🔗 Share this article

Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale by a master of suspense

I encountered this story years ago and it has stayed with me ever since. The so-called seasonal visitors are the Allisons urban dwellers, who occupy a particular off-grid lakeside house annually. On this occasion, instead of returning to urban life, they decide to extend their vacation a few more weeks – something that seems to disturb each resident in the nearby town. All pass on an identical cryptic advice that no one has remained at the lake beyond the end of summer. Regardless, the Allisons insist to stay, and that’s when things start to become stranger. The man who delivers oil refuses to sell to them. Nobody will deliver groceries to the cottage, and when they attempt to drive into town, the automobile won’t start. A tempest builds, the batteries in the radio die, and when night comes, “the aged individuals huddled together in their summer cottage and waited”. What might be the Allisons waiting for? What do the locals be aware of? Each occasion I revisit the writer’s chilling and thought-provoking story, I remember that the best horror comes from that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickman

In this short story a couple journey to a typical seaside town in which chimes sound constantly, a constant chiming that is bothersome and unexplainable. The opening truly frightening scene takes place during the evening, as they decide to take a walk and they are unable to locate the sea. There’s sand, the scent exists of rotting fish and brine, surf is audible, but the sea appears spectral, or a different entity and even more alarming. It is truly deeply malevolent and every time I visit to the shore after dark I recall this narrative which spoiled the sea at night for me – in a good way.

The young couple – the wife is youthful, he’s not – head back to the hotel and discover why the bells ring, in a long sequence of claustrophobia, macabre revelry and mortality and youth intersects with dance of death chaos. It is a disturbing contemplation on desire and decline, a pair of individuals maturing in tandem as a couple, the connection and aggression and affection within wedlock.

Not only the scariest, but perhaps a top example of concise narratives out there, and a beloved choice. I experienced it en español, in the first edition of this author’s works to appear in this country in 2011.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel from an esteemed writer

I delved into Zombie beside the swimming area overseas recently. Although it was sunny I felt an icy feeling within me. I also experienced the electricity of fascination. I was working on my latest book, and I encountered a block. I didn’t know if there was a proper method to write some of the fearful things the narrative involves. Reading Zombie, I saw that it could be done.

Released decades ago, the story is a bleak exploration through the mind of a murderer, the main character, inspired by Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer who slaughtered and dismembered multiple victims in a city during a specific period. As is well-known, the killer was consumed with producing a zombie sex slave who would stay by his side and attempted numerous grisly attempts to do so.

The acts the novel describes are horrific, but just as scary is its own mental realism. Quentin P’s awful, fragmented world is simply narrated with concise language, identities hidden. The audience is immersed caught in his thoughts, forced to witness mental processes and behaviors that horrify. The strangeness of his thinking feels like a physical shock – or getting lost in an empty realm. Going into this book feels different from reading than a full body experience. You are swallowed whole.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel by Helen Oyeyemi

During my youth, I walked in my sleep and eventually began suffering from bad dreams. On one occasion, the terror included a vision during which I was stuck in a box and, when I woke up, I discovered that I had removed a part from the window, trying to get out. That house was crumbling; during heavy rain the entranceway filled with water, fly larvae dropped from above into the bedroom, and at one time a big rodent scaled the curtains in that space.

After an acquaintance handed me Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I had moved out at my family home, but the narrative regarding the building perched on the cliffs appeared known in my view, nostalgic at that time. It is a book featuring a possessed loud, atmospheric home and a female character who ingests chalk from the cliffs. I adored the story so much and came back again and again to it, always finding {something