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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale from a master of suspense

I discovered this tale years ago and it has haunted me from that moment. The named vacationers turn out to be a couple from the city, who lease a particular isolated rural cabin each year. This time, instead of going back to the city, they decide to prolong their vacation for a month longer – a decision that to alarm each resident in the nearby town. All pass on an identical cryptic advice that nobody has ever stayed by the water after the end of summer. Regardless, the couple insist to remain, and at that point situations commence to grow more bizarre. The individual who brings the kerosene won’t sell for them. No one agrees to bring food to the cabin, and at the time they attempt to go to the village, their vehicle fails to start. A tempest builds, the energy in the radio die, and when night comes, “the elderly couple huddled together within their rental and anticipated”. What could be this couple waiting for? What do the residents understand? Each occasion I revisit this author’s unnerving and thought-provoking narrative, I’m reminded that the top terror originates in that which remains hidden.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes from Robert Aickman

In this concise narrative a pair journey to a typical seaside town in which chimes sound continuously, an incessant ringing that is irritating and puzzling. The initial very scary moment takes place during the evening, as they decide to take a walk and they can’t find the ocean. Sand is present, the scent exists of decaying seafood and seawater, there are waves, but the ocean is a ghost, or another thing and more dreadful. It is simply deeply malevolent and each occasion I go to the shore after dark I recall this story which spoiled the beach in the evening for me – positively.

The young couple – the woman is adolescent, he’s not – head back to the hotel and discover why the bells ring, during a prolonged scene of claustrophobia, gruesome festivities and mortality and youth encounters dance of death pandemonium. It is a disturbing contemplation on desire and decline, a pair of individuals maturing in tandem as a couple, the bond and violence and gentleness within wedlock.

Not merely the scariest, but probably among the finest brief tales in existence, and a beloved choice. I encountered it in the Spanish language, in the debut release of this author’s works to be published in Argentina a decade ago.

Catriona Ward

Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates

I read this book beside the swimming area overseas in 2020. Despite the sunshine I felt a chill over me. I also felt the electricity of anticipation. I was composing my third novel, and I encountered a block. I was uncertain whether there existed any good way to compose certain terrifying elements the book contains. Going through this book, I understood that it could be done.

First printed in the nineties, the novel is a dark flight into the thoughts of a murderer, the main character, inspired by Jeffrey Dahmer, the criminal who slaughtered and mutilated numerous individuals in Milwaukee between 1978 and 1991. As is well-known, this person was consumed with producing a compliant victim who would stay him and made many grisly attempts to do so.

The deeds the book depicts are appalling, but just as scary is the emotional authenticity. The protagonist’s awful, fragmented world is simply narrated with concise language, details omitted. You is sunk deep stuck in his mind, forced to witness mental processes and behaviors that horrify. The alien nature of his psyche is like a physical shock – or getting lost on a desolate planet. Starting this story is not just reading but a complete immersion. You are swallowed whole.

An Accomplished Author

White Is for Witching from Helen Oyeyemi

During my youth, I sleepwalked and later started experiencing nightmares. Once, the terror included a dream during which I was confined within an enclosure and, upon awakening, I found that I had torn off a part out of the window frame, seeking to leave. That building was crumbling; when it rained heavily the downstairs hall filled with water, fly larvae dropped from above into the bedroom, and on one occasion a big rodent ascended the window coverings in that space.

Once a companion presented me with the story, I was residing elsewhere at my family home, but the story of the house located on the coastline felt familiar in my view, nostalgic as I felt. This is a story concerning a ghostly clamorous, sentimental building and a girl who ingests chalk off the rocks. I loved the story so much and went back again and again to it, always finding {something