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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale from Shirley Jackson

I discovered this tale some time back and it has lingered with me since then. The named “summer people” turn out to be a family from the city, who occupy an identical remote lakeside house annually. This time, in place of going back to the city, they decide to extend their holiday for a month longer – a decision that to alarm each resident in the surrounding community. All pass on the same veiled caution that not a soul has ever stayed in the area past the end of summer. Regardless, the Allisons are resolved to remain, and that’s when events begin to get increasingly weird. The person who supplies the kerosene won’t sell to them. No one will deliver supplies to their home, and as the family attempt to go to the village, their vehicle refuses to operate. A tempest builds, the energy in the radio diminish, and when night comes, “the two old people crowded closely in their summer cottage and waited”. What could be this couple waiting for? What could the townspeople understand? Whenever I read the writer’s disturbing and influential story, I recall that the finest fright stems from the unspoken.

Mariana Enríquez

Ringing the Changes by a noted author

In this brief tale a couple travel to an ordinary coastal village in which chimes sound constantly, an incessant ringing that is irritating and inexplicable. The first extremely terrifying moment happens during the evening, at the time they choose to take a walk and they are unable to locate the sea. Sand is present, there’s the smell of decaying seafood and salt, there are waves, but the ocean seems phantom, or something else and even more alarming. It is truly deeply malevolent and each occasion I travel to a beach in the evening I recall this story which spoiled the beach in the evening for me – positively.

The young couple – the woman is adolescent, the husband is older – go back to the inn and find out why the bells ring, in a long sequence of enclosed spaces, necro-orgy and mortality and youth encounters danse macabre pandemonium. It’s an unnerving reflection on desire and deterioration, two people maturing in tandem as spouses, the bond and violence and gentleness of marriage.

Not only the most terrifying, but likely among the finest short stories out there, and a beloved choice. I read it en español, in the initial publication of this author’s works to be released in Argentina several years back.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel from an esteemed writer

I perused this book near the water in the French countryside a few years ago. Even with the bright weather I sensed cold creep through me. Additionally, I sensed the excitement of anticipation. I was writing my latest book, and I had hit a block. I was uncertain if there was a proper method to compose some of the fearful things the story includes. Experiencing this novel, I realized that it could be done.

First printed in the nineties, the novel is a grim journey into the thoughts of a young serial killer, the protagonist, inspired by a notorious figure, the murderer who killed and cut apart 17 young men and boys in a city between 1978 and 1991. Notoriously, the killer was obsessed with producing a compliant victim that would remain by his side and attempted numerous macabre trials to do so.

The actions the story tells are terrible, but equally frightening is its own emotional authenticity. The protagonist’s awful, shattered existence is directly described in spare prose, names redacted. You is sunk deep stuck in his mind, compelled to see mental processes and behaviors that horrify. The foreignness of his psyche is like a tangible impact – or being stranded on a desolate planet. Entering Zombie is less like reading and more like a physical journey. You are absorbed completely.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel from a gifted writer

During my youth, I sleepwalked and subsequently commenced having night terrors. At one point, the horror involved a vision during which I was confined inside a container and, upon awakening, I discovered that I had ripped a part off the window, trying to get out. That house was crumbling; when storms came the downstairs hall became inundated, fly larvae came down from the roof into the bedroom, and on one occasion a sizeable vermin ascended the window coverings in the bedroom.

After an acquaintance gave me the story, I was residing elsewhere at my family home, but the tale about the home located on the coastline felt familiar to myself, longing at that time. This is a story concerning a ghostly noisy, atmospheric home and a girl who ingests chalk from the cliffs. I adored the story so much and went back frequently to the story, consistently uncovering {something