Frightening Writers Discuss the Most Terrifying Stories They have Ever Read
Andrew Michael Hurley
The Summer People from Shirley Jackson
I read this narrative years ago and it has stayed with me from that moment. The named seasonal visitors turn out to be a family from the city, who lease an identical remote lakeside house annually. This time, rather than going back to the city, they choose to lengthen their stay an extra month – a decision that to disturb all the locals in the surrounding community. Each repeats the same veiled caution that no one has lingered at the lake past Labor Day. Even so, the Allisons are resolved to remain, and that is the moment situations commence to grow more bizarre. The individual who delivers oil declines to provide for them. No one will deliver supplies to the cabin, and as the Allisons endeavor to drive into town, the car refuses to operate. Bad weather approaches, the power of their radio die, and when night comes, “the two old people clung to each other in their summer cottage and anticipated”. What are this couple expecting? What could the locals be aware of? Each occasion I read Jackson’s disturbing and thought-provoking tale, I’m reminded that the best horror stems from the unspoken.
Mariana Enríquez
Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickman
In this concise narrative a pair journey to a common coastal village where bells ring the whole time, a constant chiming that is bothersome and inexplicable. The first very scary moment occurs at night, at the time they opt to go for a stroll and they are unable to locate the sea. The beach is there, there’s the smell of putrid marine life and brine, surf is audible, but the sea is a ghost, or another thing and even more alarming. It is truly profoundly ominous and whenever I visit to the coast after dark I remember this tale that ruined the ocean after dark to my mind – in a good way.
The recent spouses – she’s very young, the husband is older – head back to the hotel and discover the reason for the chiming, in a long sequence of enclosed spaces, necro-orgy and death-and-the-maiden intersects with dance of death bedlam. It is a disturbing meditation about longing and deterioration, two bodies aging together as spouses, the connection and brutality and tenderness in matrimony.
Not just the scariest, but probably a top example of short stories available, and an individual preference. I experienced it en español, in the first edition of this author’s works to be released locally several years back.
Catriona Ward
Zombie from an esteemed writer
I perused this book near the water in the French countryside in 2020. Despite the sunshine I felt cold creep over me. I also experienced the thrill of excitement. I was composing my third novel, and I had hit a block. I was uncertain whether there existed any good way to write certain terrifying elements the story includes. Experiencing this novel, I understood that it was possible.
Released decades ago, the story is a grim journey within the psyche of a murderer, Quentin P, inspired by a notorious figure, the murderer who slaughtered and dismembered numerous individuals in a city during a specific period. As is well-known, this person was consumed with producing a zombie sex slave who would stay him and carried out several macabre trials to do so.
The actions the novel describes are appalling, but just as scary is its own psychological persuasiveness. The protagonist’s dreadful, broken reality is simply narrated using minimal words, details omitted. You is plunged caught in his thoughts, compelled to witness ideas and deeds that horrify. The strangeness of his mind feels like a tangible impact – or getting lost on a barren alien world. Entering this story is not just reading but a complete immersion. You are swallowed whole.
Daisy Johnson
A Haunting Novel from Helen Oyeyemi
When I was a child, I sleepwalked and later started suffering from bad dreams. On one occasion, the horror included a nightmare during which I was stuck inside a container and, upon awakening, I realized that I had torn off the slat off the window, seeking to leave. That building was crumbling; when it rained heavily the entranceway became inundated, fly larvae dropped from above onto the bed, and at one time a large rat climbed the drapes in the bedroom.
When a friend gave me this author’s book, I had moved out with my parents, but the tale of the house perched on the cliffs appeared known to me, homesick at that time. This is a novel about a haunted noisy, atmospheric home and a young woman who eats limestone off the rocks. I cherished the novel deeply and came back frequently to the story, always finding {something
