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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale from a master of suspense

I discovered this narrative years ago and it has lingered with me ever since. The so-called “summer people” turn out to be a couple from New York, who lease an identical off-grid country cottage every summer. This time, in place of going back to urban life, they decide to prolong their stay a few more weeks – an action that appears to alarm everyone in the surrounding community. All pass on a similar vague warning that nobody has lingered in the area beyond Labor Day. Even so, the Allisons are determined to stay, and that’s when things start to become stranger. The person who brings the kerosene won’t sell to them. Not a single person agrees to bring groceries to their home, and as they try to go to the village, the car won’t start. A tempest builds, the power of their radio fade, and when night comes, “the aged individuals clung to each other inside their cabin and waited”. What are the Allisons expecting? What might the locals be aware of? Whenever I read Jackson’s chilling and inspiring tale, I remember that the best horror stems from the unspoken.

Mariana Enríquez

Ringing the Changes by a noted author

In this brief tale two people journey to a common seaside town where church bells toll constantly, a constant chiming that is bothersome and inexplicable. The initial truly frightening scene occurs after dark, when they choose to go for a stroll and they can’t find the ocean. The beach is there, there is the odor of rotting fish and salt, surf is audible, but the ocean seems phantom, or another thing and worse. It is truly deeply malevolent and each occasion I go to the shore at night I remember this narrative that destroyed the ocean after dark in my view – positively.

The newlyweds – the woman is adolescent, he’s not – return to the inn and learn the reason for the chiming, through an extended episode of enclosed spaces, macabre revelry and mortality and youth intersects with grim ballet pandemonium. It’s a chilling meditation regarding craving and deterioration, two people aging together as spouses, the bond and violence and tenderness within wedlock.

Not merely the scariest, but likely one of the best short stories in existence, and a beloved choice. I encountered it in the Spanish language, in the first edition of these tales to be published locally several years back.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel by Joyce Carol Oates

I read this book near the water in the French countryside in 2020. Despite the sunshine I felt cold creep within me. I also felt the excitement of fascination. I was composing my latest book, and I had hit an obstacle. I wasn’t sure whether there existed an effective approach to write various frightening aspects the narrative involves. Reading Zombie, I saw that it could be done.

Published in 1995, the novel is a grim journey through the mind of a criminal, the main character, inspired by a notorious figure, the serial killer who slaughtered and mutilated multiple victims in the Midwest during a specific period. As is well-known, this person was obsessed with producing a submissive individual that would remain with him and made many macabre trials to achieve this.

The acts the book depicts are terrible, but similarly terrifying is its mental realism. The character’s dreadful, shattered existence is simply narrated using minimal words, details omitted. The audience is plunged trapped in his consciousness, forced to witness ideas and deeds that horrify. The strangeness of his thinking is like a physical shock – or being stranded on a barren alien world. Going into Zombie is less like reading and more like a physical journey. You are swallowed whole.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel by a gifted writer

In my early years, I sleepwalked and subsequently commenced experiencing nightmares. Once, the horror featured a dream during which I was trapped in a box and, as I roused, I realized that I had torn off a piece out of the window frame, seeking to leave. That house was crumbling; during heavy rain the downstairs hall became inundated, insect eggs came down from the roof onto the bed, and at one time a sizeable vermin scaled the curtains in the bedroom.

When a friend handed me the story, I had moved out in my childhood residence, but the narrative regarding the building perched on the cliffs seemed recognizable in my view, longing at that time. It’s a story concerning a ghostly loud, sentimental building and a young woman who eats chalk from the shoreline. I cherished the novel immensely and came back again and again to its pages, each time discovering {something