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Andrew Michael Hurley

The Summer People by Shirley Jackson

I read this story some time back and it has stayed with me ever since. The named seasonal visitors turn out to be a family from New York, who rent the same isolated country cottage every summer. During this visit, in place of going back home, they decide to lengthen their stay for a month longer – something that seems to unsettle all the locals in the nearby town. Each repeats an identical cryptic advice that no one has remained at the lake after Labor Day. Regardless, the Allisons are determined to stay, and that’s when events begin to become stranger. The man who delivers fuel won’t sell to them. No one agrees to bring food to their home, and at the time they attempt to travel to the community, the automobile refuses to operate. A storm gathers, the energy in the radio die, and when night comes, “the aged individuals huddled together within their rental and expected”. What might be this couple waiting for? What do the townspeople understand? Whenever I read this author’s chilling and thought-provoking tale, I’m reminded that the best horror comes from that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

Ringing the Changes from Robert Aickman

In this concise narrative a pair journey to a typical coastal village where bells ring continuously, a perpetual pealing that is bothersome and inexplicable. The first very scary moment happens after dark, at the time they decide to take a walk and they can’t find the ocean. Sand is present, there’s the smell of putrid marine life and brine, surf is audible, but the ocean seems phantom, or another thing and worse. It is simply deeply malevolent and every time I go to the coast at night I recall this tale which spoiled the ocean after dark in my view – positively.

The recent spouses – she’s very young, he’s not – go back to the inn and learn why the bells ring, during a prolonged scene of confinement, macabre revelry and demise and innocence intersects with danse macabre bedlam. It’s a chilling reflection regarding craving and decay, two people aging together as a couple, the bond and brutality and tenderness of marriage.

Not just the scariest, but likely one of the best short stories available, and an individual preference. I encountered it in Spanish, in the initial publication of these tales to be published in this country in 2011.

Catriona Ward

Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates

I perused Zombie by a pool in the French countryside a few years ago. Despite the sunshine I sensed cold creep over me. Additionally, I sensed the thrill of excitement. I was working on my third novel, and I encountered an obstacle. I wasn’t sure if there was any good way to craft various frightening aspects the story includes. Experiencing this novel, I saw that it could be done.

First printed in the nineties, the book is a bleak exploration through the mind of a criminal, the protagonist, based on a notorious figure, the serial killer who murdered and cut apart numerous individuals in Milwaukee during a specific period. As is well-known, Dahmer was fixated with creating a submissive individual that would remain with him and attempted numerous horrific efforts to accomplish it.

The actions the book depicts are appalling, but just as scary is the psychological persuasiveness. The character’s awful, fragmented world is simply narrated in spare prose, names redacted. The reader is sunk deep trapped in his consciousness, compelled to observe ideas and deeds that shock. The strangeness of his mind feels like a physical shock – or getting lost on a barren alien world. Starting this book is not just reading than a full body experience. You are absorbed completely.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel by Helen Oyeyemi

During my youth, I sleepwalked and eventually began experiencing nightmares. On one occasion, the fear involved a vision during which I was stuck in a box and, as I roused, I discovered that I had ripped the slat off the window, seeking to leave. That home was decaying; when it rained heavily the downstairs hall became inundated, maggots came down from the roof on to my parents’ bed, and on one occasion a sizeable vermin climbed the drapes in that space.

Once a companion gave me the story, I had moved out at my family home, but the narrative about the home located on the coastline felt familiar to me, nostalgic as I felt. It’s a novel featuring a possessed clamorous, emotional house and a female character who ingests chalk from the cliffs. I cherished the book deeply and returned repeatedly to the story, each time discovering {something