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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale from Shirley Jackson

I read this narrative years ago and it has lingered with me since then. The so-called vacationers are a couple from New York, who lease an identical off-grid country cottage each year. This time, rather than going back home, they opt to lengthen their stay for a month longer – something that seems to alarm each resident in the nearby town. Each repeats an identical cryptic advice that not a soul has remained in the area after Labor Day. Even so, they are resolved to remain, and at that point events begin to become stranger. The man who delivers oil won’t sell to the couple. Not a single person agrees to bring supplies to their home, and when the family attempt to travel to the community, the automobile won’t start. Bad weather approaches, the energy in the radio die, and when night comes, “the two old people crowded closely within their rental and expected”. What could be they anticipating? What could the locals understand? Each occasion I read Jackson’s chilling and thought-provoking narrative, I’m reminded that the top terror originates in the unspoken.

Mariana Enríquez

Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickman

In this brief tale a pair journey to a typical seaside town where church bells toll the whole time, an incessant ringing that is irritating and unexplainable. The first extremely terrifying episode takes place after dark, at the time they decide to walk around and they can’t find the ocean. Sand is present, there’s the smell of decaying seafood and brine, waves crash, but the ocean appears spectral, or a different entity and worse. It is simply insanely sinister and whenever I travel to the shore after dark I recall this tale that ruined the ocean after dark for me – in a good way.

The newlyweds – the wife is youthful, the man is mature – head back to the hotel and learn the reason for the chiming, through an extended episode of claustrophobia, necro-orgy and mortality and youth encounters danse macabre chaos. It’s an unnerving reflection regarding craving and deterioration, two people aging together as spouses, the connection and brutality and tenderness of marriage.

Not only the most terrifying, but probably among the finest short stories in existence, and a personal favourite. I experienced it en español, in the debut release of this author’s works to appear in Argentina a decade ago.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel from Joyce Carol Oates

I read this book by a pool in France recently. Despite the sunshine I sensed cold creep within me. Additionally, I sensed the electricity of fascination. I was writing a new project, and I faced a wall. I was uncertain whether there existed an effective approach to craft certain terrifying elements the book contains. Going through this book, I understood that there was a way.

First printed in the nineties, the novel is a grim journey into the thoughts of a young serial killer, the main character, inspired by Jeffrey Dahmer, the murderer who murdered and dismembered multiple victims in Milwaukee during a specific period. As is well-known, this person was fixated with producing a zombie sex slave who would stay with him and made many horrific efforts to do so.

The deeds the story tells are appalling, but similarly terrifying is its psychological persuasiveness. The character’s terrible, broken reality is plainly told in spare prose, identities hidden. You is plunged caught in his thoughts, forced to see thoughts and actions that horrify. The foreignness of his thinking resembles a bodily jolt – or finding oneself isolated on a barren alien world. Entering this book is less like reading but a complete immersion. You are consumed entirely.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel by Helen Oyeyemi

During my youth, I walked in my sleep and later started suffering from bad dreams. At one point, the terror featured a nightmare where I was confined within an enclosure and, when I woke up, I realized that I had ripped a part from the window, attempting to escape. That building was falling apart; when storms came the downstairs hall flooded, fly larvae came down from the roof into the bedroom, and on one occasion a large rat climbed the drapes in the bedroom.

After an acquaintance presented me with the story, I had moved out at my family home, but the narrative of the house located on the coastline appeared known in my view, nostalgic as I was. This is a book about a haunted noisy, atmospheric home and a female character who eats limestone from the cliffs. I cherished the book immensely and went back repeatedly to its pages, always finding {something