No, that's my preferred kind of text. It's a relief to read a site like that, most aren't so kind to my eyes.
The reverse colors of quotes is very easy to understand (although if it was me I would have used white text with a slightly gray background and a white border).
If you are seeing ghosts your monitor may be too bright for the amount of light in the room around you.
its absolutely hideous and unreadable to me for any length of time - Salon.com recently did something similar on a redesign of their site. I go there much less now.