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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale from Shirley Jackson

I discovered this story years ago and it has haunted me since then. The titular “summer people” turn out to be the Allisons from the city, who rent the same off-grid rural cabin each year. This time, in place of going back to urban life, they choose to extend their holiday an extra month – a decision that to disturb everyone in the adjacent village. Each repeats the same veiled caution that not a soul has lingered by the water beyond Labor Day. Even so, the Allisons are resolved to not leave, and that is the moment things start to grow more bizarre. The person who supplies fuel won’t sell to the couple. Nobody is willing to supply groceries to their home, and as the family attempt to travel to the community, the automobile fails to start. A storm gathers, the batteries within the device diminish, and with the arrival of dusk, “the two old people crowded closely inside their cabin and anticipated”. What are they expecting? What might the locals know? Whenever I revisit Jackson’s unnerving and influential tale, I’m reminded that the best horror originates in what’s left undisclosed.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickman

In this concise narrative a pair go to a common seaside town in which chimes sound constantly, a constant chiming that is bothersome and unexplainable. The initial very scary scene takes place at night, at the time they decide to go for a stroll and they are unable to locate the ocean. Sand is present, there is the odor of rotting fish and brine, waves crash, but the sea appears spectral, or something else and even more alarming. It is simply deeply malevolent and every time I visit to the coast at night I recall this tale that ruined the sea at night in my view – positively.

The newlyweds – the woman is adolescent, the man is mature – go back to their lodging and find out the cause of the ringing, during a prolonged scene of claustrophobia, necro-orgy and demise and innocence intersects with grim ballet bedlam. It is a disturbing contemplation about longing and decay, two bodies growing old jointly as partners, the attachment and violence and tenderness in matrimony.

Not just the most frightening, but likely a top example of brief tales in existence, and a personal favourite. I experienced it in Spanish, in the debut release of this author’s works to be published in Argentina a decade ago.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel by Joyce Carol Oates

I read this book by a pool in the French countryside recently. Even with the bright weather I felt an icy feeling within me. I also felt the excitement of fascination. I was writing my third novel, and I encountered a wall. I wasn’t sure if there was an effective approach to compose some of the fearful things the story includes. Experiencing this novel, I saw that it was possible.

Released decades ago, the book is a grim journey through the mind of a murderer, the protagonist, modeled after a notorious figure, the criminal who murdered and cut apart multiple victims in the Midwest during a specific period. As is well-known, Dahmer was obsessed with making a zombie sex slave that would remain by his side and attempted numerous grisly attempts to achieve this.

The deeds the novel describes are terrible, but just as scary is the mental realism. Quentin P’s terrible, fragmented world is directly described with concise language, details omitted. You is sunk deep trapped in his consciousness, obliged to observe ideas and deeds that horrify. The alien nature of his psyche resembles a bodily jolt – or being stranded in an empty realm. Going into Zombie is less like reading and more like a physical journey. You are consumed entirely.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel by Helen Oyeyemi

When I was a child, I sleepwalked and later started having night terrors. At one point, the horror featured a nightmare during which I was stuck inside a container and, as I roused, I realized that I had ripped a piece out of the window frame, trying to get out. That house was decaying; during heavy rain the downstairs hall filled with water, fly larvae came down from the roof onto the bed, and once a large rat scaled the curtains in the bedroom.

When a friend presented me with Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I was no longer living with my parents, but the story regarding the building perched on the cliffs felt familiar in my view, longing as I felt. It is a story about a haunted clamorous, sentimental building and a female character who eats chalk off the rocks. I cherished the novel immensely and returned frequently to the story, always finding {something