There could be a few of them insinuating themselves into your Netflix queue. Maybe they are podcasts that slither through your earbuds into your ear while cleaning. You might even be reading one right now. I am speaking, of course, of the true crime genre. Not only is it horror-adjacent, but within the genre, there are all sorts of different crimes out there to tickle one’s bloodlust, from straight-up murder to bizarre forays into the criminal lifestyle. The genre has become so well-known that author Daniel Kraus has decided to use it as a framework in his haunted-fast-food-franchise story The Ghost That Ate Us.
This book chronicles the haunting of a Burger City just outside of Jonny, Iowa. Novelist and first-time true crime writer Daniel Kraus investigates just what happened to the workers who witnessed these strange hauntings and the event that left many of them dead. Going back through digital evidence and interviewing the survivors, Daniel might be the only one able to discover what led to the tragedy that will forever stain Jonny, Iowa and one fast food franchise. More importantly, he might be the only one to stop history from repeating.
Kraus’s story benefits greatly from the true crime format: it allows him to dig into the story in a seemingly clinical manner while that clinical detachment gets chiseled down throughout the course of the story. Add with that his spellbinding interactions with the survivors who are still bearing the physical and emotional scars from the poltergeist and both author and reader are slowly and inevitably pulled in. Much like the Blair Witch back in the ‘90s, its pull comes from its flirtation with being a “true” story. Part of true crime’s appeal is that there is often more than a few kernels of truth in these stories, which makes it a little harder to forget once the book is closed or you’ve closed your Netflix app. Those won’t stop the evil if there’s the possibility it’s somewhere outside your house.
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