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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale from a master of suspense

I discovered this tale long ago and it has haunted me from that moment. The so-called “summer people” turn out to be the Allisons from New York, who rent the same isolated lakeside house annually. On this occasion, instead of heading back home, they choose to lengthen their vacation for a month longer – an action that appears to unsettle all the locals in the surrounding community. Each repeats a similar vague warning that nobody has lingered at the lake beyond the end of summer. Nonetheless, they insist to remain, and at that point things start to grow more bizarre. The man who delivers oil won’t sell to the couple. Nobody is willing to supply food to the cabin, and as the family endeavor to drive into town, their vehicle fails to start. Bad weather approaches, the batteries of their radio die, and as darkness falls, “the aged individuals crowded closely within their rental and expected”. What are the Allisons waiting for? What could the locals know? Every time I revisit Jackson’s disturbing and influential tale, I recall that the finest fright originates in that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

An Eerie Story from Robert Aickman

In this short story a couple go to an ordinary seaside town where church bells toll the whole time, a perpetual pealing that is annoying and unexplainable. The initial extremely terrifying moment takes place after dark, as they opt to walk around and they are unable to locate the ocean. There’s sand, the scent exists of decaying seafood and salt, there are waves, but the sea is a ghost, or something else and worse. It’s just deeply malevolent and each occasion I go to the shore at night I think about this story which spoiled the ocean after dark to my mind – in a good way.

The recent spouses – the wife is youthful, he’s not – return to their lodging and find out the cause of the ringing, through an extended episode of claustrophobia, gruesome festivities and demise and innocence intersects with grim ballet pandemonium. It’s an unnerving reflection about longing and decay, two bodies growing old jointly as partners, the attachment and violence and tenderness of marriage.

Not only the scariest, but likely among the finest concise narratives out there, and a personal favourite. I encountered it en español, in the first edition of Aickman stories to be published locally a decade ago.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel by Joyce Carol Oates

I delved into Zombie by a pool overseas recently. Even with the bright weather I sensed a chill through me. I also felt the excitement of fascination. I was working on a new project, and I faced a block. I didn’t know whether there existed a proper method to compose various frightening aspects the book contains. Experiencing this novel, I understood that there was a way.

Published in 1995, the story is a grim journey through the mind of a murderer, the main character, modeled after an infamous individual, the serial killer who murdered and mutilated multiple victims in Milwaukee over a decade. As is well-known, Dahmer was obsessed with making a submissive individual that would remain him and carried out several horrific efforts to do so.

The actions the novel describes are appalling, but just as scary is its psychological persuasiveness. Quentin P’s awful, broken reality is directly described in spare prose, names redacted. The reader is immersed stuck in his mind, obliged to witness mental processes and behaviors that horrify. The foreignness of his thinking feels like a physical shock – or being stranded on a desolate planet. Going into Zombie is less like reading but a complete immersion. You are consumed entirely.

Daisy Johnson

White Is for Witching from Helen Oyeyemi

When I was a child, I walked in my sleep and subsequently commenced suffering from bad dreams. On one occasion, the terror featured a vision during which I was stuck within an enclosure and, upon awakening, I realized that I had torn off the slat off the window, seeking to leave. That building was decaying; when it rained heavily the entranceway flooded, maggots fell from the ceiling onto the bed, and at one time a large rat climbed the drapes in the bedroom.

Once a companion presented me with this author’s book, I was no longer living at my family home, but the story regarding the building perched on the cliffs appeared known in my view, longing as I was. This is a book featuring a possessed loud, sentimental building and a girl who eats calcium from the cliffs. I cherished the story deeply and went back repeatedly to the story, always finding {something