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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale by Shirley Jackson

I encountered this tale some time back and it has haunted me ever since. The named “summer people” turn out to be the Allisons urban dwellers, who occupy the same remote lakeside house annually. This time, in place of heading back home, they decide to prolong their vacation an extra month – something that seems to alarm each resident in the adjacent village. Everyone conveys an identical cryptic advice that no one has ever stayed in the area after the holiday. Regardless, the Allisons are determined to stay, and that’s when events begin to get increasingly weird. The person who delivers oil declines to provide for them. Nobody agrees to bring supplies to the cottage, and when they endeavor to drive into town, the car fails to start. A storm gathers, the power of their radio fade, and with the arrival of dusk, “the two old people huddled together within their rental and expected”. What might be the Allisons expecting? What do the locals know? Every time I revisit Jackson’s disturbing and thought-provoking narrative, I recall that the best horror stems from that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickman

In this brief tale a pair journey to a common seaside town where bells ring the whole time, a perpetual pealing that is annoying and inexplicable. The first very scary moment occurs during the evening, when they choose to walk around and they can’t find the sea. Sand is present, the scent exists of rotting fish and salt, waves crash, but the water appears spectral, or a different entity and even more alarming. It’s just insanely sinister and every time I travel to the coast at night I recall this tale that ruined the beach in the evening to my mind – in a good way.

The newlyweds – the woman is adolescent, the husband is older – head back to the hotel and find out why the bells ring, during a prolonged scene of confinement, macabre revelry and mortality and youth meets dance of death chaos. It’s an unnerving meditation about longing and decline, a pair of individuals aging together as a couple, the connection and brutality and gentleness of marriage.

Not only the most terrifying, but probably one of the best short stories available, and an individual preference. I experienced it en español, in the debut release of this author’s works to be published in Argentina several years back.

Catriona Ward

Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates

I delved into Zombie near the water in France in 2020. Despite the sunshine I sensed a chill over me. Additionally, I sensed the thrill of fascination. I was writing my latest book, and I had hit a wall. I wasn’t sure if there was a proper method to write various frightening aspects the narrative involves. Going through this book, I saw that it could be done.

Published in 1995, the book is a dark flight within the psyche of a criminal, the main character, inspired by a notorious figure, the murderer who slaughtered and cut apart numerous individuals in the Midwest between 1978 and 1991. Notoriously, the killer was obsessed with creating a zombie sex slave who would never leave with him and carried out several grisly attempts to achieve this.

The acts the story tells are appalling, but just as scary is the mental realism. The character’s dreadful, shattered existence is directly described with concise language, names redacted. The audience is sunk deep trapped in his consciousness, obliged to observe mental processes and behaviors that shock. The alien nature of his thinking feels like a physical shock – or getting lost on a barren alien world. Going into Zombie is less like reading and more like a physical journey. You are swallowed whole.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel from Helen Oyeyemi

During my youth, I walked in my sleep and later started experiencing nightmares. Once, the terror included a dream during which I was confined inside a container and, upon awakening, I found that I had removed a part from the window, trying to get out. That home was crumbling; when it rained heavily the downstairs hall flooded, fly larvae dropped from above on to my parents’ bed, and at one time a big rodent ascended the window coverings in the bedroom.

When a friend handed me Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I was residing elsewhere with my parents, but the narrative of the house located on the coastline appeared known in my view, homesick at that time. It is a novel about a haunted clamorous, emotional house and a young woman who consumes limestone from the shoreline. I adored the book so much and returned again and again to the story, always finding {something