I haven't read a Ramsey Campbell in many many years, and I had forgotten how excruciatingly British they are. So while the protagonist is surrounded by odd noises and furtive movements and strange behaviours, the real creeping horror is the collision of manners, the pettiness of officials, the animosity of girflriend's parents, the toxicity of his relationship with his own parents, all fueled and exacerbated by misunderstandings, farcically embarrassing incidents, and the overspilling of repressed rage and frustration at what turns out to be wrong targets. Ramsey Campbell's everyday horrors are the horrors of social cringe. Of course there's also delving into the history of a forgotten silent movie star with an unsavory reputation and the protagonist's ongoing obliviousness to, or denial of, the fact that weird and strange and terrifying things are subtly warping his world, and the dysfunctional nature of his everyday world and the supernatural creepiness are melding and mixing until it's far too late to do anything about it, if there ever was something that could have been done about it.