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Andrew Michael Hurley

The Summer People from Shirley Jackson

I discovered this story years ago and it has haunted me ever since. The titular “summer people” happen to be the Allisons from New York, who rent a particular off-grid country cottage annually. On this occasion, instead of heading back home, they decide to extend their vacation a few more weeks – something that seems to alarm each resident in the adjacent village. Each repeats the same veiled caution that no one has ever stayed at the lake beyond the end of summer. Regardless, they are resolved to stay, and at that point situations commence to become stranger. The man who delivers the kerosene won’t sell to them. No one agrees to bring supplies to the cabin, and as they try to travel to the community, the automobile fails to start. A tempest builds, the energy within the device die, and with the arrival of dusk, “the aged individuals crowded closely within their rental and expected”. What could be they waiting for? What might the locals know? Each occasion I revisit Jackson’s chilling and thought-provoking story, I’m reminded that the finest fright originates in what’s left undisclosed.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes from Robert Aickman

In this brief tale two people go to a common coastal village in which chimes sound continuously, an incessant ringing that is annoying and puzzling. The opening extremely terrifying scene happens during the evening, when they opt to walk around and they fail to see the ocean. Sand is present, there is the odor of rotting fish and brine, there are waves, but the sea appears spectral, or another thing and even more alarming. It’s just deeply malevolent and every time I visit to a beach after dark I recall this story that destroyed the sea at night for me – favorably.

The young couple – she’s very young, the husband is older – go back to their lodging and learn the cause of the ringing, in a long sequence of claustrophobia, necro-orgy and mortality and youth encounters grim ballet pandemonium. It’s an unnerving reflection regarding craving and deterioration, two people aging together as a couple, the connection and brutality and gentleness of marriage.

Not just the most terrifying, but probably one of the best brief tales in existence, and a personal favourite. I read it in Spanish, in the initial publication of these tales to be published locally a decade ago.

Catriona Ward

Zombie by an esteemed writer

I read this book near the water overseas recently. Although it was sunny I felt an icy feeling over me. I also experienced the excitement of excitement. I was composing a new project, and I had hit a block. I didn’t know whether there existed any good way to craft various frightening aspects the story includes. Experiencing this novel, I saw that there was a way.

Published in 1995, the novel is a grim journey within the psyche of a murderer, the protagonist, modeled after Jeffrey Dahmer, the criminal who killed and cut apart 17 young men and boys in Milwaukee during a specific period. Infamously, the killer was fixated with creating a compliant victim who would stay him and made many grisly attempts to do so.

The actions the book depicts are terrible, but just as scary is its own emotional authenticity. The character’s awful, shattered existence is plainly told with concise language, details omitted. The audience is plunged caught in his thoughts, compelled to observe mental processes and behaviors that shock. The strangeness of his mind is like a physical shock – or getting lost on a barren alien world. Starting Zombie is less like reading but a complete immersion. You are absorbed completely.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel by Helen Oyeyemi

During my youth, I was a somnambulist and eventually began having night terrors. On one occasion, the fear involved a dream in which I was trapped inside a container and, upon awakening, I realized that I had removed the slat out of the window frame, trying to get out. That home was falling apart; when storms came the downstairs hall filled with water, fly larvae fell from the ceiling onto the bed, and at one time a big rodent ascended the window coverings in my sister’s room.

After an acquaintance handed me the story, I was no longer living at my family home, but the story about the home perched on the cliffs appeared known to me, longing as I felt. It’s a story about a haunted clamorous, emotional house and a female character who consumes limestone off the rocks. I cherished the book immensely and went back frequently to it, each time discovering {something