Haunted is a 2005 novel by Chuck Palahniuk. The plot is a frame story for a series of 23 short stories, most preceded by a free verse poem. Each story is followed by a chapter of the main narrative, is told by a character in main narrative, and ties back into the main story in some way. Typical of Palahniuk's work, the dominant motifs in Haunted are sexual deviance, sexual identity, desperation, social distastefulness, disease, murder, death, and existentialism. The synopsis on the dustjacket describes Haunted as a satire of reality television, but according to Palahniuk, the novel is actually about "the battle for credibility" that has resulted from the ease with which one can publish through the use of modern technology. The cover of the 2006 U.S. trade paperback reprint features a glow-in-the-dark image. Plot summary Each of the book's chapters contains three sections: a story chapter, which acts as a framing device for the otherwise unconnected short stories; a poem about a particular writer on the tour, its author being unspecified; and the short story written by that writer. The main story centers on a group of seventeen individuals (all of whom go by nicknames based on the story they tell) who have decided to participate in a secret writers' retreat, frequently compared by characters to the Villa Diodati retreat of 1816. After having noticed an invitation to the retreat posted on the bulletin board of a cafe in Oregon, the characters follow instructions on the invitation to meet Mr. Whittier, the retreat's organizer. Whittier tells them to each wait for a bus to pick them up the next morning and bring only what they can fit into one piece of luggage (in particular, only what they feel they need most). The next day, the seventeen characters, Whittier, and his assistant Mrs. Clark are driven to an abandoned theatre. Whittier locks all of them inside the theatre, telling them they have three months to each write a magnum opus before he will allow them to leave. In the meantime, they will have enough food and water to survive, as well as heat, electricity, bedrooms, bathrooms, and a clothes washing and drying machine provided. The characters live under harmless conditions at first. However, the group (not including Whittier or Clark) eventually decide that they could make a better story of their own suffering inside the theatre, and thereby become