Porter delivers a CRACKER!

it's brilliant, every moment. don't fall asleep with it on tho, it gets intense lol

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A superb ghost story

Great story. Lots of dark and adult themes throughout. Definitely a story written in a different time and with different priorities. A creepy blast. Going to listen to Hill House now!!

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3 Star Appeal

I wasn't impressed nor was I disappointed. The narrators female voices were scarier than the story line. Norman Bates vibes.

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Good entertainment

Great character development and an entertaining story. Well narrated and goes by at a good pace.

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Masterpiece!

By far the best book I have read.
The storyline and characters fit together so perfectly, and the narration done by Ray Porter was absolutely superb.
I highly recommend this book

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Stephen King is right. Genuinely Scary

The King of Horror once pronounced this novel the best haunted house story ever written. He was correct. It definitely follows a formula - strangers paid by a dying eccentric man to stay in a creepy setting possessed by evil spirits - but Richard Matheson is a master at it. The characters are interesting (flawed and often unlikable), the setting is genuinely disturbing, and the atmosphere sets the reader on edge. The inexplicable episodes of ghostly activity are shocking and legitimately spooky. This book was written 50 years ago but feels like it could have taken place this summer. The writing and dialogue is a little immature, it is oversexualized at points - and it would be fair to say it is filled with clichés - but it is definitely unsettling. It's also fair to say it helped create those clichés in the first place. The book must have been astounding in 1971, as it is still engrossing now. A true masterpiece of horror.

Ray Porter delivers a masterful reading. His performance is reserved but full of emotion.

This trope-establishing novel is worth 8.5 stars out of 10.

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Disturbingly good!

I thoroughly enjoyed this story.. it was unexpectedly dark and and pretty graphic. The setting and some of the writing style is dated, but didn't hinder my enjoyment of the story overall. There are parts that made me pull faces in disgust or horror, or make goosebumps show up on my arms, which I loved, because it was partly the narrator's effects and partly the story, and I love nothing more than a good story that makes me physically react. I would often have to reset my sleep timer because I just wanted to keep listening!

The narrator is excellent, and really makes the dialogue come alive. There's never any question as to who is talking, and he can do the scary voices quite well. I am picky with narration, but I'd listen to anything by Ray Porter any day.

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Awful narration

The story was good for what it is but the narration is absolutely cringe worthy. I had a hard time getting through this and taking it seriously. The narrator's story telling is great, but when it comes to voicing the women and the evil spirits dialogue it's just horrible. I really didn't want to keep listening but I don't like to leave things unfinished. I wish I would have read the physical copy myself.

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Mostly just gross and unsettling

There's a lot of rape and sexual assault. In fact that is pretty much all there is. The whole book is just a bragge of sexual assault scenes written in a pretty fetishistic manner. There isn't really much story beyond to prop up this content. There's noting wrong with a few sex scenes in books or showing assault but in this book there just isn't enough of anything else to make it interesting, or enjoyable, or thrilling.

The narrator has a pleasant voice and mostly did a good job except the female characters came out so whiny that it was pretty hard to listen to.

The characters were mostly unlikable and they had no camaraderie which is usually pretty essential. If you compare it to Shirley Jacksons "Haunting of Hill House," which is a pretty similar premise, you really notice how much this book is lacking and how much it could have benefitted from some likeable characters and endearing moments. You might actually care what happens to them.

Honestly if this is what I was looking for in a book I just would have picked up some fetish material. This isn't scary, it wasn't entertaining. Just not worth the time.

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Relies on rape and homophobia to drive the horror.

This is my first negative review.

I would like to begin by saying that Ray Porter read the book well, he is absolved from blame in this.

But the book relies on tawdry use of rape and homophobia to drive the horror. The rape elements come across as more gross and sensationalist than anything else, and the homophobia just comes across as awkward and is only frightening if you are homophobic.
This book falls in line with the piles of moralizing horror wherein people are punished for moral lapses (as defined by the author).

The ultimate reveal fell utterly flat. It felt like we were given an obvious answer to a question we never asked.

In the past I have never understood when women complain about how male writers describe women. But Oh. My. Gosh! I clearly have just been lucky in my book choices! This book had my eye’s rolling into the roof with the hyper-sexualized descriptions of women (and, notably, never men). Except for the possibly-lesbian woman who was described as looking very masculine - so he didn’t miss the opportunity to feed into those tired stereotypes.

He also REALLY overused the word “hissing.”

In short, this book felt much more gross than it felt frightening.

I agree with a reviewer on Goodreads that this book reads more like a perverse straight male fantasy than a work of horror.

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