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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale from Shirley Jackson

I read this tale years ago and it has haunted me since then. The titular seasonal visitors happen to be the Allisons from the city, who rent the same isolated lakeside house each year. This time, rather than returning to the city, they opt to prolong their vacation a few more weeks – an action that appears to disturb all the locals in the surrounding community. All pass on a similar vague warning that nobody has ever stayed by the water past the holiday. Even so, the couple are resolved to not leave, and at that point situations commence to grow more bizarre. The person who brings fuel declines to provide to them. Nobody agrees to bring groceries to the cottage, and as they endeavor to go to the village, the car won’t start. Bad weather approaches, the batteries of their radio die, and as darkness falls, “the aged individuals clung to each other within their rental and waited”. What might be this couple expecting? What do the townspeople know? Every time I read this author’s disturbing and thought-provoking tale, I remember that the finest fright stems from what’s left undisclosed.

An Acclaimed Writer

An Eerie Story from Robert Aickman

In this concise narrative two people travel to a common beach community where church bells toll continuously, an incessant ringing that is irritating and puzzling. The first very scary episode occurs during the evening, at the time they opt to go for a stroll and they fail to see the water. The beach is there, there is the odor of putrid marine life and brine, waves crash, but the sea appears spectral, or a different entity and worse. It is simply deeply malevolent and every time I travel to the shore at night I remember this narrative that ruined the ocean after dark in my view – in a good way.

The young couple – she’s very young, he’s not – head back to their lodging and discover the reason for the chiming, through an extended episode of enclosed spaces, necro-orgy and demise and innocence meets grim ballet chaos. It’s a chilling reflection about longing and deterioration, a pair of individuals maturing in tandem as a couple, the connection and brutality and affection in matrimony.

Not only the most frightening, but perhaps a top example of brief tales out there, and a personal favourite. I encountered it en español, in the debut release of this author’s works to be published in Argentina a decade ago.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel from Joyce Carol Oates

I delved into Zombie by a pool in the French countryside in 2020. Although it was sunny I sensed an icy feeling over me. Additionally, I sensed the thrill of fascination. I was writing my latest book, and I encountered a wall. I didn’t know if it was possible a proper method to compose certain terrifying elements the book contains. Experiencing this novel, I understood that it was possible.

First printed in the nineties, the novel is a bleak exploration within the psyche of a criminal, the main character, based on a notorious figure, the serial killer who murdered and cut apart multiple victims in Milwaukee during a specific period. Notoriously, this person was consumed with making a submissive individual that would remain him and attempted numerous macabre trials to achieve this.

The acts the story tells are appalling, but similarly terrifying is its emotional authenticity. Quentin P’s awful, shattered existence is simply narrated with concise language, names redacted. The reader is sunk deep trapped in his consciousness, compelled to observe mental processes and behaviors that horrify. The strangeness of his psyche feels like a bodily jolt – or finding oneself isolated on a barren alien world. Starting Zombie is not just reading and more like a physical journey. You are consumed entirely.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel by Helen Oyeyemi

During my youth, I walked in my sleep and eventually began having night terrors. At one point, the horror included a vision where I was stuck within an enclosure and, when I woke up, I found that I had ripped the slat off the window, attempting to escape. That house was decaying; during heavy rain the entranceway became inundated, fly larvae dropped from above on to my parents’ bed, and on one occasion a large rat climbed the drapes in that space.

Once a companion presented me with this author’s book, I was no longer living at my family home, but the narrative of the house perched on the cliffs seemed recognizable in my view, nostalgic as I felt. It is a story concerning a ghostly clamorous, atmospheric home and a female character who consumes chalk from the shoreline. I adored the story so much and came back frequently to its pages, consistently uncovering {something