title: Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque
author:  Joyce Carol Oates 
description: The central haunting of this collection of 16 tales is not anything so concrete as a building haunted by a ghost, but rather the interior haunting of a human being by their ever-shifting sense of self. As Joyce Carol Oates puts it (in a fascinating afterword on the nature and history of the grotesque), "The subjectivity that is the essence of the human is also the mystery that divides us irrevocably from others . . . all <i>others</i> are, in the deepest sense, <i>strangers</i>." These stories, while all dark, cover a range of styles and subjects. Some are vividly violent; several are subtle and/or ironic. <i>The New York Times</i> praised this collection for "pull[ing] off what this author does best: exploring the tricky juncture between tattered social fabric and shaky psyche, while serving up some choice macabre moments."
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  AVON BOOKS
  
  
  
  
  
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  Introduction copyright © 1987 by Peter D. Pautz
  
  
  
  
  
  "In the House of Gingerbread" copyright © 1987 by Gene Wolfe
  
  
  
  
  
  "Where the Heart Is" copyright © 1987 by Ramsey Campbell
  
  
  
  
  
  "Ellen, In Her Time" copyright © 1987 by Charles L. Grant
  
  
  
  
  
  "Nesting Instinct" copyright © 1987 by Scott Baker
  
  
  
  
  
  "Endless Night" copyright © 1987 by Karl Edward Wagner
  
  
  
  
  
  "Trust Me" copyright © 1987 by Joseph Lyons
  
  
  
  
  
  "The Fetch" copyright © 1980 by Robert Aickman (First published in
  _Intrusions)_
  
  
  
  
  
  "Visitors" copyright © 1987 by Jack Dann
  
  
  
  
  
  "Gentlemen" copyright © 1987 by John Skipp and Craig Spector
  
  
  
  
  
  "Down in the Darkness" copyright © 1986 Nkui Inc. First published in _The
  Horror Show,_ Summer 1986; Reprinted by permission of Nkui, Inc.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Haunted" copyright © 1987 by The Ontario Review, Inc.
  