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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale from a master of suspense

I read this tale years ago and it has lingered with me ever since. The named “summer people” happen to be the Allisons from the city, who occupy an identical remote rural cabin each year. During this visit, in place of going back home, they opt to extend their holiday a few more weeks – something that seems to alarm all the locals in the nearby town. Each repeats the same veiled caution that nobody has ever stayed at the lake after Labor Day. Regardless, they insist to not leave, and at that point things start to become stranger. The man who supplies the kerosene declines to provide to the couple. Nobody is willing to supply food to the cabin, and as the family endeavor to go to the village, their vehicle fails to start. Bad weather approaches, the batteries in the radio fade, and as darkness falls, “the aged individuals huddled together within their rental and waited”. What could be they anticipating? What do the locals know? Whenever I read the writer’s chilling and influential story, I recall that the best horror stems from that which remains hidden.

An Acclaimed Writer

An Eerie Story by Robert Aickman

In this brief tale a pair go to a common beach community in which chimes sound continuously, a perpetual pealing that is annoying and unexplainable. The opening truly frightening episode happens after dark, as they opt to take a walk and they can’t find the water. There’s sand, the scent exists of putrid marine life and brine, there are waves, but the sea appears spectral, or a different entity and even more alarming. It’s just insanely sinister and each occasion I travel to the shore at night I remember this narrative which spoiled the ocean after dark for me – positively.

The newlyweds – the woman is adolescent, he’s not – return to the inn and discover why the bells ring, during a prolonged scene of enclosed spaces, gruesome festivities and death-and-the-maiden encounters grim ballet bedlam. It is a disturbing contemplation on desire and decline, a pair of individuals growing old jointly as partners, the connection and violence and affection within wedlock.

Not just the most terrifying, but probably one of the best concise narratives in existence, and a beloved choice. I experienced it in the Spanish language, in the initial publication of these tales to be published in this country several years back.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel by Joyce Carol Oates

I perused this narrative near the water in the French countryside in 2020. Even with the bright weather I experienced a chill through me. Additionally, I sensed the thrill of excitement. I was working on my third novel, and I had hit an obstacle. I was uncertain if it was possible any good way to craft certain terrifying elements the narrative involves. Reading Zombie, I understood that it was possible.

Released decades ago, the book is a grim journey through the mind of a criminal, the main character, modeled after an infamous individual, the serial killer who murdered and mutilated 17 young men and boys in Milwaukee during a specific period. Infamously, this person was fixated with creating a zombie sex slave who would never leave by his side and carried out several grisly attempts to accomplish it.

The acts the book depicts are appalling, but similarly terrifying is the psychological persuasiveness. The character’s dreadful, fragmented world is plainly told in spare prose, details omitted. The audience is sunk deep stuck in his mind, compelled to witness mental processes and behaviors that horrify. The strangeness of his mind feels like a bodily jolt – or getting lost in an empty realm. Entering Zombie is not just reading and more like a physical journey. You are consumed entirely.

An Accomplished Author

White Is for Witching by a gifted writer

In my early years, I sleepwalked and subsequently commenced suffering from bad dreams. Once, the horror featured a vision during which I was trapped within an enclosure and, upon awakening, I realized that I had ripped a part out of the window frame, seeking to leave. That building was crumbling; during heavy rain the entranceway flooded, fly larvae dropped from above into the bedroom, and once a large rat climbed the drapes in that space.

When a friend handed me this author’s book, I had moved out with my parents, but the story about the home perched on the cliffs felt familiar to me, longing as I felt. It is a story featuring a possessed loud, sentimental building and a young woman who consumes limestone off the rocks. I cherished the story immensely and came back repeatedly to its pages, always finding {something