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A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People from Shirley Jackson

I read this story some time back and it has stayed with me ever since. The named “summer people” turn out to be a couple from New York, who rent an identical isolated rural cabin annually. On this occasion, in place of heading back home, they decide to extend their holiday for a month longer – something that seems to unsettle each resident in the adjacent village. Each repeats a similar vague warning that nobody has ever stayed in the area after the end of summer. Even so, the couple are determined to stay, and at that point situations commence to get increasingly weird. The person who delivers the kerosene won’t sell to them. Nobody will deliver groceries to the cottage, and at the time the Allisons try to go to the village, the automobile refuses to operate. Bad weather approaches, the batteries within the device fade, and when night comes, “the elderly couple crowded closely in their summer cottage and waited”. What could be the Allisons expecting? What might the townspeople be aware of? Every time I revisit this author’s chilling and inspiring tale, I remember that the finest fright originates in that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

Ringing the Changes from Robert Aickman

In this brief tale a couple travel to a common coastal village in which chimes sound constantly, a constant chiming that is annoying and puzzling. The first truly frightening scene takes place during the evening, as they opt to go for a stroll and they fail to see the sea. There’s sand, there’s the smell of decaying seafood and brine, waves crash, but the water appears spectral, or a different entity and worse. It is truly deeply malevolent and each occasion I visit to a beach in the evening I recall this tale which spoiled the beach in the evening for me – positively.

The recent spouses – the woman is adolescent, he’s not – head back to their lodging and discover the cause of the ringing, during a prolonged scene of confinement, necro-orgy and mortality and youth encounters grim ballet chaos. It’s a chilling contemplation about longing and deterioration, a pair of individuals aging together as spouses, the connection and violence and gentleness of marriage.

Not just the most terrifying, but likely one of the best brief tales available, and an individual preference. I read it in the Spanish language, in the first edition of these tales to be published in Argentina a decade ago.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel from Joyce Carol Oates

I read this book by a pool overseas in 2020. Although it was sunny I sensed an icy feeling through me. Additionally, I sensed the thrill of fascination. I was writing my third novel, and I had hit a block. I was uncertain if it was possible any good way to compose certain terrifying elements the story includes. Experiencing this novel, I understood that it was possible.

Released decades ago, the book is a bleak exploration through the mind of a criminal, the main character, modeled after Jeffrey Dahmer, the murderer who slaughtered and mutilated numerous individuals in a city over a decade. Infamously, this person was obsessed with creating a zombie sex slave that would remain with him and made many macabre trials to achieve this.

The deeds the story tells are horrific, but equally frightening is its own emotional authenticity. Quentin P’s terrible, broken reality is simply narrated in spare prose, names redacted. The reader is immersed stuck in his mind, compelled to witness thoughts and actions that shock. The alien nature of his thinking is like a tangible impact – or being stranded on a desolate planet. Starting this story is less like reading than a full body experience. You are swallowed whole.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel by a gifted writer

When I was a child, I walked in my sleep and subsequently commenced experiencing nightmares. At one point, the horror featured a dream where I was trapped inside a container and, as I roused, I realized that I had ripped a part from the window, attempting to escape. That house was crumbling; during heavy rain the entranceway filled with water, maggots dropped from above on to my parents’ bed, and once a big rodent ascended the window coverings in my sister’s room.

When a friend gave me this author’s book, I had moved out with my parents, but the narrative regarding the building high on the Dover cliffs appeared known to me, homesick as I was. This is a book about a haunted loud, sentimental building and a female character who ingests chalk from the cliffs. I loved the novel so much and returned frequently to the story, consistently uncovering {something