Phantom, first published in 1982, is Thomas Tessier's fourth novel. It is the story of Ned Covington, a ten-year-old boy, who explores an abandoned building near his home and what he finds there.
According to Don D'Amassa in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror Fiction, it 'is beautifully written and hard to forget.'
Neil Barron's Horror Literature: A Reader's Guide called it 'a touching, scary book. . . as harrowing and imaginative as anything in current horror fiction.'
Douglas E. Winter in The Penguin Encyclopedia of Tessier . . . proved himself one of the major new talents in horror fiction with . . .a compelling humanist ghost story, Phantom.'
Winter also listed it in Faces of Fear (Berkley, 1985), as one of 'the best of the modern generation of horror fiction.' It was also included on a similar list published as an appendix to Stephen Jones' and Kim Newman's Horror: 100 Best Books (Carroll & Graf, 1988).
Phantom was nominated for a World Fantasy Award in 1983.