| Title | : | Haunted |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0786016841 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780786016846 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 480 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1995 |
First comes the sultry hint of jasmine...followed by the foul stench of decay. It is the dead, seducing the living, in an age-old ritual of perverted desire and unholy blood lust. For David and Amber, an unspeakable possession has begun...
Haunted Reviews
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Thorne rarely disappoints and Haunted certainly does not. First published in 1995, this one of her first novels and foreshadows many of her others set in her 'Thorneverse' of spooky California small towns. Our main protagonist, David Masters, is a recently famous horror author whose novels feature, you guessed it, ghosts and such. He recently bought the famous 'body house' and he and his daughter travel across the US and move in.
The 'body house' has a reputation as being one of the most haunted places in the USA and Masters has made a career of checking out and incorporating such places into his novels. He is presented as a skeptic regarding ghosts and also something of an expert regarding them; little does he know he is getting the read deal at the body house!
The Baudey house (the official name) was built around the turn of the 20th century and seemed fated with bad karma from the get go. The original owners only lasted a few years, succumbing to murder, rape and suicide and the house was willed to a distant relative who was living on some Caribbean isle. Lizzie and her daughter were brought to the house by a friend of the family, and old salt who ran a maritime spice trade. Taking possession of the house, but with little money, Lizzie promptly turned it into a house of ill repute-- e.g., a cat house. It is a huge old place with dozens of bedrooms and features tons of erotic stained glass ware, penis-shaped door handles, etc., and became known as the bawdy house by the townies and sailors who frequented the place. Around 1915 it because the site of a huge massacre involving dozens of the working gals and clients, but Lizzie and her daughter's bodies were never found.
After that, it became a house for retired sailors, but that too went up in smoke due to the erotic hauntings giving many old salts heart attacks. Later, a bunch of squatting hippies met their demise there in 1968 and had been vacant since. Immediately after Masters and his daughter move in, 'things' start happening...
Thorne, as usual, gives us a character driven story here, with several townies playing feature roles, including one young man who is more receptive to the supernatural than most, and who helped restore the place for Masters. The sly wit and dark humor of Thorne is here in spades, along with many erotic scenes with several of them involving ghosts (ghost rape?). Toss in some voodoo and china dolls and Thorne serves up a fun montage of horror that feels like it might have been more at home in the 1980s. A good editor would probably have lopped off 50 pages or so, but as this was published by Zebra, such a service was not a priority. Well worth a read for any horror fan, and especially those who like a good haunted house story. 4 ghostly stars!! -
Overall, very good. It does tend to wander at times (if I was an editor, I'd strongly suggest trimming 50-75 pages), but perhaps that's my personal preference getting in the way. In my mind, shorter & tighter makes for the best bloodspray.
Anyway. Thorne's style is clean, concise, & evocative, with sprinkles of dark humor thrown in -- very much to my taste -- & this book is definitely a throwback to 70s classics as opposed to modern (i.e., post-1990) splatterpunk Saw-type stuff. *thumbs up* While there are brief bits of gore (the mass-murder description is pretty gross), it's mostly retrospective -- crime scenes, letters, etc. The bulk of the book is a psycho-sexual haunting that relies on atmosphere & terror, particularly the fear of warped desires. Our hero David & his daughter Amber move into Baudey House for research purposes (David is a successful horror author), but get more than they bargained for with a ghostly mother-daughter feud still going strong after 75 years. There are missing bodies, voodoo, blood-filled dolls, nosy townsfolk, possessions, succubus sex, undead murderers, phallic doorknobs, & lewd stained glass, all of which culminate in a costume ball, a seance, & a torture chamber filled with decayed skeletons.
In short: lots of elements I like in gothic horror. ;)
Strong 4 stars, worth a read if you like Old Skool style. There's a noticeable sense of The Shining, Hell House, 13 Ghosts, & Sweetheart Sweetheart; there's also a good bit of American Horror Story's 'murder house,' but this was pub'd like 15 years before that show began, so I suppose it's the other way around...eh, whatever. I'm surprised this never became a film, but it's probably for the best. Hollywood rarely treats quiet horror with respect. 🙄 -
This is one of the best haunted house stories I've read in a a while. I killed this off in two sittings just before bed and had a blast with it. I was engaged and sucked into the story, turning the pages as quickly as I could and loving every minute of it. It's not full of gore and junk that abounds in so much of recent horror. Sometimes the best books are those you might have overlooked, and this, for me, was one of them. Very highly recommended!
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Fun and engaging. Full review here:
http://thescarefactor.blogspot.ca/201... -
“Haunted” by Tamara Thorne is, as one might guess, a story about a haunted house. I finished it today and I can easily say that this is one of all-time favorite books, and certainly the best haunted house story I have ever read. It’s about a horror writer who purposely buys a storied haunted house, and moves in. A typical set up, but of course most haunted house stories require such a set up to work. It is set in a small town and most of the residents know the history of Lizzie and her evil daughter Christabel who lived there many years ago through tragedy and malevolence and supposedly do the haunting. The novel interjects a good bit of bawdy humor (pun intended) and had me chuckling in some scenes, tense in others, and without a doubt turning page after page (or I should say, clicking the “next page” button on my kindle). The characters were well developed and entertaining, and I could envision them interacting easily. Sometimes it takes me a while to warm up to characters, or to dislike the bad ones, but that didn’t happen here. I fell in with them right away. It’s hard for me to find novels like this, and at some point I was even feeling nostalgic for horror of the past, like the old black and white movies. It had that feel at several points, with the big house and the hidden dungeon and panels. It really has a bit of everything. It’s at once scary, funny, sarcastic, delightfully uncouth, fun, creepy, and even sweet in a few scenes. I can’t recommend this one highly enough! Superb!
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This is by far one of the BEST haunted house novels ever written. The book reminds me of the great haunted house books of years past, then goes one better. The charachterization is top notch,, the frights are shocking and in all the right places. This is a highly enjoyable book and deserves far more attention than it was given on it's first release. I hear it is soon to be re-issued. If youhaven't read it yet, do so, you won't regret it.
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Wish this came in ebook format. I've long since lost my copy. But it was a fun ghost story read. I really liked it. In fact, I really liked most of Tamara's books. None of which I own (lost lots of books in a move) and aren't in ebook form. Bummer.
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If you like spooky, pervy ghosts, this is the book for you! And, you'll probably give it more than my measly 3*.
This wasn't really my cup of tea. I do like spooky, but the pervy ghost was just so gross. I spent half the book cringing. *insert barf emoji* Otherwise, it was a clever little haunted house story, nice and gorey in parts. I'm not sure I would've finished it if it weren't for the fact that I needed it for a challenge slot, but that's really only because the ghost rape was so SQUICKY!!! Actually, the affair with was also squicky, to a slightly lesser degree.
I don't have any real complaints. I didn't notice a bunch of editing errors for example. The characters were engaging enough. I didn't hate the writing. So this is 3 very subjective *. -
Haunted, Tamara Thorne, 1995
My favorite quote: “He’d always thought of supernatural horror as something that arose in daydreams and nightmares, fantastic thoughts born of facts and twisted to the imagination's wishes. It seemed to be the other way around now.”
Notable characters: David Masters, author an new owner of Baudey House; Amber, his daughter; Minnie Willard, my favorite housekeeper; Theo Pelinore, the sexy realtor
Most memorable scene: I seem to remember ghosts rutting on a dining room table …
Greatest strengths: The way Haunted weaves the past and present together is so seamless that it should teach classes where other books can come and learn how it’s done
Standout achievements: The blend of horror, humor, and sexiness here is rivaled by none. For real
Fun Facts: The character of Bea Broadside was based on one of Thorne’s neighbors who planned to euthanize her cat so she could go on vacation. Thorne took the cat, saving its life, and brought Ms. Broadside to justice in Haunted
Other media: N/A
What it taught me: The power of blending the spooky and sexy together at just the right times
How it inspired me: A lot of times I kind of groan when the main character of a book is a writer. In the wrong hands, a writer writing about a writer has a way of feeling a little … masturbatory. This isn’t one of those times, though. Rather than waxing eloquently about the life of writers, Thorne -- like King -- finds ways of putting her fictional authors to good use, exploiting their professions to further the plot. I was so impressed by this that I wanted to do the same thing. So I did. David Masters, Thorne’s hero in Haunted, is the reason I made Cade Colter, my protagonist in the Crimson Cove series, a writer
Additional thoughts: I love that David Masters is setting out to disprove ghosts when he buys this house. Heh. Silly, silly skeptic …
Haunt me: alistaircross.com -
David Master is an author who loves the paranormal and sets out to discredit and disabuse people of the notion of real ghosts. Baudey House is renowned for its deadly history and it attracts David and his daughter, Amber.
The story starts off at a steady pace as we learn about the town, the people, and the history behind Baudey House and the people who died there.
Once, there was a woman who ran the house as a brothel and helped women who had no place to go or who needed money to care for themselves. She soon had a daughter and as she began to grow, the woman noticed how she watched the men and the lascivious looks she tossed their way. Her daughter was not right. Voodoo is at the core of this story as it plays a hand in how the ghosts are able to stay around.
I don't want to give too much of the story away, but I will say that the pacing was off at times during the beginning of the book. We got a huge dose of interesting information and then we were left alone to explore the goings-on in the town and then the pacing would pick back up.
I really liked this ghostly tale and will look for more of Thorne's reads. -
A quick page turner. I love the combination of haunted house, haunted dolls and voodoo. There are some explicit scenes in this novel but I really liked reading it. Top recommendation!
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David Masters, a horror book writer, buys a haunted house so he can move in and write a book with his daughter, Amber. The Victorian mansion has been the home to multiple massacres throughout the years. Masters, having been through many weird and wild experiences, believes he can easily handle whatever the home can throw at him. However he is sadly mistaken...
This book was wonderful. Baudey House is not your average haunted house. Believed to be built on tainted ground, it was once a cat house where the owner's daughter practiced voodoo and made creepy life-like dolls. A bunch of hippies were slaughtered during a wild orgy. And the lighthouse nearby is haunted by a sailor without a head. It has everything a haunted house book should have. Loads of gory fun!!! -
Well, they sure don't write them like this anymore. Or very rarely anyways. Written in the mid 90's, it feels older than that, modems and in-house fax machines aside. Graphic, mildly explicit, and altogether engrossing, this is horror done right. I wasn't a big fan of the ending or the final showdown with the big bad, and some of the dialogue was too cutesy and cheesy, but those quibbles were more than offset by the atmosphere, killings, and general naughtiness.
Reminds me of the heydey of horror movies (late 70's through late 90's), when some people were evil just because they wanted to be, victims were killed in increasingly inventive ways, and people had sex because, well, why not? This book is those movies written down. Don't get me wrong, I love cerebral works and I love the backstories to some of our greatest villains. I do love me some heady, thought provoking material. But...sometimes you just gotta go old-school simple. And "Haunted" fits the bill perfectly. It is an enjoyable retro romp that offers both steams and screams, and was just what the doctor ordered. -
This book was very well done!! When I seen on the cover page that Nancy Holder, bestselling author, compared it to "Ghost Story" I must say I was skeptical. "Ghost Story" by Peter Straub, was to me one of the best ghost storie's I had ever read! But, after reading this exceptional work by Tmara Thorne, I must agree with Miss Holder.
This book kept me going night after night with it's creepy occurences happening so often I could barley go out after dark. NO Spoilers.. This book is defintely worth your time to read. You will be on a rollercoaster ride to the very end. But trust me the end of the book will leaving you wanting for nothing more than to read another book by Miss Thorne! -
Probably my favorite book in this genre.
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[Snack-Size Review] Haunted, by Tamara Thorne
Quick Bite: A gourmet feast for the haunted house connoisseur.
What It’s About: Horror author David Masters and his sixteen year old daughter Amber move into the infamously haunted Baudey house, where he hopes to write his next bestseller. Needless to say, Baudey House has some horrific plans of its own…
A Word From The Nerd: Duckies, I have mentioned many times how much I adore haunted house stories, and this one was DELICIOUS. The backstory of the house, the creepy dolls, the freakin lighthouse (OMG I LOVE A LIGHTHOUSE), the romance, there was just so much to love. I just felt like the characters were a little one-note - the town tramp, the busybody, the laid-back-but-kind-of-badass chief of police, etc.
The Nerd’s Rating: FOUR HAPPY NEURONS (and some beautiful, filthy stained glass). -
Tamara Thorne, Haunted (Pinnacle, 1995)
I'm crazy about Tamara Thorne. It's refreshing (to say the least) to find a writer of good old-fashioned haunted house novels these days; this is probably the first (aside from Thorne's own Bad Things) I've come across, chronologically, since Paula Trachtman published Disturb Not the Dream some twenty years ago, that doesn't have some sort of post-atomic ecological message to shove in my face or some sort of hardboiled-mystery natural explanation. (We'll conveniently overlook Barbara Michaels. After all, she writes romances, delicious as they are, not horror novels.) And that, alone, is enough reason for me to automatically slap above-average status on Miz Thorne's every word.
The only problem, really, and I will be the first to say this may be my fault for reading two of Thorne's novels so close together, is that the words seem remarkably similar between Haunted and Bad Things. We have a single (male) parent moving to California with child(ren) who are sure (we know, as the author winks at us) to be placed in the path of great danger, though the parent doesn't know this. There's a friend at home who, at a moment of crisis, must come out to assist with everything, and the child(ren) has/ve an obsession with taking the car and the Visa card into town (because, of course, we're out in the middle of nowhere). The ghosties, ghoulies, and long-leggetie beasties can't be seen by the rest of us most of the time, but they materialize in order to convince the townsfolk they do exist, thanks to some mechanism that forces them farther into our reality. Etc.
Formula? Absolutely. It's switch-the-characters as much as Barbara Cartland. But Thorne is a far finer writer than Cartland (or Danielle Steel and Nora Roberts, Cartland's living heirs o the multibillion dollar romance market), and at least the characters being switched out are not carbon copies of one another, despite their similar situations. The differences in character from book to book are enough to keep the reader going, which is necessary through some of the book's slower points. (The protagonist here is a writer, and Thorne tells us he's always somewhat nervous through the first half of his books, then towards the end starts writing obsessively, often finishing them in a few weeks. Haunted, it should surprise no one, is paced exactly this way.)
Thorne does Bad Things one better here, with the inclusion of a nasty erotic side to this particular ghost that one couldn't introduce to the Green Man in Bad Things (at least, not without ludicrous chuckles from the audience). This is balanced out by the somewhat slower plot development in the first half of the novel, but once it takes off, it most certainly takes off. The book becomes more compelling as each page turns, until the last hundred pages, which demand to be devoured in one gulp.
Haunted and Bad Things are pretty equal in quality, and Haunted only gets half a star less because I read it second. If you like one, you'll probably like the other. Just don't read them back to back, or the similarities will throw you off. *** 1/2 -
Probably 2.5 stars. I was disappointed in this book; it's been on my radar for years as a good haunted-house novel. The plot was okay, though nothing new (but I don't read ghost stories for originality; I love the tropes of the genre). The writing was pretty bad (lots of unnecessary side plots that went nowhere, horrible dialogue (especially the teenage daughter), and characters acting irrationality or going back on actions/beliefs/words of previous chapters. I'm not sure the plot really made sense. The prevalent sexism was annoying too, and overall the book felt dated. Still, I liked the house itself and the dolls were interesting.
Finally, this e-version is an unedited port, and the common conversion errors (mission punctuation, etc.) were widespread. -
There were some good parts and there were some lows. While I enjoyed the characters I felt some were stereotypical and the dialogue a bit juvenile. The ending failed to impress me but in contrast I was very taken with the beginning. I felt that there were too many explanations from different sources, all saying the same thing. Having said that, it had it's enjoyable parts. This is quite the blood and guts book so a warning for those that don't like extra details.
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Creepy. Not the best book ever, but fun if you're looking for an interesting ghost story. My real complaint is that she seems to fall back to sex when the story gets a little slow. And she does a horrible job of depicting a teenage girl.
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I loved this book it has everything that you want that is scary fot halloween. Anybody that wants a really scary book to read about ghosts and tbe past read this book. You will love it. Happy Halloween Samantha
Not that sure when I read this book but I remember it clearly. ENJOY! -
Horror novel in which a horror writer and his teen-aged daughter move into a house haunted by the ghost of a diabolical voodoo queen who leads men around by their peckers. You know, it was cheesy and over-the-top, but I can't deny that it was entertaining.
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This is another great book! My husband never reads but I actuall got him to take this book to work with him and now he loves to read!! He thought this book was awesome too!
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I do not remember exactly how this book turned out because I read it a long time ago, but I know that I really enjoyed it.
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One of my FAVORITE horror novels ever! If you like scary stuff, this is a must read!
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Better then any Stephen King book I have read. I still can't stop talking about this book. I hope this becomes a movie one day.
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Awesome...It was the first of my Tamara books ! I have read all her books so far:)
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Shortly after starting this book I began to wonder if I had accidentally picked up an erotica because it gets super dirty in a few scenes, but there was enough actual story there that I kept reading and at some point it became a lot more like a normal book that was pretty good. Aside from that and an alarming amount of editing oversights (the word "be" instead of "he", the word "the" written like "thE," etc.), I liked this story. Around the last 80 or so pages, I did grow weary and stopped reading it as voraciously as I had during the first 400, so it's possible that it went on a little longer than it had to and the ending was so sappy it was like I had just read a shitty love story instead of a freaky intense ghost story, which is too bad because this really is an engaging story about a haunted house with a really eventful history and a truly menacing ghost. The pieces of the story came together one after another in such a satisfying way that all of my minor gripes still don't affect its star rating, but they are gripes nonetheless.
