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Jeremy Dyson

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The Haunted Book Paperback – June 6, 2013

by Jeremy Dyson (Author)

3.9 126 ratings

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� 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.

Print length

352 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Canongate Books
Publication date

June 6, 2013
Dimensions

5.08 x 0.98 x 7.8 inches
ISBN-10

085786243X
ISBN-13

978-0857862433
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Editorial Reviews

Review

The Haunted Book sets out not merely to entertain, but to embody a creeping menace in the text itself . . . Open if you dare (Suzi Feay The Independent on Sunday)

Dyson nestles in the little vacant chink between Roald Dahl and Borges (Observer)

A must have for fans of all things spooky (Joel Watson Literature Works)

Dyson's one of those rare authors who can write from the heart while still creating something deceptively clever and complex (Independent of Sunday)

Darkly surreal humour . . . seemingly innocent scenarios that veer into deep weirdness (Daily Express)

Keeps you guessing. The stories themselves are all wonderfully eerie . . . like the bookish version of walking through a haunted house at a fairground (Savidge Reads Blog)

Gripping, twisted and devilishly enjoyable (MARK GATISS, author of The Vesuvius Club and The Devil in Amber)

Genre defying . . . a boxing of stories within stories that reinforces the folkloric essence of ghost tales while also playing tricks as mind-bending as the image of a ghost caught in a photograph (Metro)

About the Author

Jeremy Dyson is best known as the co-creator of the BAFTA award-winning comedy series The League of Gentlemen. He is the author of three works of fiction. His book The Cranes that Build the Cranes won the Edge Hill Award for short fiction. He is also the co-writer of the hit West-End show Ghost Stories.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Canongate Books; Main edition (June 6, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 085786243X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0857862433
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.5 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.08 x 0.98 x 7.8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #4,604,815 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #53,499 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #114,200 in Horror Literature & Fiction

Customer Reviews:
3.9 126 ratings

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Jeremy Dyson

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Jeremy Dyson is best known as the co-creator and co-writer of the multi-award-winning comedy show The League of Gentlemen. Aside from The League he was co-creator/writer of the BAFTA-nominated comedy drama Funland and the Rose-d’or winning all female sketch show Psychobitches. His play Ghost Stories, co-written with Andy Nyman was nominated for an Olivier award, and has enjoyed three separate West End runs since debuting in 2010, together with international productions in Toronto, Moscow, Sydney, Shanghai, Finland, Holland and Peru. The film version of Ghost Stories, written and directed by Andy and Jeremy won the Fangoria Chainsaw Award for best debut feature in 2019.

In addition, Jeremy has worked as script editor on many award-winning TV comedies including The Armstrong and Miller Show, Grandma’s House, The Wrong Mans, Bad Education, Tracey Ullman’s Show, The Curse and We are Ladyparts. He has also written for Killing Eve and (with Andy Nyman) Good Omens 2.

Jeremy has published a number of books of short stories, including Never Trust a Rabbit, The Cranes that Build the Cranes (which won the Edge Hill award for short fiction), and The Haunted Book, together with a novel, What Happens Now. A new novel, The Warlock Effect co-written with Andy Nyman was published by Hodder and Stoughton in April 2023.

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5

126 global ratings

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David LM McIntyre

Fun ghost stories in an exciting framing device

Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2018

I very much enjoyed this book and instantly thought of ways I could adapt it to the stage. But the author beat me to it with the play Ghost Stories (now also a movie.)

Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2019

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This book is at once predictable and nonsensical. Wants to be house of leaves and cherishes the twilight zone, pales in comparison.

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M. Crossman

Clever, scary and funny.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 13, 2013

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It would appear that Jeremy Dyson and myself grew up around the same time and into the same kind of things.
Whether it's because of that that I loved this book is debatable.
From the first look, and possibly the first feel of the book, I had an inkling I was going to enjoy it.
The book is meant to look like a second hand, well used, volume. Even the inside cover bears the scars of a pre owned book. Something that I doubt the paperback version, when it's released, will do and it will certainly lose some of it's charm on a kindle or other electronic reading device.
The book is easy to read, and light in tone, and will charm anyone who loves ghost stories.
Oh, and a word of warning. At the top of this page is a 9 minute video and despite knowing full well what was coming it still made me jump.
Not for the nervous but very highly recommended.

One person found this helpful

Joanne Sheppard

Portmanteau horror with a vintage feel

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 15, 2013

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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 male 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.

11 people found this helpful

Mercian Battleaxe

Unusual kind of haunting

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 18, 2014

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I really, really wanted to love this book. I saved it to read while my son was on hols and the house was empty, so i could curl up and devour this book in one sitting. And there is a lot to really admire here: the characterisation is good throughout, the characters are easy to care about, the settings utterly believable, the slow, creeping sense of the unheimlich and uncanny very well done in many of the chapters. I particularly loved the echoes of M.R James - there's never any cheesy vampire or zombie turning up, nor any attempt to describe scary monsters or ghosts in execrable, overdone descriptions such as ruin most horror novels. However.... without spoilers, there is a sort of 'whodunnit/whoisit' mystery thread running through the book that builds up so that you really expect something very chilling as a final denouement ... but what comes at the end, whilst utterly unexpected, and clever, and though-provoking - a moral of the story, actually (especially for me, having saved the book til the house was empty...) - was nevertheless disappointing, im afraid. Well, I wasn't afraid - that's the problem. MR James' stories are often homilies on the value of morality, family, friendship;so there is certainly no crime in Mr Dyson doing so - but coming from one of the League of Gentlemen writing team, I had expected something more nerve-jangling. Having said that, I'm sure I will read it again and see a lot more in it next time round, so I'm still glad I got it. Just don't expect the sort of book that you have to read in the daytime only - its more subtle, more adult, more literary even, than that.

4 people found this helpful

Colin

A Haunting Read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 14, 2019

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Unnerving and thought-provoking. Uncannily each time I read it, the book seems to be ever so slightly different, and yet engenders feelings that the stories are skewed versions of my own memories. Finally like all truly great ghost stories you are left with the delicious feeling of unease, - she is watching you ........

One person found this helpful

Arch Stanton

scare tactics

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 3, 2017

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A series of short stories compiled by the author from an alleged list of 'genuine', hand-picked, eyewitness accounts.
Here the author travels to different geographical locations in the UK to document these 'strange but true' experiences, whilst taking in the atmosphere first hand..
However as our intrepid author, Mr Jeremy, tours the country following up on the different cases of the paranormal, his quest takes an uncanny, terrifying twist all by itself...

There's quite a bit of unnecessary pad and pretension about this but some of the stories are undeniably entertaining, with one or two creepy and more so intriguing or memorable.
Instead of just giving us a straight short ghost story collection, Dyson attempts something a little different with his approach, which works well enough but maybe never quite convinces the reader, as he creates a tale wherein he reluctantly becomes one of the players.

If you just sit back and enjoy it it's a fun read, admittedly not as good as Dyson's short story collection, 'Never Trust A Rabbit', but nevertheless still a good attempt at doing something different with a tried and tested formula.
With the remit of the book allowing Dyson to play around with different styles (like mimicking MR James) and ideas. Which earn it extra enjoyment points if you used to like going to the library as a kid and taking out all the old hardback books on haunted Britain, or books by Peter Haining, like I did.

4/5

4 people found this helpful

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