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Andrew Michael Hurley

The Summer People from Shirley Jackson

I encountered this story some time back and it has lingered with me ever since. The so-called seasonal visitors turn out to be a couple from the city, who occupy a particular off-grid rural cabin each year. This time, rather than going back home, they decide to extend their stay an extra month – an action that appears to alarm all the locals in the adjacent village. Each repeats the same veiled caution that no one has remained by the water past the holiday. Regardless, the couple are resolved to not leave, and that is the moment events begin to get increasingly weird. The person who supplies oil refuses to sell to them. No one will deliver food to the cabin, and when they attempt to drive into town, their vehicle refuses to operate. A tempest builds, the power of their radio fade, and with the arrival of dusk, “the two old people crowded closely in their summer cottage and anticipated”. What could be they waiting for? What could the locals understand? Each occasion I revisit the writer’s chilling and thought-provoking tale, I remember that the top terror originates in the unspoken.

Mariana Enríquez

Ringing the Changes by a noted author

In this concise narrative a couple journey to a common beach community in which chimes sound the whole time, an incessant ringing that is bothersome and unexplainable. The first truly frightening moment occurs at night, at the time they opt to walk around and they are unable to locate the water. Sand is present, there is the odor of putrid marine life and salt, there are waves, but the ocean appears spectral, or a different entity and even more alarming. It’s just insanely sinister and whenever I go to the coast after dark I remember this narrative that ruined the sea at night to my mind – positively.

The young couple – the wife is youthful, he’s not – return to their lodging and learn the reason for the chiming, during a prolonged scene of claustrophobia, macabre revelry and mortality and youth meets grim ballet bedlam. It’s a chilling reflection on desire and decline, two people maturing in tandem as a couple, the connection and aggression and gentleness of marriage.

Not just the scariest, but likely one of the best short stories in existence, and an individual preference. I read it en español, in the debut release of these tales to be released in this country a decade ago.

Catriona Ward

Zombie from an esteemed writer

I read Zombie near the water overseas in 2020. Even with the bright weather I experienced an icy feeling within me. I also experienced the thrill of fascination. I was working on my latest book, and I faced an obstacle. I wasn’t sure whether there existed a proper method to write various frightening aspects the book contains. Going through this book, I realized that it was possible.

Released decades ago, the book is a bleak exploration through the mind of a criminal, Quentin P, inspired by a notorious figure, the serial killer who killed and cut apart numerous individuals in the Midwest over a decade. As is well-known, this person was obsessed with making a compliant victim who would never leave by his side and attempted numerous grisly attempts to achieve this.

The acts the novel describes are appalling, but equally frightening is the mental realism. Quentin P’s awful, shattered existence is plainly told with concise language, details omitted. You is sunk deep caught in his thoughts, compelled to witness mental processes and behaviors that appal. The foreignness of his thinking resembles a tangible impact – or being stranded on a desolate planet. Entering Zombie is less like reading than a full body experience. You are consumed entirely.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel from a gifted writer

In my early years, I walked in my sleep and eventually began experiencing nightmares. At one point, the terror featured a nightmare in which I was trapped in a box and, when I woke up, I found that I had torn off a part from the window, seeking to leave. That home was decaying; when storms came the ground floor corridor became inundated, fly larvae came down from the roof onto the bed, and on one occasion a sizeable vermin ascended the window coverings in the bedroom.

After an acquaintance gave me this author’s book, I was no longer living with my parents, but the narrative about the home high on the Dover cliffs appeared known to me, nostalgic as I was. This is a story featuring a possessed loud, atmospheric home and a young woman who ingests calcium from the shoreline. I loved the book immensely and returned again and again to its pages, each time discovering {something