involves stories within a story. The central narrative revolves around the conflict between the Chowder Society and Eva/Alma, serving as the "frame" for the various tales the characters recount. The Chowder Society itself exemplifies this storytelling device, as its members gather specifically to share stories. Additionally, Don Wanderley, a writer and English instructor, uses his professions to tell numerous stories (such as the plot of his novel inspired by his relationship with "Alma Mobley") and to reference various literary works. Notably, his allusions to authors like Hawthorne and Henry James highlight the literary tradition in which Straub is operating.

Another technique Straub uses, as King notes in Danse Macabre, is mirroring. This is evident in a scene near the novel's end where Don, Ricky, and Peter visit "Anna Mostyn" at her house. Peter looks into a small mirror in an empty bedroom and sees the face of a beautiful woman who speaks to him, telling him he is one of "them" and urging him to kill the other two men. As he raises his knife to do so, Ricky, who had tried to stop him from looking into the mirror, breaks it. Straub also employs mirroring through an epigraph retelling the myth of Narcissus. In Greek mythology, Narcissus is the young man who falls in love with his reflection in a pond and eventually turns into the flower bearing his name. In Straub's version, which opens the third section of the book, Narcissus weeps because, as he tells a friend, he has lost his innocence by gazing at his own image.

Numerous other "mirrors" appear throughout the novel. For instance, the film playing at the town's movie theater during the group's dangerous encounter with the Bate brothers is Night of the Living Dead; the on-screen events mirror the real-life struggle between the living group and the living dead brothers, with Gregory Bate even throwing Peter through the movie screen. This scene underscores the main characters' difficulty in distinguishing reality from the illusions Eva/Alma creates. In the novel's climactic scene, the small group is saved from destruction by the reality of Ricky's sneeze just as they are about to accept the individual "scenes" Eva/Alma orchestrates as real. Here, as in Straub's Floating Dragon (1983), the evil forces utilize psychological warfare to compel their victims to contribute to their own demise. In Stephen King's Salem's Lot (1975), a novel Straub has acknowledged as an influence, the vampires, following old vampire legends, can enter only by invitation; similar techniques are employed in other horror fiction to suggest that evil is fundamentally internal.

Like much of horror fiction, Ghost Story explores the battle between good and evil. The audience's values, along with those of the surviving characters, are reaffirmed as good ultimately triumphs. However, Straub delves into this conflict much more deeply than typical genre fiction. In Ghost Story and some of his other works, Straub examines ghosts with uniquely symbiotic relationships with the other characters. For instance, in a pivotal scene, Don Wanderley wakes to find Alma standing by the bedroom window. When he asks if something is wrong, she replies, "I saw a ghost." Upon reflection, Don wonders if she might have said, "I am a ghost"; finally, and most terrifyingly, he realizes she actually said, "I am you." The specific type of evil creature Alma represents is not crucial for most of the novel — she and her associates exhibit traits of ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and other monsters. However, near the end, Don identifies her as a "shapeshifter." Don suggests that by changing their form, shapeshifters distort their victims' sense of reality and sanity; thus, the best defense is to accept that the horror one perceives is genuinely happening.

Justice is another key element of the horror novel, often depicted by the defeat and destruction of evil. Once again, Straub goes far beyond this superficial treatment. His focus on justice is evident in his characters: two main characters are lawyers, and a third is named after a judge in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables (1851). Additionally, the plot of Ghost Story bears some resemblance to another Hawthorne novel, The Marble Faun (1860), which tackles the nature of evil and the consequences of sin. Straub hints at these similarities by using an epigraph from The Marble Faun at the start of Ghost Story.

Justice concerns not only the good characters in the novel but the evil ones as well. Eva/Alma clearly sees herself as correcting wrongs and feels justified in destroying not just the "wrongdoers" but everyone associated with them. One of the novel's complexities is that she was actually killed by members of the Chowder Society when they were young men. As the novel begins, they have kept this guilty secret, never discussing it even among themselves, for fifty years. Thus, the good characters are not entirely blameless; their guilt lies not so much in Eva/Alma's death, which was clearly an accident, but in their attraction to her and their cover-up of her death.

In Ghost Story, the theme of the significance of the past plays a crucial role. Ghosts are not only literal remnants of the past but also serve as symbolic representations. Specifically in horror fiction, they embody an evil aspect of history; whereas, in other genres, they might be benign or even beneficial. The novel's unusually long gap of fifty years between the ghost's death and its appearance suggests that our connection to the past may not easily or swiftly diminish.

Most characters are profoundly preoccupied with the past, as demonstrated by the tales shared by the Chowder Society members. Furthermore, Straub's fascination with history is evident through his numerous references, both direct and indirect, to the early masters of the horror genre.

On the dust jacket of Ghost Story, Straub is quoted as saying that the novel "refers back to the classic American novels and stories of the genre by Henry James and Nathaniel Hawthorne ... I was moved by a desire to look into, examine, and play with the genre — to take these 'classic' elements as far as they could go."

Straub's direct references to James and Hawthorne help establish a sense of tradition. The names of the two law partners, Sears James and Ricky Hawthorne, are the most obvious of these references. After Sears's death, a new partner joins the firm, and Ricky tells his wife, "Pity his name isn't Poe." Less noticeably, a third member of the Chowder Society, Dr. John Jaffrey, is named after Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon, a character in Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables (1851). Additionally, the story that Sears James tells in the Chowder Society is quite similar to Henry James's The Turn of the Screw (1898).

In some respects, Straub is also drawing from a tradition much older than nineteenth-century American fiction. Two of the names of the evil female character, "Galli" (Eva's last name) and "Alma," are linked to Cybele, the Asiatic goddess symbolizing the fertility of nature. Even the seemingly generic title of the novel reminds readers of the long history of ghost stories.

Straub has authored five additional novels that explore the supernatural, including one co-written with Stephen King. His earliest novel, Julia, was released in 1975 and tells the story of a woman who tries to save her choking daughter with an unsuccessful amateur tracheotomy. Following her daughter's death, Julia becomes convinced she is haunted by the child's ghost. Another ghost-themed novel, If You Could See Me Now, was published in 1977.

Three more supernatural-themed novels followed the 1979 release of Ghost Story. Shadowland, published in 1980, revolves around magic and shares a similar narrative style with Ghost Story; it employs a series of interconnected stories reminiscent of fairy tales, as indicated by the inclusion of the Brothers Grimm. Straub's next novel, Floating Dragon (1983), incorporates many themes, techniques, and character types from his earlier works, with its climactic scene particularly echoing Ghost Story. Some differences in this novel may stem from Straub's collaboration with Stephen King, culminating in their 1984 co-authored novel, The Talisman.

In 1981, Universal released a major motion picture adaptation of Ghost Story. The film featured a star-studded cast including Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., John Houseman, Patricia Neal, and Alice Krige. Directed by John Irvin, the screenplay was penned by Lawrence D. Cohen. Despite the impressive lineup, the film did not fare well with critics and audiences. The screenplay significantly simplified the novel's intricate plot and leaned heavily on horror genre clichés, missing the originality that Straub brought to the source material.

Mia Farrow and Keir Dullea led the 1976 Paramount adaptation of Julia, which was released under the title The Haunting of Julia (originally known as Full Circle). Similar to the Ghost Story film, it also failed to garner positive reception.