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A Renowned Horror Author

A Chilling Tale by Shirley Jackson

I read this story years ago and it has lingered with me from that moment. The named seasonal visitors happen to be a family from New York, who rent the same off-grid rural cabin annually. During this visit, instead of going back to the city, they opt to extend their vacation an extra month – an action that appears to disturb all the locals in the surrounding community. All pass on an identical cryptic advice that no one has lingered by the water past Labor Day. Regardless, the couple insist to remain, and at that point things start to get increasingly weird. The person who delivers fuel refuses to sell for them. Not a single person agrees to bring food to their home, and at the time they attempt to drive into town, the car won’t start. A storm gathers, the energy of their radio diminish, and with the arrival of dusk, “the elderly couple clung to each other inside their cabin and anticipated”. What are the Allisons anticipating? What might the locals know? Whenever I peruse Jackson’s disturbing and thought-provoking tale, I recall that the top terror stems from what’s left undisclosed.

An Acclaimed Writer

An Eerie Story from Robert Aickman

In this short story two people journey to a common beach community where bells ring continuously, an incessant ringing that is bothersome and puzzling. The first extremely terrifying scene takes place after dark, at the time they decide to walk around and they can’t find the sea. The beach is there, there’s the smell of decaying seafood and brine, waves crash, but the sea is a ghost, or something else and worse. It is simply deeply malevolent and each occasion I travel to a beach after dark I remember this tale that ruined the ocean after dark for me – positively.

The young couple – she’s very young, he’s not – go back to their lodging and learn the reason for the chiming, through an extended episode of claustrophobia, macabre revelry and death-and-the-maiden intersects with grim ballet pandemonium. It is a disturbing reflection regarding craving and decline, a pair of individuals aging together as a couple, the attachment and aggression and affection within wedlock.

Not merely the most terrifying, but perhaps among the finest short stories out there, and an individual preference. I experienced it en español, in the initial publication of Aickman stories to be published in this country in 2011.

Catriona Ward

Zombie from Joyce Carol Oates

I read this book by a pool overseas a few years ago. Despite the sunshine I felt a chill through me. I also experienced the electricity of anticipation. I was working on my third novel, and I encountered a block. I was uncertain if there was any good way to craft some of the fearful things the narrative involves. Experiencing this novel, I realized that it could be done.

Published in 1995, the novel is a grim journey within the psyche of a criminal, the main character, modeled after a notorious figure, the criminal who killed and dismembered 17 young men and boys in the Midwest during a specific period. Infamously, Dahmer was consumed with producing a compliant victim who would stay by his side and made many grisly attempts to accomplish it.

The deeds the book depicts are horrific, but just as scary is its emotional authenticity. The character’s dreadful, shattered existence is plainly told with concise language, identities hidden. The reader is immersed caught in his thoughts, forced to see ideas and deeds that horrify. The strangeness of his mind resembles a physical shock – or being stranded on a desolate planet. Starting this book feels different from reading but a complete immersion. You are swallowed whole.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel from a gifted writer

In my early years, I sleepwalked and later started experiencing nightmares. On one occasion, the fear included a vision during which I was confined within an enclosure and, as I roused, I realized that I had removed a part off the window, attempting to escape. That house was decaying; during heavy rain the ground floor corridor flooded, insect eggs dropped from above into the bedroom, and on one occasion a large rat ascended the window coverings in that space.

After an acquaintance gave me the story, I was residing elsewhere with my parents, but the narrative about the home high on the Dover cliffs appeared known to myself, nostalgic as I felt. It is a book about a haunted noisy, sentimental building and a young woman who ingests calcium off the rocks. I cherished the novel so much and went back again and again to its pages, each time discovering {something