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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale from Shirley Jackson

I read this tale some time back and it has lingered with me from that moment. The titular “summer people” are the Allisons from the city, who lease a particular isolated country cottage every summer. This time, instead of heading back to the city, they choose to extend their holiday a few more weeks – a decision that to disturb everyone in the nearby town. All pass on an identical cryptic advice that not a soul has ever stayed in the area after the holiday. Even so, the couple insist to remain, and at that point situations commence to grow more bizarre. The individual who brings fuel won’t sell to the couple. Not a single person agrees to bring groceries to the cabin, and as the Allisons try to travel to the community, the car won’t start. Bad weather approaches, the energy in the radio diminish, and when night comes, “the elderly couple clung to each other in their summer cottage and expected”. What could be the Allisons waiting for? What might the locals be aware of? Each occasion I peruse the writer’s unnerving and inspiring story, I remember that the finest fright comes from that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

An Eerie Story from a noted author

In this short story a couple go to an ordinary coastal village where bells ring continuously, a perpetual pealing that is irritating and inexplicable. The opening truly frightening episode happens after dark, when they choose to walk around and they can’t find the sea. The beach is there, the scent exists of decaying seafood and brine, waves crash, but the sea appears spectral, or a different entity and even more alarming. It is truly profoundly ominous and whenever I go to the coast at night I recall this story which spoiled the beach in the evening for me – in a good way.

The newlyweds – the woman is adolescent, the man is mature – head back to the inn and learn the cause of the ringing, during a prolonged scene of confinement, macabre revelry and mortality and youth meets danse macabre pandemonium. It’s an unnerving reflection on desire and decay, two people maturing in tandem as a couple, the attachment and aggression and affection in matrimony.

Not only the most terrifying, but probably a top example of concise narratives out there, and a beloved choice. I read it in Spanish, in the first edition of Aickman stories to appear in Argentina a decade ago.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel from an esteemed writer

I perused this narrative by a pool in the French countryside in 2020. Even with the bright weather I felt an icy feeling through me. I also felt the excitement of excitement. I was working on my latest book, and I encountered a wall. I was uncertain if there was any good way to write various frightening aspects the narrative involves. Reading Zombie, I understood that it was possible.

Released decades ago, the book is a dark flight within the psyche of a murderer, Quentin P, modeled after Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer who murdered and mutilated 17 young men and boys in Milwaukee over a decade. As is well-known, the killer was consumed with making a compliant victim that would remain him and made many horrific efforts to achieve this.

The acts the novel describes are terrible, but just as scary is the mental realism. The character’s awful, broken reality is directly described using minimal words, details omitted. You is immersed stuck in his mind, compelled to see thoughts and actions that shock. The strangeness of his thinking feels like a tangible impact – or finding oneself isolated on a desolate planet. Starting this story is not just reading and more like a physical journey. You are swallowed whole.

An Accomplished Author

White Is for Witching from a gifted writer

During my youth, I sleepwalked and later started having night terrors. On one occasion, the terror involved a vision during which I was trapped inside a container and, as I roused, I realized that I had removed a part from the window, attempting to escape. That house was decaying; when it rained heavily the entranceway became inundated, maggots dropped from above onto the bed, and once a sizeable vermin scaled the curtains in that space.

Once a companion handed me the story, I was residing elsewhere with my parents, but the narrative regarding the building high on the Dover cliffs felt familiar to myself, nostalgic as I felt. This is a book about a haunted clamorous, atmospheric home and a young woman who eats calcium off the rocks. I cherished the book immensely and went back frequently to the story, consistently uncovering {something