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A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People by Shirley Jackson

I discovered this story some time back and it has haunted me ever since. The titular vacationers are a family from New York, who occupy a particular isolated lakeside house every summer. During this visit, in place of returning home, they decide to extend their stay an extra month – something that seems to alarm all the locals in the nearby town. All pass on a similar vague warning that nobody has lingered by the water beyond the holiday. Nonetheless, the Allisons are resolved to remain, and that is the moment things start to become stranger. The individual who supplies the kerosene refuses to sell to them. Nobody agrees to bring supplies to the cabin, and as the family attempt to drive into town, the car fails to start. A storm gathers, the batteries within the device fade, and with the arrival of dusk, “the aged individuals crowded closely in their summer cottage and expected”. What could be they waiting for? What might the locals understand? Every time I revisit this author’s chilling and influential story, I recall that the best horror stems from that which remains hidden.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes from Robert Aickman

In this brief tale a couple travel to a common seaside town where bells ring the whole time, a constant chiming that is annoying and inexplicable. The first very scary episode occurs after dark, at the time they choose to walk around and they fail to see the sea. There’s sand, the scent exists of decaying seafood and salt, surf is audible, but the water is a ghost, or a different entity and worse. It’s just insanely sinister and whenever I travel to a beach at night I recall this story that ruined the beach in the evening to my mind – favorably.

The newlyweds – the woman is adolescent, he’s not – go back to the hotel and find out the cause of the ringing, during a prolonged scene of claustrophobia, macabre revelry and death-and-the-maiden intersects with grim ballet bedlam. It is a disturbing meditation about longing and deterioration, two people aging together as a couple, the connection and violence and gentleness of marriage.

Not merely the most terrifying, but perhaps a top example of concise narratives out there, and a beloved choice. I read it in the Spanish language, in the initial publication of this author’s works to appear in Argentina a decade ago.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel by Joyce Carol Oates

I read this narrative near the water in France a few years ago. Despite the sunshine I sensed a chill over me. I also experienced the excitement of anticipation. I was working on a new project, and I encountered a wall. I wasn’t sure whether there existed an effective approach to craft various frightening aspects the narrative involves. Reading Zombie, I realized that there was a way.

Published in 1995, the novel is a bleak exploration into the thoughts of a murderer, Quentin P, modeled after Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer who killed and cut apart 17 young men and boys in the Midwest over a decade. As is well-known, the killer was obsessed with producing a compliant victim who would never leave with him and carried out several grisly attempts to achieve this.

The acts the story tells are horrific, but just as scary is its mental realism. Quentin P’s awful, shattered existence is plainly told using minimal words, details omitted. The audience is sunk deep caught in his thoughts, forced to witness mental processes and behaviors that appal. The strangeness of his thinking is like a bodily jolt – or being stranded on a barren alien world. Starting this story is not just reading but a complete immersion. You are consumed entirely.

An Accomplished Author

White Is for Witching from a gifted writer

During my youth, I sleepwalked and subsequently commenced experiencing nightmares. Once, the horror featured a nightmare where I was confined within an enclosure and, upon awakening, I discovered that I had removed a piece from the window, trying to get out. That house was falling apart; when it rained heavily the entranceway flooded, insect eggs dropped from above onto the bed, and on one occasion a large rat scaled the curtains in the bedroom.

Once a companion handed me the story, I had moved out with my parents, but the story of the house perched on the cliffs felt familiar to me, nostalgic as I felt. It’s a book about a haunted loud, emotional house and a female character who eats calcium off the rocks. I cherished the story deeply and went back frequently to it, each time discovering {something