Frightening Writers Reveal the Most Frightening Tales They have Actually Experienced
Andrew Michael Hurley
The Summer People from a master of suspense
I discovered this tale long ago and it has stayed with me from that moment. The so-called seasonal visitors happen to be the Allisons from the city, who lease the same off-grid country cottage annually. On this occasion, instead of going back to the city, they decide to lengthen their stay a few more weeks – something that seems to alarm all the locals in the surrounding community. Each repeats an identical cryptic advice that not a soul has remained by the water after the end of summer. Regardless, the couple are determined to remain, and that’s when events begin to grow more bizarre. The individual who supplies fuel refuses to sell for them. Not a single person is willing to supply groceries to their home, and at the time the family attempt to go to the village, their vehicle refuses to operate. A storm gathers, the energy of their radio fade, and when night comes, “the two old people crowded closely inside their cabin and waited”. What might be the Allisons waiting for? What might the residents be aware of? Whenever I read the writer’s disturbing and influential tale, I recall that the finest fright stems from that which remains hidden.
Mariana Enríquez
Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickman
In this concise narrative a couple go to a typical coastal village where church bells toll the whole time, an incessant ringing that is irritating and unexplainable. The opening extremely terrifying episode happens during the evening, as they decide to go for a stroll and they are unable to locate the water. Sand is present, the scent exists of decaying seafood and brine, surf is audible, but the water seems phantom, or something else and more dreadful. It is truly insanely sinister and whenever I travel to the coast in the evening I think about this narrative which spoiled the sea at night for me – favorably.
The young couple – the woman is adolescent, he’s not – return to the hotel and learn the reason for the chiming, in a long sequence of confinement, gruesome festivities and death-and-the-maiden meets danse macabre pandemonium. It’s a chilling reflection about longing and deterioration, a pair of individuals growing old jointly as a couple, the connection and violence and tenderness in matrimony.
Not merely the scariest, but perhaps one of the best brief tales available, and a personal favourite. I experienced it in the Spanish language, in the debut release of Aickman stories to appear locally a decade ago.
A Prominent Novelist
A Dark Novel from an esteemed writer
I read this book by a pool overseas recently. Even with the bright weather I experienced an icy feeling over me. Additionally, I sensed the electricity of excitement. I was working on a new project, and I had hit an obstacle. I was uncertain whether there existed an effective approach to craft various frightening aspects the narrative involves. Experiencing this novel, I understood that it could be done.
Published in 1995, the novel is a grim journey within the psyche of a young serial killer, the main character, modeled after an infamous individual, the serial killer who slaughtered and dismembered multiple victims in the Midwest between 1978 and 1991. Infamously, this person was fixated with producing a zombie sex slave who would never leave him and carried out several horrific efforts to do so.
The deeds the story tells are appalling, but equally frightening is its own emotional authenticity. The protagonist’s terrible, broken reality is simply narrated with concise language, identities hidden. The audience is sunk deep caught in his thoughts, forced to observe ideas and deeds that horrify. The foreignness of his thinking resembles a tangible impact – or getting lost in an empty realm. Going into this story is not just reading but a complete immersion. You are absorbed completely.
Daisy Johnson
White Is for Witching from Helen Oyeyemi
When I was a child, I walked in my sleep and eventually began suffering from bad dreams. At one point, the horror featured a dream during which I was stuck within an enclosure and, when I woke up, I found that I had ripped a piece off the window, seeking to leave. That home was crumbling; when storms came the entranceway became inundated, fly larvae came down from the roof into the bedroom, and at one time a large rat ascended the window coverings in that space.
After an acquaintance handed me this author’s book, I was residing elsewhere with my parents, but the narrative of the house high on the Dover cliffs felt familiar to myself, homesick as I was. It is a story featuring a possessed clamorous, emotional house and a young woman who eats calcium from the shoreline. I cherished the book so much and went back frequently to it, always finding {something