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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale by Shirley Jackson

I discovered this story years ago and it has haunted me since then. The titular vacationers are the Allisons from New York, who rent an identical remote country cottage each year. This time, rather than heading back to urban life, they decide to prolong their stay a few more weeks – an action that appears to unsettle all the locals in the adjacent village. Everyone conveys an identical cryptic advice that no one has lingered at the lake past Labor Day. Even so, the couple insist to stay, and that is the moment situations commence to grow more bizarre. The individual who delivers oil declines to provide to them. No one will deliver supplies to their home, and as they attempt to travel to the community, the automobile fails to start. Bad weather approaches, the batteries in the radio diminish, and with the arrival of dusk, “the two old people clung to each other inside their cabin and anticipated”. What could be they waiting for? What could the residents know? Whenever I peruse the writer’s chilling and inspiring story, I’m reminded that the finest fright originates in the unspoken.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes from a noted author

In this brief tale a couple go to a common coastal village where bells ring constantly, a constant chiming that is bothersome and puzzling. The opening truly frightening scene takes place during the evening, as they decide to go for a stroll and they are unable to locate the water. Sand is present, there’s the smell of decaying seafood and seawater, there are waves, but the ocean is a ghost, or a different entity and more dreadful. It’s just deeply malevolent and each occasion I go to the shore in the evening I remember this tale that ruined the sea at night to my mind – favorably.

The recent spouses – she’s very young, he’s not – head back to their lodging and discover the reason for the chiming, during a prolonged scene of confinement, gruesome festivities and demise and innocence intersects with dance of death bedlam. It is a disturbing contemplation on desire and decline, two bodies aging together as a couple, the bond and brutality and gentleness of marriage.

Not just the most frightening, but perhaps a top example of brief tales available, and a beloved choice. I read it in the Spanish language, in the first edition of Aickman stories to be released in Argentina a decade ago.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel by Joyce Carol Oates

I read Zombie near the water in France in 2020. Even with the bright weather I felt an icy feeling through me. I also experienced the electricity of excitement. I was working on a new project, and I faced an obstacle. I wasn’t sure if it was possible a proper method to compose certain terrifying elements the story includes. Going through this book, I saw that there was a way.

Released decades ago, the story is a grim journey into the thoughts of a murderer, the main character, inspired by Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer who slaughtered and cut apart multiple victims in the Midwest between 1978 and 1991. Infamously, the killer was obsessed with creating a compliant victim who would stay him and attempted numerous horrific efforts to do so.

The deeds the story tells are terrible, but similarly terrifying is the emotional authenticity. Quentin P’s awful, broken reality is simply narrated with concise language, names redacted. The reader is immersed trapped in his consciousness, compelled to see ideas and deeds that horrify. The strangeness of his psyche feels like a physical shock – or being stranded on a barren alien world. Entering Zombie is less like reading but a complete immersion. You are consumed entirely.

An Accomplished Author

White Is for Witching from a gifted writer

When I was a child, I sleepwalked and eventually began having night terrors. On one occasion, the fear included a nightmare during which I was trapped in a box and, as I roused, I found that I had torn off a piece off the window, trying to get out. That home was falling apart; when it rained heavily the downstairs hall filled with water, maggots dropped from above into the bedroom, and at one time a sizeable vermin scaled the curtains in my sister’s room.

When a friend handed me the story, I had moved out in my childhood residence, but the tale regarding the building perched on the cliffs appeared known to myself, longing as I was. It’s a story featuring a possessed loud, atmospheric home and a young woman who consumes chalk off the rocks. I adored the story deeply and came back again and again to its pages, consistently uncovering {something