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Dreamthorp
Welcome to Dreamthorp
A sleepy little Pennsylvania resort town where city folks can get away from it all…
A town where a woman who saw her best friend mutilated by a crazed sex killer can hide – and forget…
…until haunted relics of another age awaken an ancient evil and unleash a human horror that has no place outside of Hell…
A sleepy little Pennsylvania resort town where city folks can get away from it all…
A town where a woman who saw her best friend mutilated by a crazed sex killer can hide – and forget…
…until haunted relics of another age awaken an ancient evil and unleash a human horror that has no place outside of Hell…
- GenresHorror
353 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
6 people are currently reading
190 people want to read
About the author
Chet Williamson
189 books117 followersChet Williamson has written horror, science fiction, and suspense since 1981. Among his novels are Second Chance, Hunters, Defenders of the Faith, Ash Wednesday, Reign, Dreamthorp, and the forthcoming Psycho Sanitarium, an authorized sequel to Robert Bloch's classic Psycho. Over a hundred of his short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, The Magazine of F&SF, and many other magazines and anthologies.
He has won the International Horror Guild Award, and has been shortlisted twice for the World Fantasy Award, six times for the HWA Stoker, and once for the MWA's Edgar. Nearly all of his works are available in ebook format.
A stage and film actor, he has recorded over 40 unabridged audiobooks, both of his own work and that of many other writers, available at www.audible.com. Follow him on Twitter (@chetwill) or at www.chetwilliamson.com.
He has won the International Horror Guild Award, and has been shortlisted twice for the World Fantasy Award, six times for the HWA Stoker, and once for the MWA's Edgar. Nearly all of his works are available in ebook format.
A stage and film actor, he has recorded over 40 unabridged audiobooks, both of his own work and that of many other writers, available at www.audible.com. Follow him on Twitter (@chetwill) or at www.chetwilliamson.com.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 9, 2022
Reread for Spooktober '22, and just as good as I remembered. Williamson, thankfully, does not have a formula like Saul for his books; each one is distinct and fresh. First published in 1989, Dreamthorp is perhaps more literary horror than his other works I have read, with quotes from the original Dreamthorp starting every chapter. From what I gather, Dreamthorp was something of an utopian plan for a village, and when it was published in the early 19th century, there were many such 'utopian' experiments.
In any case, Williamson's Dreamthrop is a small, quaint town in Central Pennsylvania not that far from Lancaster. It was built in a very rustic, sylvian manner, with small cottages nestled in among the towering trees, and for a town its size, it has a very robust arts scene, with plays in the rustic theater and weekly concerts. The prologue involves a few Indian tribes at war, with one group finally being massacred where Dreamthorp will be one day. Yeah, Williamson pulls out the old Indian curse/burial ground thing here, but he does it well.
The foo starts when some 'urban miners' take their metal detectors to the site of an old saw mill, looking to find whatever; what they ended up finding (besides some old coins and nails) was a carved piece of quartz that looked like a man. The next day, bad, strange things start happening in Dreamthorp, like the rustic theater suddenly collapsing for no reason, killing and maiming dozens of people. From there on in, it is like 10 miles of bad road...
Williamson managed to build a lot of tension into this one, along with some characters that Robert McCammon blurbed "breathe and bleed." Our lead, Tom, is a wood carver/art teacher at the local college, who lost his wife in a car wreck about a year ago. His teenage son has still not gotten over it, and when Tom starts dating a coed, things go from bad to worse between them; this gets even worse when his parents show up for a long visit. There are a host of other characters here, and Williamson breathes life into them all. This is not a fast paced horror rampage, but more of a slow burn punctuated by some grizzly, nasty foo. This is probably my favorite Williamson at the moment, but all of what I have read of his works rests more than a few levels above the majority of the horror boom of the 80s. Good stuff! 4 woody stars!
In any case, Williamson's Dreamthrop is a small, quaint town in Central Pennsylvania not that far from Lancaster. It was built in a very rustic, sylvian manner, with small cottages nestled in among the towering trees, and for a town its size, it has a very robust arts scene, with plays in the rustic theater and weekly concerts. The prologue involves a few Indian tribes at war, with one group finally being massacred where Dreamthorp will be one day. Yeah, Williamson pulls out the old Indian curse/burial ground thing here, but he does it well.
The foo starts when some 'urban miners' take their metal detectors to the site of an old saw mill, looking to find whatever; what they ended up finding (besides some old coins and nails) was a carved piece of quartz that looked like a man. The next day, bad, strange things start happening in Dreamthorp, like the rustic theater suddenly collapsing for no reason, killing and maiming dozens of people. From there on in, it is like 10 miles of bad road...
Williamson managed to build a lot of tension into this one, along with some characters that Robert McCammon blurbed "breathe and bleed." Our lead, Tom, is a wood carver/art teacher at the local college, who lost his wife in a car wreck about a year ago. His teenage son has still not gotten over it, and when Tom starts dating a coed, things go from bad to worse between them; this gets even worse when his parents show up for a long visit. There are a host of other characters here, and Williamson breathes life into them all. This is not a fast paced horror rampage, but more of a slow burn punctuated by some grizzly, nasty foo. This is probably my favorite Williamson at the moment, but all of what I have read of his works rests more than a few levels above the majority of the horror boom of the 80s. Good stuff! 4 woody stars!
Want to read
October 2, 2017This hardcover is numbered 362 of 400 copies produced and is signed by Chet Williamson and the illustrator Bob Eggleton.
March 17, 2013
This was my first Chet Williamson read, and I was impressed with his highly literate writing style. That said, the intellectual tone occasionally made the way over the top subject matter and questionable dialog all the more silly. Some things didn't work in this book, others did. It isn't a perfect read, but I'm glad I read it and will check out more of Williamson's work in the future.
October 1, 2014
Welcome to Dreamthorp, Pennsylvania - an idyllic little resort town full of picturesque cottages, friendly neighbors and a sleepy, picture postcard-style atmosphere. It is to this quiet little town that two people from the city can finally come to get away from it all. A place where one can escape and start their life over...
Laura Stark is a woman on the run. She has fled to Dreamthorp in order to recover from a brutal attack perpetrated by a crazed rapist - the same attack during which she saw him mutilate her best friend. Dreamthorp seems like the perfect place for Laura Stark to hide - and forget the past...
Tom Brewer is a recently widowed teacher and sculptor, determinedly trying to put his life back together and helping his grieving fourteen-year-old son, Josh.
Then one day the peace of Dreamthorp is irrevocably shattered when a couple of local treasure hunters uncover several deeply-buried Native American artifacts. The couple's digging yields some ancient coins, beads, and an unusual-looking amulet. Once the haunted relics are unearthed, a hellacious and centuries-old evil is also unleashed; one that will inevitably exact a horrific vengeance that has no place outside of the gates of Hell. A series of brutal murders occur in the quiet town, rocking Dreamthorp - and its people - to its very core.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It was certainly very graphic and gruesome in parts, and the story was somewhat far-fetched in places. However, I found the book to be surprisingly well-written, for horror that was written in the late 1980s and I'm currently looking for more books by this author. I would give Dreamthorp by Chet Williamson an A!
Laura Stark is a woman on the run. She has fled to Dreamthorp in order to recover from a brutal attack perpetrated by a crazed rapist - the same attack during which she saw him mutilate her best friend. Dreamthorp seems like the perfect place for Laura Stark to hide - and forget the past...
Tom Brewer is a recently widowed teacher and sculptor, determinedly trying to put his life back together and helping his grieving fourteen-year-old son, Josh.
Then one day the peace of Dreamthorp is irrevocably shattered when a couple of local treasure hunters uncover several deeply-buried Native American artifacts. The couple's digging yields some ancient coins, beads, and an unusual-looking amulet. Once the haunted relics are unearthed, a hellacious and centuries-old evil is also unleashed; one that will inevitably exact a horrific vengeance that has no place outside of the gates of Hell. A series of brutal murders occur in the quiet town, rocking Dreamthorp - and its people - to its very core.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It was certainly very graphic and gruesome in parts, and the story was somewhat far-fetched in places. However, I found the book to be surprisingly well-written, for horror that was written in the late 1980s and I'm currently looking for more books by this author. I would give Dreamthorp by Chet Williamson an A!
October 21, 2025
It took me a while to finish this one, but I’m glad I stuck with it. It starts off feeling like your standard small-town horror, an old burial ground, a stolen charm, and weird stuff starting to happen, but it ends up being a lot more than that.
Yeah, it’s got violence and ghosts and all that, but underneath it is a really good love story. Tom and Laura felt real to me. Two people who’ve both been through it, trying to figure life out while everything around them is falling apart. Their story hit harder than I expected.
Some parts drag, and the supernatural angle doesn’t always click, but I didn’t care much by the end. The town felt alive, the writing had mood, and that love story pulled me in more than the horror did.
It’s one of those books that stays with you for reasons you can’t quite explain. I’d call it horror, but it was also kind of beautiful...
Yeah, it’s got violence and ghosts and all that, but underneath it is a really good love story. Tom and Laura felt real to me. Two people who’ve both been through it, trying to figure life out while everything around them is falling apart. Their story hit harder than I expected.
Some parts drag, and the supernatural angle doesn’t always click, but I didn’t care much by the end. The town felt alive, the writing had mood, and that love story pulled me in more than the horror did.
It’s one of those books that stays with you for reasons you can’t quite explain. I’d call it horror, but it was also kind of beautiful...
November 12, 2010
Great book.
June 14, 2021
"I mean, an Indian graveyard? It just sounds too pulpy to be real." So says one of the more credulous characters in Dreamthorp, Chet Williamson's take on the disturbed spirits of the sacred burial ground subgenre. And while Williamson finds many alternate routes to sidestep the "pulpy" traps and cliches of this subgenre, he often does so with plot points that are equally cheesy and absurd. The experience of reading this book was a little like waiting for a friend to throw a pie in your face as a gag only to find that he's actually going to splash you with hot coffee instead. Sure, it's unexpected, but not necessarily any better.
One matter of unpredictability involves the killer's storyline. He spends most of the book traveling across the country to find the one victim who got away. Not only does he slash and burn new victims as he goes, he constantly thinks about anything and everything morbid: getting revenge, how much he hates women, how much he hates his mom for molesting him, and killing people in general. Having reread In Cold Blood recently and seeing how some of the most vicious killers actually spend their time doing boring daily tasks and holding innocuous thoughts, everything about this character rings hollow.
However, he does eventually stop in Chicago where his estranged father is a jazz musician. This leads to some odd passages of late night debauchery that, while out of place, could have led to some revelations about their strained relationship. Unfortunately, it all ends with nothing more than standard bloodshed and ends up feeling more like filler than anything substantive.
The relationship between the two main characters is, perhaps, the most positively unexpected aspect of the book. They show a maturity about their stations in life and exude vulnerabilities based on their current situation that exceed the rest of the story. Their internal dialogue when together is sweet (at least until the end when it becomes saccharine), and the way the female protagonist struggles with her fluid sexual orientation is particularly daring and believable, continuing a trend Williamson started with his earlier book, McKain's Dilemma.
But the subtlety on display in these moments can't maintain itself. The ending of the story, once again, subverts expectations, but still gets things wrong. The major threats of the novel aren't addressed until the last twenty pages or so, and the twist just doesn't make much sense. Even if it had, trees and wood attacking people is not all that scary or interesting. Not even some unexpected twists and turns could make it so.
One matter of unpredictability involves the killer's storyline. He spends most of the book traveling across the country to find the one victim who got away. Not only does he slash and burn new victims as he goes, he constantly thinks about anything and everything morbid: getting revenge, how much he hates women, how much he hates his mom for molesting him, and killing people in general. Having reread In Cold Blood recently and seeing how some of the most vicious killers actually spend their time doing boring daily tasks and holding innocuous thoughts, everything about this character rings hollow.
However, he does eventually stop in Chicago where his estranged father is a jazz musician. This leads to some odd passages of late night debauchery that, while out of place, could have led to some revelations about their strained relationship. Unfortunately, it all ends with nothing more than standard bloodshed and ends up feeling more like filler than anything substantive.
The relationship between the two main characters is, perhaps, the most positively unexpected aspect of the book. They show a maturity about their stations in life and exude vulnerabilities based on their current situation that exceed the rest of the story. Their internal dialogue when together is sweet (at least until the end when it becomes saccharine), and the way the female protagonist struggles with her fluid sexual orientation is particularly daring and believable, continuing a trend Williamson started with his earlier book, McKain's Dilemma.
But the subtlety on display in these moments can't maintain itself. The ending of the story, once again, subverts expectations, but still gets things wrong. The major threats of the novel aren't addressed until the last twenty pages or so, and the twist just doesn't make much sense. Even if it had, trees and wood attacking people is not all that scary or interesting. Not even some unexpected twists and turns could make it so.
June 25, 2025
"But the image of the two women together intruded upon his thoughts, not with the simple and adolescent jealousy of a lover’s past love but with the gnawing insistence that the memory of pornography exerts upon the penitent, seeking to subsume the sins of the flesh in contemplations of sanctity."
Dreamthorp by Chet Williamson
5/5 ⭐️
In my old podcast: The Nerdyverse of Madness, I interviewed Judith Sonnet and one of my questions to her were "3 horror books that you'd recommend that maybe I haven't heard of."
Among those recommendations was Dreamthorp by Chet Williamson.
I was going through some of my boxes of books a week or so later and, what do you know, I had Dreamthorp (and I got it for $1!!). It took me a bit to get around to it and now I wish I hadn't waited.
In the interview, Judith said that the less you know about it, the better and I wholeheartedly agree, but I will give a little bit, as did she, here.
What I loved: Everything lol. I am definitely going to be pulling Chet on to my autobuy list (he wrote the novelization for the second Crow movie lol). His use of language was absolutely fantastic, he was able to paint a very detailed, vivid description of every scenario without bogging you down in overdescription.
The characters felt real as hell and they're going to be living with me for awhile.
I loved the feel of Dreamthorp and, with the exception of the events that are happening, I actually could see myself living a wonderful, happy life in that town.
The atmosphere was amazing and I am so happy I read this at the beginning of summer. This is an excellent summer read.
What I didn't like: Honestly, there isn’t anything. If I were to be critical, perhaps the ending was a teeny bit rushed, but not enough so to affect my rating.
Dreamthorp by Chet Williamson
5/5 ⭐️
In my old podcast: The Nerdyverse of Madness, I interviewed Judith Sonnet and one of my questions to her were "3 horror books that you'd recommend that maybe I haven't heard of."
Among those recommendations was Dreamthorp by Chet Williamson.
I was going through some of my boxes of books a week or so later and, what do you know, I had Dreamthorp (and I got it for $1!!). It took me a bit to get around to it and now I wish I hadn't waited.
In the interview, Judith said that the less you know about it, the better and I wholeheartedly agree, but I will give a little bit, as did she, here.
What I loved: Everything lol. I am definitely going to be pulling Chet on to my autobuy list (he wrote the novelization for the second Crow movie lol). His use of language was absolutely fantastic, he was able to paint a very detailed, vivid description of every scenario without bogging you down in overdescription.
The characters felt real as hell and they're going to be living with me for awhile.
I loved the feel of Dreamthorp and, with the exception of the events that are happening, I actually could see myself living a wonderful, happy life in that town.
The atmosphere was amazing and I am so happy I read this at the beginning of summer. This is an excellent summer read.
What I didn't like: Honestly, there isn’t anything. If I were to be critical, perhaps the ending was a teeny bit rushed, but not enough so to affect my rating.
April 12, 2024
3.5 rounded up.
ALRIGHT. This book. WOW! The rating on this is low because the plot and pacing of the novel is sort of all over the place.
I wasn't hooked by the story really in any way, but the WRITING! Oh my GOD!!! Chet Williamson writes in what is essentially Steinbeckian prose. His writing is absolutely incredible. I kept stopping to take pictures of pages with impressive prose, and I even read some passages out loud to my coworkers, getting chills in the process. He is able to blend snark, sarcasm, and chillingly beautiful description into something that is incredibly engaging to read, even in the face of an extremely lackluster plot.
Some of my criticisms of the book are as such: A weird sense of underlying racism against Native Americans, the use of the haunted Native American burial ground trope, and objectification of black women. This is all stuff to be expected from a pulpy horror novel from the 80's, but I thought I'd bring it up anyways.
I was pleasantly surprised by how the book handled Laura's sexuality and ended up really enjoying how her relationship with Tom was written.
I would highly recommend this book with the caveat that the plot is really not that great.
ALRIGHT. This book. WOW! The rating on this is low because the plot and pacing of the novel is sort of all over the place.
I wasn't hooked by the story really in any way, but the WRITING! Oh my GOD!!! Chet Williamson writes in what is essentially Steinbeckian prose. His writing is absolutely incredible. I kept stopping to take pictures of pages with impressive prose, and I even read some passages out loud to my coworkers, getting chills in the process. He is able to blend snark, sarcasm, and chillingly beautiful description into something that is incredibly engaging to read, even in the face of an extremely lackluster plot.
Some of my criticisms of the book are as such: A weird sense of underlying racism against Native Americans, the use of the haunted Native American burial ground trope, and objectification of black women. This is all stuff to be expected from a pulpy horror novel from the 80's, but I thought I'd bring it up anyways.
I was pleasantly surprised by how the book handled Laura's sexuality and ended up really enjoying how her relationship with Tom was written.
I would highly recommend this book with the caveat that the plot is really not that great.
October 1, 2024
4/5. This was exactly what I was looking for when I grabbed this $2 paperback off the shelf. The story pretty much follows a small town where supernatural accidents keep occurring, all while we are also following a serial killer as he treks cross country. The writing is very good and the story is super fast paced, making this read almost like an Adult Goosebumps type of book. The small town aspects and characters reminded me a lot of Twin Peaks, and the serial killer narrative was as dark and graphic as Henry: Portrait of a Serial killer. Perfect way to kick off fall and jumpstart October!
April 5, 2023
Reads almost like a Lucio Fulci film. Batshit stuff happens for seemingly no reason, and damn you for asking it to make sense! The villain is very much a David Hess type so I was very attached to his storyline lol. Great book!
June 17, 2023
Good start but disappointing finish
March 29, 2024
3.75 stars
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews