Haunted. I'm Rebecca Lebe. I'm Jason Horton. And this is Ghost Town.

Chuck Pollinix Haunted is a daring visceral work of fiction that defines conventional storytelling.

Published in 2005, the novel weaves a series of dark and grotesque tales into a larger narrative about human desperation.

Though the book is primarily remembered for its unrelenting depictions of horror and depravity,

it's gained a peculiar reputation years before its official release. In 2003, when Paul Hennick began performing readings of one particular story from the book entitled Guts.

College boys everywhere are like, huh, what?

Let's hear more.

Guts is a short story that exemplifies Paul Inix talent for exploring the macab

while probing the vulnerabilities of the human condition.

Its content is explicit and shocking involving tales of sexual experimentation gone horribly wrong.

Oh, sexy.

I know a little bit about the story just based on this.

I didn't get too much into it.

I'm not going to describe it.

It's not necessary.

That's for you to do.

This is teasing the book a little bit as well.

Yeah, Guts is, I guess, one story in a collection of his words.

I'm not super familiar with him aside from culturally.

What sets the story apart, however, is its visceral impact on listeners.

During his 2003 readings, Paul Nick began to notice an unusual phenomenon.

Members of his audience started fainting. By the time Haunted was published, he had reportedly tracked over 70 fainting incidents across various readings of guts,

...