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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale from Shirley Jackson

I encountered this narrative years ago and it has lingered with me from that moment. The so-called seasonal visitors happen to be the Allisons urban dwellers, who lease the same remote lakeside house each year. During this visit, rather than going back home, they decide to extend their stay for a month longer – a decision that to unsettle each resident in the adjacent village. Everyone conveys an identical cryptic advice that nobody has remained at the lake past the end of summer. Even so, they are resolved to stay, and at that point events begin to become stranger. The man who supplies the kerosene won’t sell to them. Nobody agrees to bring food to their home, and when the Allisons attempt to go to the village, the automobile won’t start. A storm gathers, the batteries in the radio diminish, and when night comes, “the two old people huddled together in their summer cottage and anticipated”. What could be this couple expecting? What might the residents know? Every time I read the writer’s disturbing and influential narrative, I remember that the best horror originates in the unspoken.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes from Robert Aickman

In this concise narrative two people travel to a typical seaside town where church bells toll continuously, a perpetual pealing that is irritating and puzzling. The first very scary scene takes place during the evening, when they decide to go for a stroll and they can’t find the sea. The beach is there, there is the odor of decaying seafood and salt, surf is audible, but the sea appears spectral, or something else and worse. It is simply profoundly ominous and every time I go to the coast in the evening I remember this tale that ruined the beach in the evening to my mind – positively.

The newlyweds – the wife is youthful, the man is mature – head back to the inn and find out the cause of the ringing, in a long sequence of claustrophobia, necro-orgy and death-and-the-maiden encounters dance of death pandemonium. It’s an unnerving reflection on desire and deterioration, a pair of individuals aging together as a couple, the bond and brutality and gentleness of marriage.

Not only the scariest, but probably among the finest brief tales out there, and a personal favourite. I encountered it en español, in the debut release of this author’s works to be released in Argentina several years back.

Catriona Ward

Zombie from an esteemed writer

I perused this narrative beside the swimming area in France recently. Even with the bright weather I sensed an icy feeling through me. I also felt the thrill of anticipation. I was composing my third novel, and I had hit an obstacle. I was uncertain if there was an effective approach to craft certain terrifying elements the narrative involves. Going through this book, I saw that it could be done.

Published in 1995, the book is a bleak exploration into the thoughts of a criminal, the protagonist, inspired by Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer who killed and dismembered multiple victims in Milwaukee between 1978 and 1991. Infamously, the killer was obsessed with creating a zombie sex slave who would stay by his side and attempted numerous horrific efforts to accomplish it.

The deeds the novel describes are terrible, but equally frightening is its own mental realism. The protagonist’s awful, fragmented world is simply narrated in spare prose, names redacted. The audience is immersed stuck in his mind, obliged to witness ideas and deeds that shock. The alien nature of his psyche is like a tangible impact – or getting lost on a barren alien world. Entering Zombie is not just reading and more like a physical journey. You are swallowed whole.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel from a gifted writer

When I was a child, I sleepwalked and later started having night terrors. On one occasion, the terror included a dream where I was trapped within an enclosure and, as I roused, I realized that I had removed a part off the window, trying to get out. That home was decaying; when storms came the entranceway filled with water, insect eggs came down from the roof into the bedroom, and on one occasion a large rat ascended the window coverings in the bedroom.

After an acquaintance handed me Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I was no longer living with my parents, but the tale of the house located on the coastline appeared known to me, nostalgic as I was. It’s a book concerning a ghostly clamorous, emotional house and a young woman who eats calcium off the rocks. I adored the book so much and went back repeatedly to the story, always finding {something