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A Renowned Horror Author

A Chilling Tale from Shirley Jackson

I encountered this tale some time back and it has haunted me from that moment. The so-called “summer people” happen to be a couple from New York, who lease the same off-grid country cottage annually. During this visit, instead of returning to urban life, they opt to lengthen their holiday for a month longer – something that seems to disturb each resident in the surrounding community. All pass on an identical cryptic advice that nobody has lingered in the area after the end of summer. Nonetheless, the couple insist to not leave, and at that point events begin to become stranger. The person who supplies the kerosene refuses to sell to them. Not a single person will deliver food to the cabin, and as the family endeavor to go to the village, their vehicle refuses to operate. A tempest builds, the energy in the radio die, and when night comes, “the elderly couple huddled together inside their cabin and expected”. What are the Allisons expecting? What could the townspeople understand? Whenever I peruse Jackson’s unnerving and thought-provoking narrative, I recall that the top terror stems from that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

Ringing the Changes from a noted author

In this brief tale a pair travel to a common beach community where bells ring constantly, a perpetual pealing that is irritating and puzzling. The initial extremely terrifying episode takes place at night, when they opt to walk around and they fail to see the sea. The beach is there, there is the odor of rotting fish and salt, surf is audible, but the sea is a ghost, or another thing and even more alarming. It is truly insanely sinister and every time I go to the coast at night I recall this tale which spoiled the beach in the evening to my mind – favorably.

The recent spouses – the wife is youthful, the man is mature – head back to the hotel and learn the cause of the ringing, in a long sequence of enclosed spaces, gruesome festivities and mortality and youth meets dance of death bedlam. It’s a chilling contemplation on desire and decline, two people growing old jointly as spouses, the connection and brutality and gentleness of marriage.

Not merely the most frightening, but probably a top example of short stories in existence, and a personal favourite. I encountered it in the Spanish language, in the initial publication of Aickman stories to appear in Argentina in 2011.

A Prominent Novelist

Zombie from an esteemed writer

I perused Zombie beside the swimming area in the French countryside in 2020. Although it was sunny I felt an icy feeling within me. I also experienced the excitement of anticipation. I was writing a new project, and I faced a wall. I wasn’t sure if there was any good way to craft certain terrifying elements the book contains. Experiencing this novel, I saw that it was possible.

First printed in the nineties, the book is a bleak exploration into the thoughts of a murderer, Quentin P, modeled after an infamous individual, the serial killer who killed and mutilated numerous individuals in Milwaukee over a decade. As is well-known, this person was obsessed with producing a submissive individual who would never leave him and carried out several macabre trials to achieve this.

The acts the book depicts are appalling, but equally frightening is its own emotional authenticity. The character’s awful, broken reality is plainly told in spare prose, names redacted. The audience is immersed trapped in his consciousness, forced to see mental processes and behaviors that appal. The strangeness of his mind is like a physical shock – or getting lost on a desolate planet. Entering this story is less like reading than a full body experience. You are consumed entirely.

Daisy Johnson

White Is for Witching from a gifted writer

In my early years, I walked in my sleep and later started experiencing nightmares. On one occasion, the horror included a dream where I was confined inside a container and, upon awakening, I discovered that I had torn off a part out of the window frame, attempting to escape. That building was decaying; during heavy rain the downstairs hall became inundated, fly larvae dropped from above onto the bed, and on one occasion a big rodent climbed the drapes in that space.

After an acquaintance presented me with this author’s book, I was residing elsewhere in my childhood residence, but the story about the home high on the Dover cliffs seemed recognizable to myself, homesick at that time. It’s a novel featuring a possessed clamorous, sentimental building and a female character who eats calcium off the rocks. I cherished the story so much and came back repeatedly to the story, always finding {something