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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale by Shirley Jackson

I read this tale years ago and it has haunted me ever since. The titular seasonal visitors turn out to be a family urban dwellers, who lease an identical isolated lakeside house annually. On this occasion, instead of returning to urban life, they opt to lengthen their vacation for a month longer – something that seems to unsettle each resident in the nearby town. Each repeats the same veiled caution that not a soul has ever stayed by the water after the holiday. Regardless, the couple are resolved to remain, and that is the moment events begin to grow more bizarre. The person who delivers fuel refuses to sell to them. No one agrees to bring groceries to the cottage, and at the time they endeavor to travel to the community, the car refuses to operate. A tempest builds, the energy of their radio die, and with the arrival of dusk, “the two old people clung to each other in their summer cottage and expected”. What might be the Allisons waiting for? What do the locals know? Whenever I revisit Jackson’s unnerving and influential story, I recall that the best horror comes from that which remains hidden.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes from a noted author

In this brief tale a couple journey to a typical coastal village in which chimes sound the whole time, an incessant ringing that is annoying and puzzling. The opening extremely terrifying moment takes place at night, when they opt to go for a stroll and they fail to see the ocean. The beach is there, the scent exists of putrid marine life and seawater, surf is audible, but the sea appears spectral, or something else and worse. It’s just insanely sinister and whenever I go to a beach after dark I remember this tale that ruined the sea at night for me – positively.

The newlyweds – the wife is youthful, the husband is older – go back to their lodging and find out the cause of the ringing, through an extended episode of claustrophobia, gruesome festivities and demise and innocence intersects with dance of death bedlam. It’s an unnerving reflection about longing and decay, two bodies aging together as partners, the bond and violence and tenderness of marriage.

Not merely the most frightening, but perhaps one of the best concise narratives available, and an individual preference. I experienced it in the Spanish language, in the debut release of this author’s works to be released in Argentina several years back.

Catriona Ward

Zombie from Joyce Carol Oates

I perused this book beside the swimming area in France in 2020. Despite the sunshine I experienced a chill within me. Additionally, I sensed the thrill of excitement. I was working on my third novel, and I encountered a wall. I didn’t know if it was possible a proper method to write various frightening aspects the narrative involves. Experiencing this novel, I saw that it could be done.

Released decades ago, the novel is a dark flight through the mind of a criminal, the protagonist, inspired by a notorious figure, the serial killer who killed and mutilated 17 young men and boys in a city over a decade. As is well-known, Dahmer was obsessed with producing a compliant victim that would remain him and made many macabre trials to achieve this.

The actions the book depicts are horrific, but equally frightening is the mental realism. The character’s awful, shattered existence is plainly told in spare prose, details omitted. The reader is sunk deep trapped in his consciousness, forced to see ideas and deeds that appal. The strangeness of his psyche is like a tangible impact – or getting lost on a desolate planet. Starting this story is less like reading than a full body experience. You are absorbed completely.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel from Helen Oyeyemi

In my early years, I walked in my sleep and eventually began having night terrors. Once, the terror involved a vision in which I was confined inside a container and, upon awakening, I found that I had ripped the slat from the window, seeking to leave. That house was decaying; when it rained heavily the downstairs hall became inundated, maggots fell from the ceiling onto the bed, and at one time a large rat climbed the drapes in the bedroom.

When a friend gave me Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I had moved out at my family home, but the tale of the house located on the coastline seemed recognizable to myself, homesick as I felt. It’s a novel concerning a ghostly noisy, emotional house and a girl who ingests chalk from the cliffs. I cherished the novel so much and went back repeatedly to its pages, always finding {something