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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” happen to be a family from New York, who occupy the same remote lakeside house annually. On this occasion, instead of returning to urban life, they opt to extend their holiday an extra month – a decision that to disturb each resident in the adjacent village. Everyone conveys an identical cryptic advice that nobody has remained by the water past Labor Day. Even so, they insist to stay, and that is the moment things start to get increasingly weird. The person who supplies the kerosene refuses to sell to the couple. No one agrees to bring food to their home, and at the time the family endeavor to travel to the community, their vehicle fails to start. A storm gathers, the power of their radio diminish, and as darkness falls, “the elderly couple clung to each other inside their cabin and expected”. What are the Allisons expecting? What could the townspeople understand? Whenever I read Jackson’s unnerving and thought-provoking tale, I’m reminded that the finest fright comes from that which remains hidden.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes from Robert Aickman

In this concise narrative two people journey to an ordinary coastal village where bells ring continuously, a constant chiming that is irritating and inexplicable. The first extremely terrifying episode takes place during the evening, as they opt to walk around and they are unable to locate the water. There’s sand, there’s the smell of rotting fish and salt, surf is audible, but the water appears spectral, or a different entity and more dreadful. It’s just profoundly ominous and each occasion I travel to the coast after dark I recall this story which spoiled the ocean after dark to my mind – in a good way.

The young couple – she’s very young, the man is mature – go back to the inn and learn the reason for the chiming, during a prolonged scene of enclosed spaces, necro-orgy and demise and innocence intersects with danse macabre chaos. It’s an unnerving meditation regarding craving and decay, a pair of individuals maturing in tandem as a couple, the bond and violence and tenderness within wedlock.

Not just the most terrifying, but probably one of the best brief tales in existence, and an individual preference. I read it in the Spanish language, in the initial publication of these tales to be published locally a decade ago.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel from an esteemed writer

I delved into this book by a pool in the French countryside in 2020. Despite the sunshine I felt an icy feeling through me. Additionally, I sensed the excitement of excitement. I was composing my third novel, and I encountered a wall. I didn’t know whether there existed an effective approach to write certain terrifying elements the narrative involves. Going through this book, I saw that it could be done.

Published in 1995, the story is a dark flight through the mind of a criminal, Quentin P, based on an infamous individual, the criminal who slaughtered and mutilated multiple victims in Milwaukee over a decade. Infamously, the killer was consumed with making a compliant victim who would stay by his side and attempted numerous grisly attempts to achieve this.

The acts the novel describes are appalling, but similarly terrifying is the emotional authenticity. The protagonist’s terrible, fragmented world is plainly told with concise language, identities hidden. The audience is sunk deep trapped in his consciousness, forced to observe thoughts and actions that appal. The alien nature of his thinking feels like a bodily jolt – or being stranded in an empty realm. Starting this story feels different from reading than a full body experience. You are absorbed completely.

Daisy Johnson

White Is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

In my early years, I was a somnambulist and eventually began experiencing nightmares. On one occasion, the terror included a vision during which I was trapped in a box and, upon awakening, I discovered that I had torn off a piece off the window, seeking to leave. That house was crumbling; when storms came the downstairs hall flooded, insect eggs dropped from above on to my parents’ bed, and on one occasion a big rodent scaled the curtains in the bedroom.

After an acquaintance presented me with this author’s book, I had moved out with my parents, but the tale regarding the building perched on the cliffs appeared known to me, nostalgic at that time. It is a novel about a haunted noisy, sentimental building and a young woman who ingests limestone off the rocks. I loved the book deeply and came back frequently to its pages, consistently uncovering {something