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A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People by Shirley Jackson

I read this story years ago and it has haunted me from that moment. The titular “summer people” are the Allisons urban dwellers, who occupy an identical off-grid country cottage every summer. This time, in place of going back to urban life, they choose to prolong their stay for a month longer – an action that appears to unsettle each resident in the nearby town. All pass on the same veiled caution that not a soul has lingered in the area beyond the end of summer. Even so, the Allisons insist to not leave, and that’s when things start to grow more bizarre. The man who brings oil won’t sell to the couple. No one will deliver groceries to their home, and as the Allisons attempt to travel to the community, their vehicle fails to start. Bad weather approaches, the power in the radio diminish, and when night comes, “the elderly couple clung to each other within their rental and waited”. What could be the Allisons anticipating? What might the locals understand? Every time I revisit Jackson’s disturbing and inspiring story, I recall that the finest fright comes from that which remains hidden.

An Acclaimed Writer

An Eerie Story from Robert Aickman

In this concise narrative a couple go to a common beach community where bells ring constantly, a constant chiming that is annoying and inexplicable. The first very scary episode happens during the evening, at the time they opt to go for a stroll and they can’t find the water. The beach is there, there is the odor of decaying seafood and seawater, surf is audible, but the water seems phantom, or another thing and more dreadful. It is truly profoundly ominous and each occasion I travel to the coast after dark I remember this tale that ruined the sea at night for me – positively.

The recent spouses – the woman is adolescent, he’s not – return to their lodging and find out the reason for the chiming, through an extended episode of claustrophobia, gruesome festivities and demise and innocence intersects with danse macabre chaos. It is a disturbing meditation about longing and decay, two bodies aging together as a couple, the connection and brutality and tenderness of marriage.

Not merely the most frightening, but probably a top example of short stories available, and a personal favourite. I read it en español, in the first edition of these tales to be released in this country a decade ago.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel from Joyce Carol Oates

I perused this narrative beside the swimming area in the French countryside in 2020. Despite the sunshine I experienced an icy feeling within me. I also experienced the thrill of fascination. I was composing a new project, and I faced a block. I was uncertain whether there existed any good way to craft some of the fearful things the narrative involves. Going through this book, I saw that it was possible.

First printed in the nineties, the book is a grim journey through the mind of a criminal, Quentin P, inspired by an infamous individual, the murderer who killed and cut apart 17 young men and boys in a city during a specific period. Notoriously, Dahmer was consumed with creating a compliant victim who would stay by his side and attempted numerous horrific efforts to achieve this.

The actions the novel describes are horrific, but just as scary is the mental realism. The character’s dreadful, shattered existence is plainly told in spare prose, details omitted. The audience is sunk deep stuck in his mind, obliged to witness mental processes and behaviors that appal. The foreignness of his thinking is like a tangible impact – or getting lost on a desolate planet. Starting this story is less like reading but a complete immersion. You are swallowed whole.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel from a gifted writer

When I was a child, I sleepwalked and eventually began experiencing nightmares. At one point, the horror involved a dream where I was stuck inside a container and, as I roused, I found that I had removed the slat off the window, attempting to escape. That house was falling apart; when storms came the ground floor corridor filled with water, fly larvae fell from the ceiling into the bedroom, and on one occasion a sizeable vermin scaled the curtains in my sister’s room.

After an acquaintance handed me this author’s book, I was no longer living with my parents, but the narrative regarding the building located on the coastline seemed recognizable to me, longing at that time. It’s a novel about a haunted noisy, emotional house and a young woman who eats chalk from the cliffs. I loved the novel immensely and went back repeatedly to it, consistently uncovering {something