🔗 Share this article

Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale by Shirley Jackson

I discovered this story some time back and it has haunted me since then. The so-called vacationers turn out to be the Allisons from the city, who lease the same isolated rural cabin annually. During this visit, instead of returning to the city, they opt to extend their holiday a few more weeks – a decision that to alarm everyone in the nearby town. Everyone conveys the same veiled caution that nobody has ever stayed in the area past the end of summer. Even so, the Allisons are determined to remain, and at that point events begin to get increasingly weird. The person who supplies the kerosene declines to provide to the couple. Nobody agrees to bring supplies to their home, and as the Allisons endeavor to drive into town, the automobile fails to start. A storm gathers, the power in the radio fade, and when night comes, “the aged individuals huddled together within their rental and waited”. What might be this couple anticipating? What could the locals know? Every time I peruse this author’s unnerving and influential tale, I remember that the best horror stems from what’s left undisclosed.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes from a noted author

In this brief tale a couple travel to a common beach community where church bells toll the whole time, a constant chiming that is irritating and unexplainable. The first very scary episode occurs during the evening, when they decide to walk around and they are unable to locate the sea. There’s sand, there’s the smell of putrid marine life and salt, there are waves, but the sea is a ghost, or a different entity and worse. It is truly deeply malevolent and whenever I go to a beach in the evening I recall this story which spoiled the ocean after dark for me – in a good way.

The recent spouses – the woman is adolescent, he’s not – go back to their lodging and discover the cause of the ringing, during a prolonged scene of claustrophobia, macabre revelry and demise and innocence encounters dance of death pandemonium. It’s a chilling contemplation about longing and decay, a pair of individuals maturing in tandem as spouses, the bond and violence and tenderness within wedlock.

Not merely the scariest, but perhaps one of the best brief tales in existence, and an individual preference. I encountered it in the Spanish language, in the initial publication of Aickman stories to be published in this country in 2011.

Catriona Ward

Zombie from Joyce Carol Oates

I delved into Zombie by a pool in the French countryside a few years ago. Even with the bright weather I sensed a chill through me. I also experienced the thrill of anticipation. I was writing a new project, and I had hit an obstacle. I wasn’t sure if it was possible a proper method to write certain terrifying elements the narrative involves. Going through this book, I saw that it was possible.

Released decades ago, the story is a dark flight into the thoughts of a criminal, the main character, inspired by Jeffrey Dahmer, the murderer who slaughtered and cut apart 17 young men and boys in a city during a specific period. Infamously, this person was fixated with making a submissive individual who would stay by his side and attempted numerous grisly attempts to achieve this.

The actions the story tells are appalling, but equally frightening is its own mental realism. Quentin P’s awful, fragmented world is simply narrated with concise language, names redacted. You is immersed caught in his thoughts, compelled to witness mental processes and behaviors that shock. The foreignness of his mind feels like a physical shock – or getting lost in an empty realm. Starting this story is less like reading but a complete immersion. You are absorbed completely.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel by a gifted writer

In my early years, I sleepwalked and later started suffering from bad dreams. Once, the horror involved a dream where I was confined inside a container and, upon awakening, I discovered that I had ripped the slat out of the window frame, attempting to escape. That building was decaying; when storms came the downstairs hall became inundated, insect eggs fell from the ceiling onto the bed, and once a sizeable vermin ascended the window coverings in that space.

When a friend presented me with the story, I was no longer living with my parents, but the narrative regarding the building perched on the cliffs appeared known to me, homesick at that time. It’s a book about a haunted noisy, emotional house and a young woman who ingests chalk from the cliffs. I loved the story deeply and came back frequently to it, each time discovering {something