carrot," referring to both the mother in the first story and to the total denial of all the parents involved. At the end, the narrator tells the reader they can now take a breath, as he still has not taken one himself. Purportedly all three of these incidents are based on true stories. According to Palahniuk, the first two tales came from his friends' experiences and the third he heard while shadowing sexual addiction support groups as research for Choke. In one of these groups, he met an extremely thin man. When Palahniuk asked him how he stayed so thin, he told him "I had a massive bowel resectioning." When Palahniuk asked what he meant, he told him the story which was the basis for the third episode in "Guts". Reception Haunted received mixed to favorable reviews from critics upon its release. Haunted received a negative review from The New York Times columnist Tom Shone who noted that despite being referred to as a horror novel it is "...stubbornly unscary. It burps up its shock moments with so little ceremony that the Gothic virtue of stealthily sidewinding suspense -- the art of allowing a story to steal up on you before you even knew it was there -- is left whistling in the wind." Shone additionally noted the repetitive nature of many of the stories within the novel noting that every single story regardless of which character was narrating all utilized Palahniuk's distinctive style. Tasha Robinson of The A.V. Club reviewed the novel soon after its release giving it a positive review, stating "...Palahniuk is as unique and colorful as ever, with his predilection for odd factoids and weird twists. But none of this makes the arbitrary deaths, the ludicrous behavior, or the pages upon pages about corpse-rot and vivisection any easier to deal with. Like his characters, Palahniuk sometimes seems to be operating under the presumption that he can never sink too low, or vomit up too much. Here's hoping he's wrong, for everyone's sake." Editions (hardcover, 2005) (paperback, 2006) References External links Official book website Information about Haunted at ChuckPalahniuk.net Haunted Has Director 2005 American novels Metafictional novels American horror novels Novels by Chuck Palahniuk Short story collections by Chuck Palahniuk Doubleday (publisher) books Self-harm in fiction Novels about cannibalism Books with cover art by Rodrigo Corral