Ghost story

by Peter Straub · 1979

When seventy‑year‑old attorney Frederick Hawthorne steps out of his Melrose Avenue home for his usual walk to the office on Wheat Row, the quiet streets of Milburn, New York, seem as predictable as his decades‑long career. Yet the crisp October air carries a whisper of something far older than any case file—a presence that has lingered in the town’s shadows for generations. As Hawthorne’s routine encounters a series of unsettling visions and inexplicable events, he is drawn into a chilling investigation that forces him to confront the town’s buried secrets and the restless spirit that haunts its very foundations. Straub weaves a masterful blend of legal intrigue and supernatural dread, turning the ordinary world of a small‑town lawyer into a labyrinth of memory, guilt, and spectral menace. "Ghost Story" is a haunting tale of how the past refuses to stay buried, and how even the most steadfast of minds can be unsettled by the echo of a ghost that refuses to be forgotten.