🔗 Share this article

Andrew Michael Hurley

The Summer People by Shirley Jackson

I discovered this story long ago and it has stayed with me since then. The named “summer people” are the Allisons from New York, who lease an identical off-grid lakeside house annually. During this visit, in place of heading back to urban life, they opt to prolong their holiday a few more weeks – something that seems to disturb all the locals in the surrounding community. Everyone conveys the same veiled caution that no one has ever stayed by the water past Labor Day. Nonetheless, the Allisons are determined to stay, and that is the moment events begin to get increasingly weird. The man who delivers the kerosene won’t sell to them. Nobody is willing to supply supplies to the cabin, and as they endeavor to drive into town, the automobile refuses to operate. A storm gathers, the energy of their radio fade, and as darkness falls, “the two old people huddled together within their rental and anticipated”. What might be they anticipating? What could the residents know? Each occasion I revisit this author’s unnerving and inspiring story, I’m reminded that the best horror stems from that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

Ringing the Changes by a noted author

In this short story a couple travel to a common beach community where bells ring continuously, an incessant ringing that is irritating and puzzling. The initial very scary scene takes place after dark, as they choose to take a walk and they can’t find the sea. Sand is present, there is the odor of putrid marine life and seawater, there are waves, but the ocean seems phantom, or a different entity and worse. It is simply profoundly ominous and every time I travel to a beach at night I remember this tale that ruined the sea at night to my mind – positively.

The recent spouses – the wife is youthful, he’s not – return to the hotel and learn the reason for the chiming, in a long sequence of claustrophobia, necro-orgy and demise and innocence intersects with danse macabre chaos. It’s a chilling meditation on desire and decline, two people growing old jointly as a couple, the connection and aggression and affection of marriage.

Not merely the most terrifying, but probably one of the best short stories available, and a beloved choice. I experienced it en español, in the debut release of Aickman stories to appear locally in 2011.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel from Joyce Carol Oates

I read this narrative by a pool in France in 2020. Despite the sunshine I felt a chill through me. I also experienced the thrill of excitement. I was writing my latest book, and I had hit a block. I didn’t know if it was possible any good way to write certain terrifying elements the book contains. Going through this book, I realized that it could be done.

Released decades ago, the book is a grim journey within the psyche of a criminal, Quentin P, based on a notorious figure, the serial killer who killed and dismembered 17 young men and boys in the Midwest between 1978 and 1991. As is well-known, Dahmer was obsessed with producing a submissive individual who would never leave him and made many horrific efforts to do so.

The acts the book depicts are appalling, but equally frightening is its mental realism. The protagonist’s awful, fragmented world is directly described in spare prose, details omitted. You is plunged trapped in his consciousness, compelled to see thoughts and actions that appal. The foreignness of his psyche resembles a tangible impact – or being stranded on a barren alien world. Going into Zombie is less like reading than a full body experience. You are swallowed whole.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel from a gifted writer

In my early years, I walked in my sleep and later started having night terrors. Once, the horror included a vision where I was stuck in a box and, as I roused, I found that I had removed a piece from the window, seeking to leave. That house was crumbling; when it rained heavily the entranceway flooded, maggots dropped from above onto the bed, and on one occasion a big rodent ascended the window coverings in the bedroom.

When a friend presented me with the story, I was no longer living at my family home, but the narrative of the house located on the coastline seemed recognizable to myself, longing at that time. It’s a novel about a haunted noisy, emotional house and a girl who consumes chalk from the cliffs. I adored the story deeply and went back frequently to its pages, always finding {something