave me the creeps.

The Haunted Book is rather ambiguously marketed, presented as a collection of ghost stories from around Britain sourced by Dyson. It is left up to the reader to decide the truth but inevitably it becomes clear it if fiction masquerading as non-fiction. Even if you are inclined to believe in the stories themselves, the fact that there’s a book within a book, within a book would leave very little that could be genuinely attributed to Dyson.

Like many short story collections, there are hits and misses and I found myself skipping over a few. Yet there was always the feeling that you could turn the page to be confronted with something terrifying and the lack of it just adds a little to the tension. What really lifted the book for me was the end; hidden away in those black pages. If you are a book geek you will love it. Maybe every book should end that way!

The physical hardback is certainly one of those books that begs to be picked up. Indeed, when reading at my desk during lunch (because I’m a big wimp and need to read scary things in daylight) several people came and leafed through it. The designer has managed to replicate the old journal look perfectly.

[Joanne Sheppard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeremy Dyson is the member of The League of Gentlemen team who doesn’t appear on screen. He’s also the co-writer of the stage hit Ghost Stories, a deeply unsettling play in the ‘portmanteau’ format beloved of British horror films of the 1960s and 70s, in which several separate stories are told within a overarching narrative. Like his fellow Gentlemen Reece Shearsmith and Mark Gatiss, Dyson seems to have a frame of horror interest that’s incredibly similar to my own, heavily influenced by pre-1975 films, short story anthologies and slightly cheaply-produced books called things like ‘The Hamlyn Book of Ghosts’. If he’s got a pack of vintage Horror Top Trumps knocking around, used to collect Armada Ghost Books, always chose the Dracula ice lolly and got Shiver & Shake annual for Christmas every year, he’s probably just me in a parallel universe in which I am inexplicably a successful northern writer.

The Haunted Book, then – also in the ‘portmanteau’ format, and presented as a work of non-fiction in which Dyson is commissioned by the mysterious Aiden Fox to compile a collection of mostly contemporary British ghost stories – should by rights have been the perfect read for me. And, as I would have expected, a lot of it did certainly resonate with me.

Each story-within-the-story (and there are many) is a gem. Some of them are ghost stories in the conventional sense. A man is haunted by a ghostly voice from a disconnected phone, for instance, and an evil spirit stalks an old library. Some of them, however, are something different, and ultimately more unsettling: the one that has continued to nag at my subconscious since I finished the book over a week ago features no actual ‘ghosts’ at all, but rather a family trying to find an abandoned amusement park they once visited but have never been able to locate again. It’s a story where what remains unsaid and unexplained is more disturbing than what is. And most – perhaps all – the stories have a strong psychological undercurrent that suggests that what we’re really frightened of most of all is ourselves.

There’s more to The Haunted Book than just a collection of stories. However, it’s almost impossible to go into much detail about what is arguably the most interesting aspect of the book without giving away the end, and the experience of reading it does rely somewhat on that end coming as a surprise. It’s probably enough to say that the title of the book is no accident, as Dyson (in his fictional guise as the protagonist, at least) discovers books within books within books, all written by authors with curiously significant names. Those who went to see Ghost Stories may remember what happens to Dr Goodman, the rationalist sceptic and professor of parapsychology (played by Andy Nyman in the production I saw) who tells the stories themselves, and also the degree to which the audience were drawn into the production. Perhaps elements of The Haunted Book will come as less of a surprise to them.

Without giving any further explanation, I’ll just say that while the end of The Haunted Book is undeniably a clever one that elevates the book above a straightforward ghost story collection, I also found its high-concept artifice a little distancing. The element of the novel that’s supposed to really draw the reader in was, for me, the very thing that made me feel as if I was taking a step back and losing contact with the chilling undercurrent of the book overall. Perhaps the fault lies with me, and I was too busy looking out for it, too keen to analyse. But all that said, I can’t help but admire the way Dyson brings the novel together at its conclusion for its sheer ingenuity. It's an ending that will stay with me for some time, and I suspect it will stand up to repeated re-readings.

If you have even the slightest interest in ghost stories, I'd recommend The Haunted Book. And if you’ve read it, do let me know what you think.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoy a good ghost story. Or perhaps ‘enjoy’ is the wrong word, since I’m both more and less demanding of them than I would be of literary fiction. I go to them for total involvement, and to some extent I’m willing to set aside my usual critical faculties in pursuit of that. I've always had this fantasy of finding some obscure volume of occult writing and being affected by it to the point of genuine existential terror – hence my love of Mark Danielewski’s cult classic ‘House of Leaves’, for example.

‘The Haunted Book’ isn’t the first collection to adopt a frame narrative that masquerades as a series of true accounts, but it’s refreshing to find something which adopts the conventions of horror fiction even while manipulating them to suit its own ends. It’s interesting, and very well written; and yes, it is haunting in more than one sense.

An introduction by the author frames the book as a collaboration with a journalist named Aiden Fox, who writes columns on supernatural occurrences for a local paper in the south-west of England. Fox himself doesn’t appear in the stories which follow, but each one is preceded by a link from a narrator (apparently Dyson himself) who travels directly to the site at which each story occurs. He even goes so far as to give road directions as to how to get to most of the locations yourself, should you be interested.

The stories themselves are genuinely inspired. I don’t want to go into detail as to what they’re about because much of the pleasure I found in this book was in discovering each one on its own merits. Dyson has clearly read widely in the traditions of British horror fiction, and he really does know his stuff. For the most part his tales eschew gore and violence in favour of atmosphere, yet they aren’t leaden or overtly threatening; they lure you in, keep you wondering exactly when and how the shock will come until sometimes it doesn’t come at all. Or sometimes it does. Some don’t even really feature anything explicitly paranormal, but a deep vein of weirdness runs through every one.

And then something else unexpected happens. About three-fifths of the way through the book, the author does something unusual with the form of the text which colours what follows. Again, I don’t want to say too much about this except that one of the later stories relies upon the narrative gear-shift in order to deliver an incredibly clever twist in its tail. That aside, it wasn’t ever entirely clear to me what purpose the change in narrative style was meant to achieve. Was it simply another way of forestalling what would normally be a ‘big reveal’ about the true nature of Dyson’s apparently non-fictional persona?

I don’t know. And that might turn out to be the most interesting thing about this book. The ending itself is one of the strangest I’ve read in any work of fiction for some time; on one level it colours what came before in the light of new knowledge, but it still withholds revelation. Certain themes, things the stories have in common are underlined, but it frustrates any attempt to link them all together in any kind of grand conspiracy. The question of where all these stories came from – which in a way is the main question of the book -- is left unanswered. And when you think about it, isn’t that a really weird demand to make from a work of fiction in the first place?

(One final thing: if you’re thinking of buying this book, get it in hard copy rather than as an ebook. You won’t be sorry.)

[EDIT 27/2/13: Upgraded this to five stars because I'm still thinking about most of these stories over three months later.]

[Phillip · Rating 1 out of 5]

Preposterous tosh. There I was expecting this book to be full of chills yet the stories are about as scary as an episode of Scooby Doo. This is one book that does not seem to know what it is, and you are left with the feeling that the author is trying to be too clever for his own good. The writing style is actually quite good, however, there are countless spelling mistakes and even missing words, so whoever proof read this didn’t do a very good job. These are supposed to be fiction stories based on true locations and experiences, yet the endings left me feeling disappointed and not the least bit frightened, which is a shame as some of the locations seemed to be the perfect location for a good ghost story. If you want to read ghost stories written by someone who knows how to scare the reader, then read the works of M. R. James, but don’t waste your money on this!

[Alex Sarll]

A nest of ghost stories from the chap who, for all his subsequent work in various media, would to me remain 'the non-performing one of the League of Gentlemen' even were he to get a clean sweep of the Nobels. This, though, has much more in common with his Ghost Stories, given it similarly follows a man not being entirely honest with himself as he in turn follows up on various spooky accounts, realising too late that he too is embroiled in something uncanny. More of a problem is that the accounts have a certain saminess of tone and personnel; most centre on a man of somewhat reserved and particular habits, for instance – although one of the exceptions, with a teenage lead, is possibly the best thing here, for the way it breaks the book's level surface with a very well-written evocation of the tension and the sense of greatness to be found in first lust. Elsewhere...well, I suppose you could read it as a deliberate comment on the way there was a sort of house style to those collected accounts of 'true' ghost stories on which Dyson, like me, was brought up, but when even the books within books within books which start cropping up as part of that eponymous haunting mostly read the same, it still feels like squandering a promising device. The main effect is that we lose Dyson's linking narration, where I was rather enjoying the accounts of dragging his family to places with eerie histories, simply because I recognised it so well (is this why people like autofiction so much?). Obviously scariness is almost as subjective as funniness or hotness, but for me this never approached the sense of plummeting through layer after layer of story towards a terrifying core which is present in something like House of Leaves – or indeed Dyson's own Ghost Stories, in its stage version at least. Nor were the stories taken individually as chilling as all that, tending to build unease well but then cop out a little at the climax. Though admittedly it may not have helped that I read this in the afternoon, on summer lawns. Still, if nothing else, it amuses me that all of the League have now done stories set in haunted studios, and I did love the image of a man caught by a resurgence of an incident from his youth trying as solace to remind himself of his achievements, his adult life – "But it was like trying to warm himself round a photograph of a flame."

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

*Spoiler alert. I loved this book. The tale about the mental institution, forget the title, was particularly chilling, like being stuck inside a nightmarish public information film from the 1970s. My only gripe is that the back story, about the author's collaboration with a reporter, seemed to fragment and eventually disintegrate entirely - what happened? I expected there to be some kind of resolution but none was forthcoming. Having said that, it's still a fantastic read. The Aickman influence, well documented by Dyson, is very evident, as are the other formative influences, many of which are mentioned in the introduction. I read it on Kindle, which was fine, but I suspect the print version is probably more immersive, with the illustrations and design no doubt adding to the experience. Thoroughly recommended.

[Judy Abbott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tekinsiz Kitap, Jeremy Dyson
Domingo Yayınları
Algan Sezgintüredi çevirisi


İngiltere kırsalında gerçekten yaşanmış ürkütücü hayalet öykülerinin derlemesi diyebiliriz. Beklediğim kadar korkutucu değildi.

[Aidan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Never have I wanted Goodreads to add half stars more than I have with this book. I want to give it ⭐⭐½ - exactly half as I'm so torn about how I feel about this...

I picked this up at the height of a League of Gentlemen obsession when I was once again rewatching that show. I'd seen this book on the shelves of Waterstones a few times and the cover had always drawn me in. So after finishing the series, I thought I'd give it a read.

At first, I was taken aback by the short story format. Based on the blurb, I hadn't expected this and was prepared for one story (presumably including stone circles based on the cover, though this never really went anywhere). Eventually, I got used to this structure and it became quite fun ranking the stories and checking back to the map at the start of the book and ticking off the locations that I had now read. Some stories here were great. The asylum one was by far my favourite as it genuinely creeped me out. The Leeds Library one was also an especially strong one and another that was actually chilling. There were also much weaker ones: the one on the boat and the one in the fairground are the first that spring to mind. My only confusion comes from the fact there are 10 locations on the map and yet I have no memory of the London one? Are there actually only 9 stories in the book? Or has there been some strange time warp there that an entire chapter has faded from my memory?

Despite this short story format, I started to notice a few interlinking threads that were starting to build. The appearance of a ghost with hair over its face being the main one of these. It began to appear in numerous stories so I assumed we were building to something. The last 20 or so pages of the book were black so I could see that something was coming from the moment I started. Perhaps this set my expectations too high because... Well, nothing actually happened. The book just ended. The black pages were dedicated to "The Book" itself guiding me out from the fictional world and back to the real world. It supposedly told me that I had become too invested and was lost in the fictional world that it had created. I'm sure this works for readers who were invested, but for me I just found myself bemused. It kept saying "you can put the book down at any moment" despite the narrator protesting that they could not take their eyes from the text. But I personally could have happily put the book down at any moment.

What this book did well was filling the reader with a sense of dread. It was one of those where, after reading it at night, the dark did seem a little darker. You would want to go straight to sleep without exploring that darkness. I thought this worked especially well when Jeremy Dyson's linking first-person chapters ended. It was as though he had been holding the reader's hand through the first creepy stories but now left you on your own. This was effective, though it did start to lose my interest. Having Dyson rationalise the surrounding stories made them somewhat more interesting and believable and I wish his narration had continued for a little longer. My complaint really is that this sense of dread never went anywhere. So who was that ghost? Because the final story of the book would have you believe that she is a 17th century witch. Yet the black pages claim that she is my daughter? As it happens, I don't have a daughter. I'm just confused as to who this ghost was and why she kept reappearing in several unconnected stories?

I didn't expect my review for this one to be so long. Maybe I didn't get it. All the reviews emblazoned on the cover of the book claim to love it. But they also speak of the book being funny and I didn't laugh once. Maybe it was supposed to be a comedy, while I expected a horror? Who knows. I've just never read a book that I've been so neutral on. Reading it, I couldn't decide whether I found it boring or whether I was enjoying it. And now that I've finished, I can't decide whether I liked it or not...

[Nancy Oakes]

coming soon, but for now -- what is with all of the "not scary" reviews for the stories in this book? For me a large majority of these gave off a thoroughly creepy vibe, augmented by reading them in the dark by booklight alone, well into the wee hours of the morning. I also love the book-within-a-book sort of thing that happens here. These stories were inspired by the work of Robert Aickman, Charles Fort, local folklore and more., making it really tough to put the book down to sleep.

more shortly. I loved this book. Absolutely.

[Kerri MacKay · Rating 2 out of 5]

What was the point

[Alex Murphy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book. I love a good ghost story, throw in based on true events, and I’m all over it. I found this in my library’s non-fiction section, and that’s the first mistake. Others have mentioned the same on here. Its not a non-fiction book. It’s a book that starts off like a real-life author looking into real-life ghost stories, but like films like Fargo and The Blair Witch Project, its only ‘pretending’ to be a true story. This can sometime be a good gimmick, but this book is nowhere good enough to pull this off.

The book starts off with the author (real, imagined, a bit of both…I don’t know), being approached by a long-time reporter from a small local newspaper who has written a column about supernatural occurrences across the country, if he’d like to collect all his stories into one book. He agrees as he’s always had a love for ghost stories and goes off around the country visiting places this reporter has heard tales from. Each location is split into two parts; one in italics is the author writing a bit of personal information about the area he is in, followed by a short ghost story which I’m not sure is based on any true accounts or completely made up. These stories are ok, nothing really special. There are 4 of these…and then it gets stupid. While researching an area along a canal, he meets an old man outside a run-down cottage and asks him about the ghostly tales of the area. The old man disappears into the house and hands him an old book. Then the book turns into this book. Yep it becomes a book within a book. Oh, but it doesn’t stop there. After two stories there’s another book. So, it’s a book within a book, within a book. The narrator is long gone by this point. The stories get progressively more boring and sluggish. Then the last part is a bunch of pages with short paragraphs and sentences on, with someone trying to have a conversation. I don’t know between who. The narrator. A ghost. Me (you the reader). The book itself. Its convoluted and confusing. I didn’t get anything what was going on. Apparently, the number of stories is also significant (I don’t know why).

This was a book trying to be clever, and not having the skills to be able to pull it off. I think its trying to say this book (all books?) are haunted. The way the style dramatically changes from one to the other is seriously off putting, and with the stories varying in quality, none that are particularly great, most suffer from lack of direction, very poor endings (the one in bunker starts off well, but the ending…what?) and are not disturbing or scary. Some are really hard to follow with me re-reading bits to try to grasp what was going on.

I thought being the co-creator of the League of Gentlemen, this would be a dark, gothic book with flashes of black humour. There was none of this.

This was a massive let-down, with the author I feel trying to outsmart the reader in a semi-pretensions way, by making me not being able to understand it. There is no secret reveal that suddenly becomes clear or anything like that. Miss this one out and read a standard ghost story. The oddness of the book is not even enough for me to recommend it

[Janette Fleming · Rating 4 out of 5]

What unspeakable horror glimpsed in the basement of a private library in West Yorkshire drove a man to madness and an early grave?

What led to an underground echo chamber in a Manchester recording studio being sealed up for good?

What creature walks the endless sands of Lancashire's Fleetwood Bay, and what connects it to an unmanned craft washed ashore in Port Elizabeth, nearly six thousand miles away?

In 2009 Jeremy Dyson was contacted by a journalist wanting help bringing together accounts of true life ghost stories from across the British Isles.

The Haunted Book chronicles the journey Dyson, formerly a hardened sceptic, went on to uncover the truth behind these tales.


Love this review from the Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ent...

It's traditional to present ghost stories with an authenticating framing device: the dusty diary, the old newspaper clipping, the aged man who relates a terrible experience.

The shtick here is that a journalist, Aiden Fox, who writes a column about true ghostly encounters, has proposed a collaboration to Jeremy Dyson, the co-creator of The League of Gentlemen; he provides his extensive source material and Dyson will write up the stories as fiction. Dyson, or should that be "Dyson", accepts, and vows to visit all the locations. But that is just the start of the game.

The 10 stories which comprise The Haunted Book explore the conventions and tricks of the form, although some have no ghost at all. We begin with a straightforward haunted house yarn. A young man is taunted by calls from a disconnected telephone; but it seems that the clue lies in his own psychosexual make-up. The sense of a link between a character's sexual life and his supernatural experience intensifies as the book goes on, and is one of the unifying features of the collection. Another is the way that "Dyson" himself becomes a haunted figure, as he roams around the country following Fox's leads.

"A Wire with Gain" concerns the surviving (heh, heh, heh) members of an Eighties band, Zurau, who reunite to complete an album in the very studio where one of their number had a horrible experience. The recording terminology of the title becomes an elegant metaphor for time passing and opportunity lost.

After four tales, the book turns into a replica of a 1978 title, This Book is Haunted, within which lies perhaps the most terrifying tale, "Tetherdown Lock". The spirit of the writer Robert Aickman – much admired by Dyson – presides over all (one of Zurau's songs is named after an Aickman story). Aickman also ties sexuality and coercion in some of his creepiest tales. The last two formal tales, which purport to come from yet another source, "A Book of Hauntings", make this link explicit with a Leeds library haunted by a porn fiend, and a series of sex crimes out on't moors. But there's one more surprise for the reader, in the final, coal-black pages.

The Haunted Book sets out not merely to entertain, but to embody a creeping menace in the text itself. The trompe-l'oeil cover is just the start of the fun. Open it if you dare ….

[D.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've only read one other book by Dyson, but it was good enough for me to want to check this one out when it appeared (credit again to my library, who actually ordered it new when I asked for it!). Coincidentally, I've been reading a collection of M.R. James' ghost stories, and this fits in perfectly with that. In fact, many times I forgot what was going on in which book, they're so similar in tone, topic and style.
Dyson's writing is perfect. When I read the previous book (Cranes...), I was struck by how fluid and fine his style is. This time out, he's adapted his style to reflect not just the subject at hand (ghosts and general weirdness), but to change in order to ape different time periods' popular styles. He does this admirably, and if not for the gimmickry at play here, I'd almost believe these were the excerpts from various sources they claim to be.
I absolutely loved this book. It's the first time in a long time I was so creeped out by a story that I gave in to the infantile impulse to look around the dark room to make sure I wasn't being watched (though this was aided by the atmospheric video Amazon has to promote the book)!
This would have been a five-star book for me, except for one thing: the ending. Through the course of the tale(s), something is clearly being set up. I had no solid expectations of what that would be, but what it finally was I found vastly disappointing. I won't give it away, as I know there are plenty of readers who found the end clever and interesting. Not me. So, the book loses a star for crapping out at the end. But, if you're looking for a modern book of spooky stories with a classic bent, you could do far worse than The Haunted Book. (Do yourself a favour, though, and don't e-book it; I'm sure it'll lose something in the change from this beautifully-produced hardcover into a sheet of electro-text.)

[Nay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I'm not really sure what to make of this book. It starts off with an introduction by the author, Dyson, explaining his history with ghost stories and how he came to write this book. He then lays out some stories for our perusal, giving an account of his experiences when visiting the setting of each one. The book then takes a different turn by becoming another book of a similar name, again recounting some ghostly stories. And so on. I'm not even sure I fully understand the last few pages, so the less said about that the better.

The stories within the book were good, they didn't scare me but I enjoyed them as creepy little stories about the supernatural and the unknown. I have a feeling some of them will stick with me, as one or two did when I read Dyson's 'Never Trust A Rabbit' twelve years ago. I liked that they didn't provide an answer, letting the reader make their own mind up on what happened, why and how. And not only on the stories, but about the very essence of the book itself - why did Dyson write this book, and what happened to him on his journey? There is a running theme in the book which I didn't get till about halfway through, which I also enjoyed.

And there's also that nagging question that won't go away. Were any of the stories actual accounts from real people, or did they all come from Dyson's mind? I guess that's up to me to decide...

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book delivered more than I had expected. It presents itself as a portmanteau connecting stories based around the frame of Dyson collaborating with a local journalist to assemble his spooky column into a book.

It's quite an effective conceit. The idea of ready recorded stories needing to be qualified by a journey around haunted Britain is a mouth watering prospect. The only problem is the framing device disappears halfway through the book and is never really explained.

Not that it mattered much because the second half of the collection is based on an found tome full of old ghost stories. I really enjoyed these. It's a mix between Aickman and James.

I won't list my favourite stories in case it leads to spoilers. One thing I will say is I enjoyed every single one of them. Yes of course some more than others. The only downfall was the fading of the framing structure which sent me reading back to see if I'd missed a few pages.

If you loved ghost stories as a kid or read The Mysterious World books like me then you will appreciate this book. It's clear Dyson has a great love of the supernatural tale and it really shines though.

I give it four stars but in reality It's a four and a half.

[Chris Pettett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall a great collection of ghost stories - some more effective than others but no stinkers - in a beautifully produced hardback. My personal favourite is the one about the family trying to track down the phantom fairground.

I have to admit I was initially somewhat disappointed when I turned the final page; I didn't get the rather bizarre ending and I thought it would have been much better had the original linking narrative (Dyson's musings on the stories and locations) been continued. However, I then went back and re-read the ending, more carefully, and whilst I don't profess to understand every single detail, I think I "get" it now, and the more I think about it the more I like the ending. The recurrence of the "Aiden Fox" motif (right the way through to 8-10-4x) is rather clever and also makes more sense once you appreciate the ending.

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eye-catching hardback edition that if your to judge a book by it's cover it would call you to its dark passages in the boundaries between natural and supernatural.
There is a motley of stories contained within, ordinary people in ordinary places new dwellings, hospitals, and the sea to name a few, but
what they encounter is of the supernatural and unexplained terrors.
This did serve up some interesting reading into strange occurrences, there was a feeling for me that this territory that i treaded had been covered before in the world of stories.
3.5 stars

[Ross McGovern · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the stories in here have stayed in my head ever since I read it. It's that good. Utterly compelling and weirdly original, except in a peculiar kind of originality which makes you feel you're being reminded of something real. The story of The Pleasure Park in particular got right under my skin and I've no idea why. I suppose it's about shared experience, somehow Mr Dyson is capturing the essence of something we've all felt before but had no words for.
Very, very creepy and worth every minute. You will come back to this book more than once.

[Kirsty · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first third was great – creepy short stories in an increasingly-mysterious frame story. But then it all fell apart, with an attempt at metafiction which was not just unsuccessful, but boring. Such a shame! Read the first four stories and then stop.

[Virginia Appleton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only just started this but loving every second so far. Bloody brilliant!

[Samuel Gibb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dark, compelling, oh so clever. And terrifying. Of course. But in a rather wonderful way.

[Deanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of short stories some of which are very creepy, however there are some weaker parts of the book, especially the last twenty pages.

[James Tidd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeremy Dyson, more familiar to me as co-creator of the League of Gentlemen, does quite a decent job in this book. After being given notes on varying haunted sites by a journalist, Dyson goes to view each site and writes his own ghost stories for the first half of the book.

In the first story, Kitson from Nealon, he writes about a person who has recently acquired a house near Hinckley, and the person is convinced that it is haunted through the old telephone wire. The second story, The Diary of Ramon Huld, is based on the diary of a gentleman who began a round the world sailing attempt but was lost off the coast of South Africa, and supposedly haunts Fleetwood Bay. The third, A Wire with Gain, is about a band that reforms for a recording session at a converted former mill and recording studio, Victoria Mills, but are haunted by something that lurks in the basement. The fourth and last by Dyson, Ward Four-Sixteen, is based at Rauceby Hospital, where a volunteer is sent to help out in a high dependency unit, but ends up in a ward that I assume hasn't been used in many years. Dyson then borrows from a book, This Book is Haunted by H. Den Fawkes, for the next few stories. An Encounter by Water is based at the Liskeard and Looe Union Canal, when a gentleman out for a walk comes across another gentleman that turns out to be his future self. The Pleasure Park is about a family that comes across a lost pleasure park, but all attempts to find it again prove fruitless. Tetherdown Lock is about a group of volunteers that are charged with helping to maintain that is, in my opinion, a cold war bunker that, according to a local, is where they took witches, one of the group, after an argument with the story's main character, encounters something when he goes into a forbidden area. Dyson then borrows from another book, A Book of Hauntings by Sir Eden Vachs, for the next two stories. In the book's first chapter, Apparitions of Darkness, the first story, seemingly based at Leeds Library but this is by no means certain, is about a gentleman who is charged with cataloguing some old documents left by a Lord F, but encounters weird looking glasses on the top shelf in a couple of rooms and a vengeful spirit in the basement. The second story, based at the former Ben Rhydding Hydropathic Institute, is about a former police inspector whilst awaiting execution, tells a story to a fellow police officer of weird alternative therapies, whilst investigating a series of murders and a boy that fled something evil. The book's final story is taken from a third book, Glimpses in the Twilight, is based around White Wells, near Ilkley, and is about a young girl who seemingly has the power to heal, but is accused by locals of being a witch. The book begins with the author's quest as a young boy to find a Hand of Glory, and ends in something that I have read several times and I cannot make head nor tail of.

[Doug Lewars · Rating 3 out of 5]

*** Possible Spoilers ***

This book contains a number of stories with a theme of the supernatural - ghosts primarily - and they're well-written and quite enjoyable. That's the good news. Unfortunately, in an attempt to create an atmosphere of scariness, the author prefixes his stories with a certain amount of commentary. He attempts to blend anecdote with the story and it doesn't work. For example, he suggests that the stories are being written to flesh out a series of anecdotes and that he traveled to the various story settings to get a feel for what was required in the story itself. Needless to say he attempts to create the sensation that perhaps something is just a little strange in the real world. However the result is a book that is part travelogue and part ghost stories. The ghost stores are entertaining. The travelogue is boring. In addition, he attempts to add verisimilitude by publishing a book within his book which, by itself, wouldn't be so bad except he finds it necessary to use graphic title pages and the occasional font that isn't easy to read.

I do recommend the ghost stories but you can just skip over everything in italics and the entire last section. The last section is supposed to be from an old manuscript and the page backgrounds are grey. The very last section of the book is black with white lettering in which he attempts to create the illusion that the book and the reader have merged during the reading. This section is just plain boring. So you might want to pick up this book and read the stories but I'd guess that about 50% can be skipped without any loss.

[Rosie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book greatly disturbed me for many reasons, but none were the reasons the author intended.
First the book is appallingly written, the stories instead of being scary or chilling were often times boring, with the ending of each story having very little pay off for the build up.
Secondly, I was under the impression that this was a novel rather than a collection of short stories yet despite the authors clumsy attempts to give it an overarching narrative, he fails and instead the audience is left with an anthology of mediocre to just bad supposed scary stories.
Thirdly, the ending of the novel as a whole cannot even be put into words of just how dire it is. The author clearly when writing this felt very intelligent but its nonsensical pompous drivel that adds nothing to the book nor was foreshadowed in any satisfying way.

However, the reason why I disliked this book the most was due to its disturbing presentation of women. If I didn’t have to read this book for a University course I would have never have finished it due to how disturbing I found the author’s descriptions of female characters.
The female characters are often only viewed in terms of desire, being lusted after by the main male characters or even being abused and raped. It is especially disturbing when the author references young girls in particular suffering, with two stories implying that these girls are only teenagers. The author in my opinion does not handle this with any tact or care, nor does he present a strong leading female character who is not
a child or viewed solely for her body. The book left a very bad taste in my mouth.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

A frustrating collection of stories masquerading as a series of interlinked narratives. There are some impressive individual tales (notably 'The Pleasure Park', which is visionary and melancholy at the same time, and 'Tetherdown Lock', which is impressively weird and disturbing - both of these merit 4 stars), but a lot are fairly insipid - 'Ramon Huld' is nowhere near as bizarre as his real-life inspiration, Donald Crowhurst, and a number of the tales simply dribble away into disappointing conclusions. As other reviewers have noted, the proofreading is pretty poor at times, and Dyson won't win any prizes as a stylist. He does quite a good line in imitating the halting and uninspired prose of a regional journalist, but as the book unfolds, it would seem that that is his default rather than an act of impersonation.
The conceit of the book as a whole doesn't hang together, and the opening couple of stories get things off to a fatally slow start. Dyson has all the right influences and his head and heart are in an engagingly weird place. Unfortunately, he's not an especially good writer of fiction. Screenplays and collaborative work seem to bring out the best in him - here, there are flashes of inspiration but little more.

[Dee Darby · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book had some good stories but non of them scary as such. I would’ve given it more stars if it wasn’t for the fact that about half way through it just went weird. After a particular story the author, for some reason, decided to change the book into another book. So it became a book within a book but just told a few more stories so I really didn’t see the point of it. Then it did it twice more!! There was just no reason for it, he could’ve just carried on with the short stories in my opinion. And don’t even get me started on the bit right at the end with the black pages and white writing. I didn’t even bother reading all of that drivel.

Not sure what the author was trying to do.....trying to be clever maybe? Was it called The Haunted Book because it got possessed by other books? I don’t know but to me it just spoiled the whole thing changing it into four different books when he could’ve just carried on with his original premise. And that last bit....I don’t even know what to say about that bit......

[James Mullen · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best collections of original ghost stories I've ever read, each one evokes a real sense of the mood intended by the author; in fact, this is Jeremy Dyson's strong suit, really getting you to feel yourself in the place of the characters and share their loneliness, unrest, frustration and fear.

The stories themselves... well, I don't want to spoil anything, but they run the gamut from eerie phone calls to abandoned places, from possessions to apparitions. You will definitely find at least one story here that gives you the shivers.