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Andrew Michael Hurley

The Summer People by Shirley Jackson

I read this tale some time back and it has haunted me from that moment. The titular “summer people” turn out to be the Allisons urban dwellers, who rent a particular off-grid lakeside house each year. This time, in place of going back to the city, they choose to lengthen their stay an extra month – an action that appears to disturb all the locals in the surrounding community. Everyone conveys the same veiled caution that no one has remained in the area beyond Labor Day. Regardless, they insist to not leave, and that is the moment events begin to become stranger. The man who delivers the kerosene declines to provide to the couple. No one will deliver groceries to their home, and as the family try to go to the village, their vehicle fails to start. Bad weather approaches, the batteries in the radio diminish, and as darkness falls, “the aged individuals crowded closely in their summer cottage and anticipated”. What could be this couple expecting? What do the townspeople understand? Each occasion I peruse this author’s disturbing and thought-provoking tale, I’m reminded that the finest fright comes from the unspoken.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes from Robert Aickman

In this concise narrative a pair travel to a common beach community where church bells toll constantly, a constant chiming that is irritating and puzzling. The initial truly frightening moment occurs at night, as they decide to go for a stroll and they can’t find the water. There’s sand, the scent exists of rotting fish and brine, waves crash, but the ocean appears spectral, or a different entity and more dreadful. It’s just deeply malevolent and every time I visit to the shore in the evening I remember this story which spoiled the ocean after dark to my mind – in a good way.

The newlyweds – the woman is adolescent, the man is mature – head back to the hotel and find out the reason for the chiming, through an extended episode of claustrophobia, necro-orgy and mortality and youth meets danse macabre pandemonium. It’s a chilling meditation regarding craving and deterioration, a pair of individuals maturing in tandem as spouses, the bond and violence and gentleness in matrimony.

Not just the scariest, but perhaps one of the best concise narratives in existence, and a beloved choice. I read it en español, in the initial publication of Aickman stories to appear in Argentina a decade ago.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel by an esteemed writer

I read Zombie near the water in France a few years ago. Even with the bright weather I felt an icy feeling over me. Additionally, I sensed the excitement of anticipation. I was composing a new project, and I encountered an obstacle. I wasn’t sure if it was possible any good way to craft certain terrifying elements the book contains. Reading Zombie, I understood that there was a way.

Released decades ago, the novel is a dark flight through the mind of a murderer, the main character, inspired by an infamous individual, the serial killer who slaughtered and mutilated numerous individuals in a city between 1978 and 1991. Infamously, this person was obsessed with producing a submissive individual who would never leave with him and carried out several grisly attempts to do so.

The deeds the story tells are terrible, but equally frightening is its emotional authenticity. The protagonist’s awful, shattered existence is simply narrated in spare prose, names redacted. The audience is plunged trapped in his consciousness, obliged to witness ideas and deeds that shock. The alien nature of his mind resembles a tangible impact – or being stranded in an empty realm. Entering this story feels different from reading than a full body experience. You are consumed entirely.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel by a gifted writer

During my youth, I walked in my sleep and eventually began suffering from bad dreams. Once, the horror featured a dream where I was stuck inside a container and, upon awakening, I found that I had removed a part off the window, seeking to leave. That building was crumbling; during heavy rain the ground floor corridor flooded, maggots fell from the ceiling into the bedroom, and once a large rat climbed the drapes in my sister’s room.

When a friend gave me this author’s book, I had moved out in my childhood residence, but the narrative regarding the building perched on the cliffs seemed recognizable to myself, homesick at that time. It’s a story concerning a ghostly noisy, sentimental building and a female character who ingests calcium from the cliffs. I cherished the novel deeply and returned again and again to the story, each time discovering {something