What do you think?
Rate this book
The Visitor
After five months of bitter separation, Frank and Ginny Merritt are together again. Frank has found a promising new assignment at Rosewood, a posh psychiatric clinic. He installs Ginny and the children in a huge glass house near the sanitorium and immerses himself in the problems of his wealthy and celebrated patients.
Before long, Ginny's enthusiasm about her new home begins to wane. She is alarmed to notice that Bobby, her six-year-old, is becoming more withdrawn each passing day. Then she sees one of Frank's patients -- a famous movie star -- wandering nude on the outskirts of town.
When she tells Frank about the escape, he insists that she is hallucinating. Suddenly, Ginny feels cornered, alone. But she could not know the real danger; she is still unaware of the chilling truth about Rosewood.
Before long, Ginny's enthusiasm about her new home begins to wane. She is alarmed to notice that Bobby, her six-year-old, is becoming more withdrawn each passing day. Then she sees one of Frank's patients -- a famous movie star -- wandering nude on the outskirts of town.
When she tells Frank about the escape, he insists that she is hallucinating. Suddenly, Ginny feels cornered, alone. But she could not know the real danger; she is still unaware of the chilling truth about Rosewood.
272 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
2 people are currently reading
97 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
February 7, 2023
While not quite as good as The Legacy, it was better than The Abyss, but all three were unique, distinct and well written. Our main protagonist here, Ginny, is married to a psychologist, but the marriage is strained the say the least. Her husband Frank took off 5 months ago, but at the start of the novel returned, imploring her to join him in moving close to Chicago, where he landed a job at Rosewater, an exclusive 'nut house'/asylum. He also bought a house close by. Ginny, hoping to make a go for it, if only for her kids, decides to give it a go and they shortly move from Memphis to their new digs.
There are several story arcs surrounding the main plot. The prologue features a guy named Beck ('Where its at!'), a now disgraced psychologist who once had several of the same patients now located at Rosewater. We shortly learn that he believes one of the patients horribly killed his wife via some sort of astral projection and he wants payback. Ginny, echoing the women's liberation of the era (this was first published in 1978) wants to be a painter, but her husband basically wants a housfrau and distains her 'career'. Further, Frank is a major asshole, demanding sex and forcibly taking it often. So we have some major family drama for sure. Of the two kids, young Bobby is a loner, but after being at the house for a bit, his personality seems to change dramatically...
We also have Rosewater itself, a place for the rich to hide (like Frank's patients, a burned out actress and a has-been famous writer among others) who are free to check themselves out if they like. Frank's job consists of being a glorified babysitter, while his boss schemes ways to skim cash from Rosewater and extort silence from her patients via blackmail and such. Nice place!
Then, of course, we have the title. Who is the visitor? We know almost from the get go it is some form of astral projection, but I will not say more due to spoilers. The pros? Cunningham tells the tale well enough to get you to suspend your disbelief and strap in for the ride, building a good level of mounting suspense. The book is creepy to be sure! The cons? Frank is a true asshole, and how and why Ginny can have any feelings for him is a complete mystery, except it seems everyone is sucking down valiums right and left ('Mommies little helper' after all!). A fun read for sure, but not really exceptional by any means. 3.5 stars!!
There are several story arcs surrounding the main plot. The prologue features a guy named Beck ('Where its at!'), a now disgraced psychologist who once had several of the same patients now located at Rosewater. We shortly learn that he believes one of the patients horribly killed his wife via some sort of astral projection and he wants payback. Ginny, echoing the women's liberation of the era (this was first published in 1978) wants to be a painter, but her husband basically wants a housfrau and distains her 'career'. Further, Frank is a major asshole, demanding sex and forcibly taking it often. So we have some major family drama for sure. Of the two kids, young Bobby is a loner, but after being at the house for a bit, his personality seems to change dramatically...
We also have Rosewater itself, a place for the rich to hide (like Frank's patients, a burned out actress and a has-been famous writer among others) who are free to check themselves out if they like. Frank's job consists of being a glorified babysitter, while his boss schemes ways to skim cash from Rosewater and extort silence from her patients via blackmail and such. Nice place!
Then, of course, we have the title. Who is the visitor? We know almost from the get go it is some form of astral projection, but I will not say more due to spoilers. The pros? Cunningham tells the tale well enough to get you to suspend your disbelief and strap in for the ride, building a good level of mounting suspense. The book is creepy to be sure! The cons? Frank is a true asshole, and how and why Ginny can have any feelings for him is a complete mystery, except it seems everyone is sucking down valiums right and left ('Mommies little helper' after all!). A fun read for sure, but not really exceptional by any means. 3.5 stars!!
April 2, 2018
On the strength of some pretty good reviews for another of Mr. Cunningham’s novels, I checked this out of my library.
There’s a popular saying that fish and visitors have a commonality in that they both become really rank after laying around your house for three days. I can now attest that “The Visitors” would make putrefying mackeral smell like gardenias.
Marital rape, serial rape, incest, child abuse, evil psychiatrists — it’s all part of this horror story ostensibly about an entity (the “visitor”) which can both shape-change, travel via astral-projection, and deliver (at will) a deadlier blast of electricity than downed power lines after a blizzard, with a current that is as deep-frying as stepping on the infamous third rail that runs throughout New York City’s subway system. Actually, combine them both, and that’s what one touch from this entity will do: charbroil it’s chosen target to the bone, leaving behind black molten ash for skin. Cunningham describes two attacks very specifically as it’s victims being left with charred, blackened faces. More acccurately and in it’s simplest terms: formerly white individuals reduceed to black-face, as punishment.
Early in the book, and apropos of nothing, a couple of peripheral characters, (a security guard and a hospital orderly), are described specifically as “black” men, while no other characters are ever described in racial terms. Initially, I thought that perhaps this distinction fell under the odd phenomenon in writing which I define as “white understood” — meaning a tendency to give a deliberate racial designation to characters of color, and never, in the same work, to a white character, cause the white is “understood.”
Understand?
Then, a bit later on, a doctor who we are told is a black man, and while performing an autopsy, muses as he works by referring to himself as a n*gger. So, after the black security guard, and the black hospital orderly (red flag #1), Jere gives us a black doctor who tags himself by using a term that essentially obliterates every achievement in his life. For me, this became red flag # 2.
Finally, in the midst of a nasty marital confrontation, and on the heels of a marital rape, here comes red flag #3: an MC husband/doctor flings what is intended as a vicious insult to a MC wife/artist — that he hopes she gets raped by a bunch of “n*ggers.”
Say what??? This story is supposed to be centered around a modern urban mental institution, one staffed by opportunistic, crooked psychiatrists, and featuring a patient who turns out to be an astrally cavorting firebranding fiend who is on it’s own special scorched earth rampage.
Again, say what??
So all that, compounded by the Visitor’s attack mode of reducing a white character to a sickening mewling blackfaced thing, .......
Suffice it to say, I didn’t get the horror the author intended. But the undercurrent horror I detecteed, though quite probably not consciously intended by he author, was way nastier.
There’s a popular saying that fish and visitors have a commonality in that they both become really rank after laying around your house for three days. I can now attest that “The Visitors” would make putrefying mackeral smell like gardenias.
Marital rape, serial rape, incest, child abuse, evil psychiatrists — it’s all part of this horror story ostensibly about an entity (the “visitor”) which can both shape-change, travel via astral-projection, and deliver (at will) a deadlier blast of electricity than downed power lines after a blizzard, with a current that is as deep-frying as stepping on the infamous third rail that runs throughout New York City’s subway system. Actually, combine them both, and that’s what one touch from this entity will do: charbroil it’s chosen target to the bone, leaving behind black molten ash for skin. Cunningham describes two attacks very specifically as it’s victims being left with charred, blackened faces. More acccurately and in it’s simplest terms: formerly white individuals reduceed to black-face, as punishment.
Early in the book, and apropos of nothing, a couple of peripheral characters, (a security guard and a hospital orderly), are described specifically as “black” men, while no other characters are ever described in racial terms. Initially, I thought that perhaps this distinction fell under the odd phenomenon in writing which I define as “white understood” — meaning a tendency to give a deliberate racial designation to characters of color, and never, in the same work, to a white character, cause the white is “understood.”
Understand?
Then, a bit later on, a doctor who we are told is a black man, and while performing an autopsy, muses as he works by referring to himself as a n*gger. So, after the black security guard, and the black hospital orderly (red flag #1), Jere gives us a black doctor who tags himself by using a term that essentially obliterates every achievement in his life. For me, this became red flag # 2.
Finally, in the midst of a nasty marital confrontation, and on the heels of a marital rape, here comes red flag #3: an MC husband/doctor flings what is intended as a vicious insult to a MC wife/artist — that he hopes she gets raped by a bunch of “n*ggers.”
Say what??? This story is supposed to be centered around a modern urban mental institution, one staffed by opportunistic, crooked psychiatrists, and featuring a patient who turns out to be an astrally cavorting firebranding fiend who is on it’s own special scorched earth rampage.
Again, say what??
So all that, compounded by the Visitor’s attack mode of reducing a white character to a sickening mewling blackfaced thing, .......
Suffice it to say, I didn’t get the horror the author intended. But the undercurrent horror I detecteed, though quite probably not consciously intended by he author, was way nastier.
January 22, 2023
Oh Lordy! 'The Visitor' is a novel - at least it's got that going for it. At least it has a creepy looking doll on the cover, peering out cross-eyed from a pane of shattered glass. At least it's an old paperback that brings back memories of being a kid and looking at all the horror paperbacks lining the shelves at your local Waldenbooks or Booksmiths. At least it has some gore in it - no matter how incapably inane Cunningham is at setting it up...here the physical nature of body movements seems unnatural even for the shirking, shrieking, pained, mouth-clenching, wide-eyed, haunted-eyed, and screechingly-mad puppets these cardboard characters portray. At least these 265 pages keep you enthralled and chuckling out loud with the outright stupidity and ridiculousness of the horror logic, character logic, prose logic, setting logic....insert any type of logic here, and Cunningham betrays them all. This is a gloriously stinky novel.
If you thought your marriage sucked, then this novel is for you. If you thought your kids were assholes (one vain and dumb as a stump, the other an invalid little shit who plays with pissed-off ghosts), then this novel is for you. If you know your husband is a rapist and most likely the worst psychotherapist in medicine history, then this novel is for you. If you think astral traveling, racist stereotypes, eye-rolling sex scenes, and dialogue weighed down with countless EXCLAMATION POINTS! then this novel is for you.
I enjoyed it. I really did. Was it good, no. My soft spot for questionable horror paperbacks gets softer with old age, and I think that's a great thing.
If you thought your marriage sucked, then this novel is for you. If you thought your kids were assholes (one vain and dumb as a stump, the other an invalid little shit who plays with pissed-off ghosts), then this novel is for you. If you know your husband is a rapist and most likely the worst psychotherapist in medicine history, then this novel is for you. If you think astral traveling, racist stereotypes, eye-rolling sex scenes, and dialogue weighed down with countless EXCLAMATION POINTS! then this novel is for you.
I enjoyed it. I really did. Was it good, no. My soft spot for questionable horror paperbacks gets softer with old age, and I think that's a great thing.
January 23, 2012
It escapes, screaming, from the tortured souls caged in the exclusive sanitarium where Frank Merritt works. It travels to the new home that Ginny Merritt lives in, chilling her with a feeling of unspeakable evil. It heads straight for Bobby Merritt; it loves children. I give this story an A!
August 22, 2012
This is a brilliant story you have to stick with past page 150, absurd as that may sound, as this isn't as enthralling as The Abyss right off the bat. The tension and thrills mount the more you read it, however, till it ends in a powerful, grisly crescendo.
September 24, 2017
Cornball but entertaining enough potboiler from the author of The Legacy. Thematically it's sort of a supernatural Kramer Versus Kramer, featuring a troubled couple, Frank and Ginny, in danger of losing their young son not to one or the other, but to a persistent supernatural force - because Frank and Ginny are BAD 70's PARENTS. The Visitor features plenty of klutzy dialogue, especially for the main child character, who simply doesn't across believably (it makes you appreciate once again how talented Stephen King is at limning children's voices), and that delightful 70's cynicism mixed in with sentimentality. It does build to a fairly satisfying conclusion, adding up to a decent enough time-waster for 70's horror buffs.
February 6, 2017
In all, I was pretty impressed with this book. It was fairly well-written, and though the horror elements were pretty slow, the last sixty pages of the novel were very fast-paced and very edge-of-your-seat type of pages. I'm not sure if the plot twists were meant to be surprising; they weren't but that didn't detract from the story. Overall, it was a good horror novel with some great gore, and I'm pretty happy that I read it.
The death of might go down in one of my favorite deaths - a pretty typical death, I mean, I've seen it before, but man, the way it was written made me so happy. If I used the verb 'fangirl' I would say I fangirled over how it was written, but I don't use that word, so it just excited me.
The death of might go down in one of my favorite deaths - a pretty typical death, I mean, I've seen it before, but man, the way it was written made me so happy. If I used the verb 'fangirl' I would say I fangirled over how it was written, but I don't use that word, so it just excited me.
February 20, 2024
Enough of Rosewood's four peaks ✋ Enough of Ginny biting her cuticles ✋
The Visitor is littered with sexual assault, racial slurs, and more often than not, seems as though it was written from a voyeuristic point of view. Would I have been able to enjoy this without those factors? Even then, no, probably not. I need a palate cleanser, ASAP.
The Visitor is littered with sexual assault, racial slurs, and more often than not, seems as though it was written from a voyeuristic point of view. Would I have been able to enjoy this without those factors? Even then, no, probably not. I need a palate cleanser, ASAP.
July 27, 2021
Awesome old-school horror from 1978. This was a good, scary story in spite of the fact that it has nothing whatsoever to do with a killer doll breaking through glass to get you as indicated on the cover. Also in spite of the fact that every character is more hateable than the last.
October 27, 2024
Frank was a trash husband and trash human. We were robbed of his demise. This book wasn’t for me. Spousal abuse, grape, sexism
August 31, 2025
A bit dated, but still super fun.
September 16, 2025
Boring horror novel. Leave it on the shelf. That's the second best place for it.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews