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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale by Shirley Jackson

I discovered this tale years ago and it has lingered with me ever since. The so-called “summer people” happen to be the Allisons from New York, who lease the same off-grid lakeside house annually. This time, rather than going back to urban life, they opt to extend their vacation for a month longer – an action that appears to disturb each resident in the nearby town. Everyone conveys the same veiled caution that not a soul has remained in the area past the holiday. Even so, they are determined to stay, and that is the moment situations commence to get increasingly weird. The person who brings the kerosene declines to provide to the couple. Nobody agrees to bring food to their home, and when the family try to travel to the community, their vehicle fails to start. Bad weather approaches, the batteries of their radio die, and with the arrival of dusk, “the two old people huddled together within their rental and expected”. What could be the Allisons waiting for? What do the locals understand? Each occasion I read this author’s disturbing and influential story, I remember that the top terror comes from what’s left undisclosed.

An Acclaimed Writer

An Eerie Story from Robert Aickman

In this brief tale two people go to a typical seaside town where bells ring constantly, an incessant ringing that is bothersome and puzzling. The opening truly frightening moment takes place after dark, when they opt to walk around and they can’t find the water. There’s sand, there is the odor of decaying seafood and seawater, waves crash, but the sea is a ghost, or a different entity and more dreadful. It is simply deeply malevolent and each occasion I travel to the coast in the evening I think about this tale which spoiled the sea at night in my view – in a good way.

The newlyweds – she’s very young, the man is mature – go back to their lodging and learn why the bells ring, through an extended episode of enclosed spaces, necro-orgy and demise and innocence meets grim ballet chaos. It is a disturbing meditation about longing and decay, two people maturing in tandem as a couple, the bond and aggression and gentleness of marriage.

Not just the most frightening, but probably among the finest short stories in existence, and a beloved choice. I read it in the Spanish language, in the first edition of this author’s works to be released locally a decade ago.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel from an esteemed writer

I perused this book near the water in the French countryside a few years ago. Although it was sunny I felt an icy feeling within me. I also experienced the thrill of fascination. I was writing a new project, and I faced a block. I didn’t know whether there existed a proper method to craft some of the fearful things 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 criminal, Quentin P, inspired by an infamous individual, the murderer who murdered and dismembered multiple victims in Milwaukee between 1978 and 1991. Infamously, this person was fixated with producing a zombie sex slave who would stay with him and attempted numerous grisly attempts to achieve this.

The acts the novel describes are appalling, but just as scary is its emotional authenticity. Quentin P’s awful, broken reality is simply narrated with concise language, names redacted. The audience is immersed stuck in his mind, forced to witness thoughts and actions that appal. The foreignness of his thinking feels like a physical shock – or getting lost in an empty realm. Going into this book feels different from reading but a complete immersion. You are swallowed whole.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel by a gifted writer

In my early years, I was a somnambulist and subsequently commenced suffering from bad dreams. At one point, the terror included a nightmare during which I was stuck in a box and, when I woke up, I discovered that I had removed a part out of the window frame, attempting to escape. That house was falling apart; when it rained heavily the entranceway filled with water, maggots fell from the ceiling onto the bed, and once a sizeable vermin climbed the drapes in my sister’s room.

Once a companion gave me the story, I had moved out with my parents, but the tale about the home perched on the cliffs appeared known to me, homesick as I was. This is a book concerning a ghostly clamorous, atmospheric home and a girl who consumes calcium off the rocks. I adored the story immensely and returned frequently to it, always finding {something