” Phantoms” by Dean Koontz is a horror novel originally published in the early 1980’s .

A doctor and her younger sister go into a small mountain town called Snowfield, California . Finding it almost abandoned except for a few dead bodies with strange injuries, they do the practical thing and call the sheriff of the next town over. The sheriff hears their pleas and brings some deputies to investigate. They find even more dead bodies in odd poses and as the investigation continues the deputies begin to disappear themselves. One of the deputies is seen being taken away by a moth like creature and the decision is made to get the military involved . The military dispatched a research team that also starts disappearing but they get a message from the presence that is seemingly causing all this to get ahold of a disgraced professor in the United Kingdom . Is this an alien invasion ? Possibly a demonic infestation ? A hallucination caused by a chemical weapon ? Or is it something else ?

First off , buy this book . It’s the classic horror novel that established Dean Koontz as a major player in the genre and it has gone on to inspire many other stories. Personally , it reminds me a lot of the ” Silent Hill ” video game series as they contain similar settings and themes. If you are looking for a Lovecraftian thriller give this a shot . On a side note , I know a movie was made based off this book and my feelings on it is that it’s alright . Definitely left some of the story out but if you can get it cheap it’s not the worst out there.