Chuck Palahniuk is an author that most people associate with gritty, philosophical novels that deal with issues from racism and xenophobia to social breakdown and re-discovering oneself. Some of his more popular titles are, "Fight Club," which was made into a movie starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, and "Choke," which was made into a television series. However, many fans may overlook, or outright dislike his novel "Haunted," though for fans of horror it's a fantastic trip through the bizarre and macabre as only Palahniuk can tell it.
At its core, Haunted is a story about people who want to be writers. Being a successful writer is kind of like being a literary rockstar, and there will always be groups of hopefuly and wannabes that are willing to do anything, and part with anything to make that goal. The group that Haunted follows is never named, but rather the characters are referred to by names like Comrade Snarky, the Missing Link, Agent Tattletale, Chef Assassin and others. All of these characters are aspiring writers, and for one reason or another they've accepted a strange pact to wall themselves away from the world in an old theater in order to finally create their own, individual masterpieces. Of course things go from bad to worse from one heartbeat to the next, and as the situation becomes more and more tenuous the stories that all the members of this desperate commune begin telling get stranger and stranger, and more and more compellingly horrific.
Now there are two types of horror in "Haunted," one type comes from the stories that the characters are penning which are interspersed throughout like commercials in a TV marathon. There are stories that involve urban legends (like the guy who was masturbating in the pool with his butt against the suction pump, and when he went to push up it pulled out his intestine), the dark side of new age (like one story where a woman schooled in foot massage technique could kill a client, or grant them intense pleasure) and even the strange and bizarre (such as a cook turned serial killer trying to extort a company for money or he'll tell the world it was their knife brand he used during his killings). And while these stories are frightening in their own way, there is the bigger, over-arching story of the sequestered authors who, if they'd just buckled under and written would have been fine. But they started jamming the locks, puncturing the sealed food bags and sabotaging their setup in hopes to make it a little worse so that, when they got into the world and told their stories they'd be famous.
There are a lot of aspects to this novel. There's the shock value of what people will do when pressed to the limits, but there's also the effects that greed can have on you. When you go through something bad you expect a reward, and when the situation gets worse the reward grows, until there's no way what you're accomplishing can ever match the reward. Also, whether or not it was Palahniuk's intention, the story tries to show that if you actually work hard and do what you set out to do you can come through it... but shortcuts will cripple and maim you as well as your work. Of course, in the end, Palahniuk's "Haunted" will turn reality upside down and show that everything you thought you knew was wrong... and that maybe what you were wagering your life on isn't really as important as you thought it was in the long ago and far away.